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. DiL 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 hosts.) 'I've got a sketch of him here an'it's all twaddle. Tell us something new about him. If he's got a hole in his sock we ought to know it.
Mr Dana came in to see him while I was there.
'Look here, Dana,'said the Printer, in a rasping humour. 'By the gods of war! here's two colunms about that perfonnance at the Academy and only two sticks of the speech of Seward at St Paul. I ll have to get someone if go an'burn that theatre an'send the bill to me.
In the morning Mayor Wood introduced me to the Duke of Newcastle, who in turn presented me to the Prince of Wales - then a slim, blue-yed youngster of nineteen, as gentle mannered as any I have ever met. It was my unpleasant duty to keep as near as possible to the royal party in all the festivities of that week.
The ball, in the Prince's honour, at the Academy of Music, was one of the great social events of the century. No fair of vanity in the western hemisphere ever quite equalled it. The fashions of the French Court had taken the city, as had the Prince, by unconditional surrender. Not in the palace of Versailles could one have seen a more generous exposure of the charms of fair women.
None were admitted without a low-cut bodice, and many came that had not the proper accessories. But it was the most brilliant company New York had ever seen.
Too many tickets had been distributed and soon 'there was an elbow on every rib and a heel on every toe, as Mr Greeley put it.
