OREGON'S NOMINATION OF LINCOLN 213
nature side of newspaper men can catch a glimpse of the inner consciousness of the editor Greeley, and realize how willing Greeley must have been to answer the summons of Oregon to represent it in the convention against Seward.
Greeley countered these aspersions, of course, with the skill of a great editor in a journalistic duello. If his motives harked back to the subconscious experience of shabby treatment at the hands of Seward and Weed, yet the modern reader can hardly doubt the sincerity of his purposes.
"I went to Chicago," he wrote, "to do my best to nominate Judge Bates, unless facts, there developed, should clearly render another choice advisable." The reader will remember a quota- tion from this same statement of Greeley 's quoted earlier in this article, narrating how he acquired the Oregon proxy and recog- nized the obligation that went with it to support Bates, who was a favorite of Oregon Republicans. "I reiterate that I think Judge Bates would have been the wiser choice. There is no truer, more faithful, more deserving Republican than Abra- ham Lincoln; probably no nomination could have been made more conducive to certain triumph; and yet I feel that the selection of Edward Bates would have been more farsighted, more courageous, more magnanimous." Greeley added that the true cause of Seward's defeat was not his (Greeley's) op- position to him, but the conviction, on the part of the delegates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Indiana, that the nomina- tion of Seward would jeopardize the election in those States. Greeley said later, in response to Raymond's letter (quoted in the foregoing) aspersing Greeley's motives as those of revenge:
"If ever in my life I discharged a public duty in utter dis- regard of personal considerations, I did so at Chicago last month. . . . Our personal intercourse [with Seward] as well since as before my letter herewith published, had always been frank and kindly, and I was never insensible to his many
food and some great qualities, both of head and heart. But did not and do not believe it advisable that he should be the Republican candidate for President."
The "letter herewith published" referred to by Greeley in the foregoing paragraph, Greeley had written November 11, 1854, after the state election, for whose nomination as Gov-
