as a man who, in having a newspaper at his back, is sure not to play
their game fairly. The consequence was that he was constantly
irritated by finding how purely professional his influence was, or,
in other words, what a mortifying disproportion existed between his
editorial and his personal power. The first revelation the public
had of the bitterness of his disappointment on this score was caused
by the publication of the famous Seward letter, and the surprise it
caused was perhaps the highest compliment Mr. Greeley ever received.
It showed with what success he had prevented his private griefs from
affecting his public action, and people are always ready to forgive
ambition as an "infirmity of noble minds," even when they do not
feel disposed to reward it.

Unfortunately for Mr. Greeley, however, he never could persuade
himself that the public was of the same mind as the politicians
regarding his personal capacity. He persisted to the last in
believing himself the victim of their envy, hatred, and malice, and
looking with unabated hope to some opportunity of obtaining a
verdict on his merits as a man of action, in which his widespread
popularity and his long and laborious teachings would fairly tell.
The result of the Cincinnati Convention, which his friends and
emissaries from this city went out to prepare, but which perhaps
neither he nor they in the beginning ventured to hope for, seemed to
promise him at last the crown and consummation of a life's longings,
and he received it with almost childlike joy. The election was,
therefore, a crushing blow. It was not, perhaps, the failure to get
the presidency that was hardest to bear--for this might have been
accompanied by such a declaration of his fitness for the presidency
as would have sweetened the remainder of his years--it was the
contemptuous greatness of his opponent's majority which was killing.