Burke, what patriotism was to Webster, what all
mankind was to Paul, that politics and political writing were to Horace
Greeley. Dr. Bacon once said of a secretary of the State Association of
Connecticut that he was "possessed of a statistical devil." And Horace
Greeley's _Tribune Almanac_ became so great a power that an envious
competitor once said that Horace Greeley was possessed of a political
devil, who helped him in his statistics on Protection. At last the
_Tribune_ became a national organ, an acknowledged power. Horace Greeley
began to make history, and in 1860 prevented Seward's nomination for the
presidency. It was Greeley's personal preference for Governor Bates of
Missouri that made possible the nomination of Abraham Lincoln.

As a reformer, Greeley was an extremist in politics. Whatever he wanted,
he wanted on the moment, and had no patience in waiting. He was as
uncompromising as Garrison, as insistent as Wendell Phillips, and as
bitter in his criticism of Lincoln for postponing emancipation as
Theodore Parker himself could have been. When the South seceded Greeley
said that we must "let the erring sisters go." He thought that the North
could do without the South quite as well as the South could do without
the North; that is no true marriage that binds husband and wife together
with chains when love has fled away. He urged that if any six States
would send their representatives to Washington and say: "We wish to
withdraw from the Union," the North had better let those States depart.
It was not that Greeley felt it was best to dissolve the Union, but that
he loathed the idea of compelling States by force to remain in it.

For a long time he carried the head-lines "On to Richmond" and roused
the North into such a frenzy of feeling that he goaded the President,
the Cabinet and General Winfield Scott into action before they were
ready. Scott was at the head of the army. He was a Virginian, and loved
the Old Dominion State with every drop of blood in his veins. The great
men of the South on their knees begged Scott to join the South and lead
the host of rebellion. Scott answered that he had sworn a solemn oath to
defend the Constitution and the country, and made himself an outcast
that he might be true to God and the Union. But the cry "On to Richmond"
became the cry of an unreasoning multitude of editors and their readers.
All unprepared, the advance was ordered and Bull Run was the result.
Greeley, being the