leading editor of the land, was made the
scapegoat--the target of universal criticism. The barbed arrows found
his brain, and becoming excited, sleepless and overwrought, Greeley went
into an attack of brain fever, from which he recovered only after long
time, to register a vow that he would never again discuss the management
of the army. Then came his editorials urging emancipation, illustrated
by "The prayer of twenty millions," and Lincoln's wonderful reply,
written to Greeley, "in deference to an old friend whose heart I have
always found to be right." It is honour enough for any editor to have
called out Lincoln's letter (August 22, 1862), a letter that placed the
President in the first rank as a master of epigrammatic speech, and put
in a nutshell the whole position of the government in relation to the
war.

Greeley was wrong again in 1864, when he met certain representatives of
the South at Niagara Falls and suggested a plan of adjustment for the
ending of the war. These so-called peace commissioners, without doubt,
used Greeley as a convenient tool, and exhibited him as Don Quixote,
riding forth upon a windmill enterprise. But Greeley had the courage of
his opinions; threats could not cow him nor blows terrify him, nor scorn
and hate drive him from a position which he had taken upon grounds of
conscience and sound reasoning.

During the draft riots, in 1863, the mob attacked the _Tribune_,
smashing the windows and doors, and it seemed a miracle that Greeley was
not killed. When his friends rescued him the great editor seemed quite
unwilling to be forced into a place of safety. "Well, it doesn't matter;
I have done my work; I may as well be killed by the mob as die in my
bed; between now and the next time is only a little while."

In May, 1867, Greeley signed the bail bond for Jefferson Davis,
ex-president of the Confederacy. Burning with anger his friends in the
Union League Club of New York called a meeting to expel him. He returned
a defiant answer: "Gentlemen, I shall not attend your meeting; I have an
engagement out of town and I shall keep it. I do not recognize you as
capable of judging me. You evidently regard me as a weak sentimentalist,
misled by a maudlin philosophy. I arraign you as narrow-minded
blockheads, who would like to be useful to a great and good cause but
don't know how. Your attempt to base a great and enduring party on the
hate and wrath engendered by a bloody civil war is as though you