he election occurred on November 6, and on the 9th he
declared that "if the cotton States shall decide that they can do
better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in
peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists
nevertheless.... Whenever a considerable section of our Union shall
deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures
designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a republic, whereof
one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets."[600] Two weeks
later, on November 26, he practically repeated these views. "If the
cotton States unitedly and earnestly wish to withdraw peacefully from
the Union, we think they should and would be allowed to go. Any
attempt to compel them by force to remain would be contrary to the
principles enunciated in the immortal Declaration of Independence,
contrary to the fundamental ideas on which human liberty is
based."[601] As late as December 17, when South Carolina and other
Southern States were on the threshold of secession, Greeley declared
that "if the Declaration of Independence justified the secession from
the British Empire of three millions of colonists in 1776, we do not
see why it should not justify the secession of five millions of
Southrons from the Union in 1861."[602] In January, he recanted in a
measure. Yet, on February 23, he announced that "Whenever it shall be
clear that the great body of the Southern people have become
conclusively alienated from the Union, and anxious to escape from it,
we will do our best to forward their views."[603]

[Footnote 600: New York _Tribune_, November 9, 1860.]

[Footnote 601: _Ibid._, November 26.]

[Footnote 602: New York _Tribune_, December 17.]

[Footnote 603: _Ibid._, February 23.]

Henry Ward Beecher[604] and the Garrison Abolitionists[605] also
inclined to this view; and, in November and December, a few
Republicans, because of a general repugnance to the coercion of a
State, did not despise it. Naturally, however, the Greeley policy did
not please the great bulk of Lincoln's intelligent supporters. The
belief obtained that, the election having been fair and
constitutional, the South ought to submit to the decision as readily
as Northern Democrats acquiesced in it. Besides, a spontaneous feeling
existed that the United States was a nation, that secession was
treason, and seceders were traitors. Such people sighed for "an hour
of Andrew Jackson;" and, to sup