i86o3 Rumblings of Civil War 



Before the war began, my parents had diverged Abolition 

 somewhat from each other in political matters. To Vfrsus 

 Father, Abolition was the main issue, so that he * 

 inclined toward Greeley and the Republicans on the 

 ground that, the slavery question being a moral one, 

 it was not in the category of popular rights. My 

 mother, a thoroughgoing believer in popular govern- 

 ment, favored the Douglas Democrats, of which her 

 brother, David Waldo Hawley, was a leading local 

 exponent. And I remember hearing her maintain 

 in 1860 that the platforms of both Lincoln Re- 

 publicans and Southern or Breckenridge Democrats 

 violated alike the principle of "popular sovereignty" 

 in that both wished to determine arbitrarily the 

 future status of new territories. The Southern 

 Democrats, for example, wished to legislate slavery 

 into them, the Republicans to legislate it out. 

 Douglas Democrats, on the contrary, believed that 

 the people immediately concerned should decide for 

 themselves. But the attack on Fort Sumter, fol- 

 lowed by the ordinances of Secession, led all Douglas 

 Democrats to stand by their patriotic leader in his 

 support of the war. Thus Father, the ardent Abo- 

 litionist, and Mother, the equally ardent Unionist, 

 then met on the same ground, "squatter sovereignty" 

 being no longer an issue. 



Throughout the war Greeley's Tribune, Forney's Greeley 

 War Press, Harpers Weekly, and The Atlantic d ibe 

 Monthly came to us regularly. The Tribune, es- 

 pecially, molded the opinions of millions by means of 

 its owner's powerful and sincere editorials. It was 

 therefore a great surprise and a mortal blow to 

 Greeley that when in 1872 he was nominated for 

 the presidency on a platform of moderation and 



C 31 3 



