new York, December 14, 1859.
Probably Mr. Seward stays in Europe till the first flurry
occasioned by the Harper's Ferry affair is over; but I do not think his
prospects for being the next candidate for the Presidency are brightening. This
iteration of the misconstruction put on his phrase of “the
irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery” has, I think, damaged
him a good deal, and in this city there is one thing which has damaged him
still more. I mean the project of Thurlow Weed to give charters for a set of
city railways, for which those who receive them are to furnish a fund of from
four to six hundred thousand dollars, to be expended for the Republican cause
in the next Presidential election. This scheme was avowed by Mr. Weed to our
candidate for mayor, Mr. Opdyke, and others, and shocked the honest old
Democrats of our party not a little. Besides the Democrats of our party, there
is a bitter enmity to this railway scheme cherished by many of the old Whigs of
our party. They are very indignant at Weed's meddling with the affair, and
between Weed and Seward they make no distinction, assuming that, if Seward becomes
President, Weed will be “viceroy over him.” Notwithstanding, I suppose it is
settled that Seward is to be presented by the New York delegation to the convention
as their man.
Frank Blair, the younger, talks of Wade, of Ohio, and it
will not surprise me if the names which have been long before the public are
put aside for some one against which fewer objections can be made.
Our election for mayor is over. We wished earnestly to unite
the Republicans on Havemeyer, and should have done so if he had not absolutely
refused to stand when a number of Republicans waited on him, to beg that he
would consent to stand as a candidate.
Just as the Republicans had made every arrangement to
nominate Opdyke, he concluded to accept the Tammany nomination, and then it was
too late to bring the Republicans over. They had become so much offended and
disgusted with the misconduct of the Tammany supervisors in appointing registrars,
and the abuse showered upon the Republicans by the Tammany speakers, and by the
shilly-shallying of Havemeyer, that they were like so many unbroke colts; there
was no managing them. So we had to go into a tripartite battle; and Wood, as we
told them beforehand, carried off what we were quarrelling for. Havemeyer has
since written a letter to put the Republicans in the right. “He is too old for
the office,” said many persons to me when he was nominated. After I saw that
letter I was forced to admit that this was true.
Your letters are much read. I was particularly, and so were
others, interested with the one — a rather long one — on the policy of
Napoleon, but I could not subscribe to the censure you passed on England for
not consenting to become a party to the Congress unless some assurance was
given her that the liberties of Central Italy would be secured. By going into
the Congress she would become answerable for its decisions, and bound to
sustain them, as she was in the arrangements made by her and the other great
powers after the fall of Napoleon — arrangements the infamy of which has stuck
to her ever since. I cannot wonder that she is shy of becoming a party to
another Congress for the settlement of the affairs of Europe, and I thought
that reluctance did her honor. I should have commented on your letter on this
subject if it had been written by anybody but yourself. . . .
The Union-savers, who include a pretty large body of
commercial men, begin to look on our paper with a less friendly eye than they
did a year ago. The southern trade is good just now, and the western rather
unprofitable. Appleton says there is not a dollar in anybody's pocket west of
Buffalo.
SOURCE: Parke Godwin, A
Biography of William Cullen Bryant, Volume 2, p. 127-8
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