Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/418

392 canvass, I know that my running would have helped the ticket and helped my paper.

"It was thought best to let the matter take another course. No other name could have been put on the ticket so bitterly humbling to me as that which was selected. The nomination was given to Raymond, the fight left to me. And, Governor Seward, I have made it, though it be conceited in me to say so. What little fight there has been I have stirred up. Even Weed has not been (I speak of his paper) hearty in this contest, while the journal of the Whig lieutenant-governor has taken care of its own interests and let the canvass take care of itself, as it early declared it would do. That journal has (because of its milk-and-water course) some twenty thousand subscribers in this city and its suburbs, and of these twenty thousand I venture to say more voted for Ullmann and Scroggs than for Clark and Raymond; the Tribune (also because of its character) has but eight thousand subscribers within the same radius, and I venture to say that of its habitual readers nine-tenths voted for Clark and Raymond—very few for Ullmann and Scroggs. I had to bear the brunt of the contest, and take a terrible responsibility in order to prevent the Whigs uniting upon James W. Barker in order to defeat Fernando Wood. Had Barker been elected here, neither you nor I could walk these streets without being hooted, and Know-nothingism would have swept like a prairie fire. I stopped Barker's election at the cost of incurring the deadliest enmity of the defeated gang, and I have been rebuked for it by the lieutenant-governor's paper. At the critical moment he came out against John Wheeler in favor of Charles H. Marshall (who would have been your deadliest enemy in the House); and even your colonel-general's paper, which was even with me in insisting that Wheeler should be returned, wheeled about at the last moment and went in for Marshall, the Tribune alone clinging to Wheeler to the last. I rejoice that they who turned so suddenly were not able to turn all their readers.

"Governor Seward, I know that some of your most cherished friends think me a great obstacle to your advancement—that John Schoolcraft, for one, insists that you and Weed shall not be identified with me. I trust, after a time, you will not be. I trust I shall never be found in opposition to