New York, May 21, 1861.
Pike: Your
Maine delegation was a poor affair; I thought you had been at work preparing it
for the great struggle; yet I suspect you left all the work for me, as
everybody seems to do. Massachusetts also was right in Weed's hands, contrary
to all reasonable expectation. I cannot understand this. It was all we could do
to hold Vermont by the most desperate exertions; and I at some times despaired
of it. The rest of New England was pretty sound, but part of New Jersey was
somehow inclined to sin against light and knowledge. If you had seen the
Pennsylvania delegation, and known how much money Weed had in hand, you would
not have believed we could do so well as we did. Give Curtin thanks for that.
Ohio looked very bad, yet turned out well, and Virginia had been regularly sold
out; but the seller couldn't deliver. “We had to rain red-hot bolts on them,
however, to keep the majority from going for Seward, who got eight votes here
as it was. Indiana was our right bower, and Missouri above praise. It was a
fearful week, such as I hope and trust I shall never see repeated. I think your
absence lost us several votes.
But the deed is done, and the country breathes more freely.
We shall beat the enemy fifty thousand in this State — can't take off a single
man. New England stands like a rock, and the North-west is all ablaze.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey are our pieces de resistance, but we shall
carry them. I am almost worn out.
Yours,
Horace Greeley.
James S. Pike,
Esq., Somewhere.
SOURCE: James Shepherd Pike, First Blows of the
Civil War: The Ten Years of Preliminary Conflict in the United States from 1850
to 1860, p. 519-20
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