To suppose, that, under any circumstances of pressure or temptation,
he can fail in loyalty to the cause he has served so constantly, is
an offence to reason and to decency. In his two letters of acceptance
this loyalty is nobly conspicuous. Replying to the nomination at
Cincinnati, he drew the wise line between “local self-government” and
“centralization,” asserting the former as our true policy, “_subject_
to our solemn constitutional obligation to maintain the equal rights
of all citizens,”[224]--thus placing these under national safeguard,
and making them absolutely the same in all parts of the country.
Replying to the nomination at Baltimore, made after the enunciation
of this master principle, he announces his “hope and trust that the
first century of American Independence will not close before the
grand elemental truths on which its rightfulness was originally based
by Jefferson and the Continental Congress of 1776 will have become
the universally accepted and honored foundations of our political
fabric.”[225] And thus is his great record crowned.
Living so entirely in the public eye, all know his life, which
speaks for him now. Who so well as himself could stand the trial?
The “Tribune,” in its career of more than thirty years, speaks for
him also. Those opponents who in the work of disparagement assert
that he wants executive ability, I point to this journal, begun by
Horace Greeley in 1841, without partner or business associate, with a
cash capital of only one thousand dollars, and with but six hundred
subscribers. And yet, under his individual effort, by his amazing
industry and through his rare intelligence, with his determined nature
animating all, the enterprise prospered, until he found himself at
the head of one of the first newspapers of the world, completely
organized intellectually and mechanically, with writers for every
subject, with correspondents everywhere at home and abroad, and with a
constantly increasing influence never surpassed in newspaper history.
A President with the ability that did all this would impart new energy
to the public service, impressing it with his own faithful character,
and assuring, on a larger scale, a corresponding success, so that the
whole country would be gainer. Again, those opponents who assert that
Horace Greeley wants fidelity, or that he can be easily swayed against
life-long convictions, I point to this same journal, which from the
beginning, and throughout the whole course of its existence, has been
an unwavering representative of the liberal cause, foremost always
in warfare with Slavery, prompt in support of reform, inflexible in
honesty, and a beacon-flame to all struggling for human advancement.
Not to put faith in Horace Greeley is to act not only without evidence,
but against evidence so manifest and constant in unbroken continuity as
to seem like a law of Nature. As well distrust the sun in its appointed
course.