CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



above sectional interests and party loyalties, 

 and surveyed his country as a whole. No other 

 man of his day, either in or out of public office, 

 was so free from local prejudices and so intensely 

 national in his beliefs and sympathies. He re- 

 fused to stamp himself with the label of the 

 North or of the South. He had been reared 

 in the one and matured in the other. And in 

 the ominous days before the Civil War he 

 strove like a beneficent giant to make the 

 wrangling partisans listen to the voice of 

 reason and arbitration. 



He went to the Democratic Convention at 

 Baltimore, just before the war> and set before 

 the Southerners the standpoint of the North. 

 Then he bought a daily paper The Times 

 to explain to Chicago the standpoint of the 

 South. He wrote editorials. He made speeches. 

 He poured into the newspapers, day after day 

 for two years, a large share of the profits that 

 he derived from his Reaper. He was no more 

 popular as an editor than as a political candi- 

 date. He was a maker, not a collector, of public 

 opinion; and instead of pandering to the war 



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