William Alexander Linn, Horace Greeley Founder and Editor of The New York Tribune

“ [129] by instinct, by tradition, and disinclined to reject or leave undone the practical good within reach, while straining after the ideal good that was clearly unattainable, I clung fondly to the Whig party, and deprecated the Abolition, or third, party in politics, as calculated fatally to weaken the only great national organization which was likely to oppose an effective resistance to the persistent exactions and aggressions of the slave power.” But before this was written, Greeley had witnessed the death of the Whig party, because it did not make its resistance effective, and had read, if not written, in the Tribune (November 24, 1847): “As to the Abolition party, its movements and fulminations have doubtless had the evil effect observed by Mr. Clay, of irritating and alarming the masters generally, and rendering most of them impervious to the arguments for emancipation. But, on the other hand, their efforts have served to awaken and fix public attention, and, though their immediate influence has been unfavorable, we are not sure that the existence of slavery has been protracted by their labors as a whole.”

The vastness of the task required of those who were to educate public opinion in the Northern States to accept slavery as a moral