Chapter 36

Those were great days in mid autumn. The Republic was in grave
peril of dissolution. Liberty that had hymned her birth in the last
century now hymned her destiny in the voices of bard and orator.
Crowds of men gathered in public squares, at bulletin boards, on
street corners arguing, gesticulating, exclaiming and cursing.
Cheering multitudes went up and down the city by night, with
bands and torches, and there was such a howl of oratory and
applause on the lower half of Manhattan Island that it gave the
reporter no rest. William H. Seward, Charles Sumner, John A. Dix,
Henry Ward Beecher and Charles O'Connor were the giants of the
stump. There was more violence and religious fervour in the
political feeling of that time than had been mingled since '76. A
sense of outrage was in the hearts of men. 'Honest Abe' Lincoln
stood, as they took it, for their homes and their country, for human
liberty and even for their God.

I remember coming into the counting-room late one evening. Loud
voices had halted me as I passed the door. Mr Greeley stood back
of the counter; a rather tall, wiry grey-headed man before it. Each
was shaking a right fist under the other's nose. They were shouting
loudly as they argued. The stranger was for war; Mr Greeley for
waiting. The publisher of the Tribune stood beside the latter,
smoking a pipe; a small man leaned over the counter at the
stranger's elbow, putting in a word here and there; half a dozen
people stood by, listening. Mr Greeley turned to his publisher in a
moment.

'Rhoades,' said he, 'I wish ye'd put these men out. They holler 'n
yell, so I can't hear myself think.

Then there was a general laugh.

I learned to my surprise, when they had gone, that the tall man was
William H. Seward, the other John A. Dix.

Then one of those fevered days came the Prince of Wales - a
Godsend, to allay passion with curiosity.

It was my duty to handle some of 'the latest news by magnetic
telegraph', and help to get the plans and progress of the campaign
at headquarters. The Printer, as they called Mr Greeley, was at his
desk when I came in at noon, never leaving the office but for
dinner, until past midnight, those days. And he made the Tribune a
mighty power in the state. His faith in its efficacy was sublime,
and every line went under his eye before it went to his readers. I
remember a night when he called me to his office about twelve o
clock. He was up to his knees in the rubbish of the day-newspapers
that he had read and thrown upon the floor; his desk was littered
with proofs.

'Go an' see the Prince o' Wales,' he said. (That interesting young
man had arrived on the Harriet Lane that morning and ridden up
Broadway between cheering