De Alexander

If the cotton States unitedly and earnestly wish to withdraw peacefully from the Union, we think they should and would be allowed to go.

Whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in.

The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless....

The election occurred on November 6, and on the 9th he declared that "if the cotton States shall decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace.

Heretofore the Republican party had defeated them separately--now it met them as a united whole, when antagonisms, ceasing to be those of rational debate, had become those of fierce and furious passion.

But in freshness of thought and kaleidoscopic phraseology, they were attractive, full of eloquence, and of statesmanlike comment, lifting the campaign, then just opening, upon a high plane of political and moral patriotism.

In its eagerness to unite every phase of anti-slavery sentiment the convention buried the past in its desire to know, in the words of Seward, "whether this is a constitutional government under which we live.

He was evidently a man without guile, and, although modest and plain-spoken, he knew what the farmer and workingman most wanted, and addressed himself to their best thought.

But the fact that he advocated the protection of slave property in the territories, although opposed to Buchanan's Lecompton policy, was destined to subject him to humiliating defeat.

Personally, Brady was perhaps the most popular man in New York City; and had he stood upon other than a pro-slavery platform his support must have been generous.

To many it seemed strange, if not absolutely ludicrous, to hoist a pro-slavery flag in the Empire State.

It destroys ideals of disinterestedness and generosity which relieved political life from so much that is selfish, sordid, and rapacious.

We, on the other hand, have ever held the relation of newspaper editor and subscriber as one of fraternity.

Admit, as we do, that he is not as wealthy as we wish he was, it is not because the Tribune has not made his fortune, but because he did not keep it--because it went, as other people's money goes, to friends, to pay indorsements, and in…

Did he not attain, in the sixteen years, a high position, world-wide reputation, and an ample fortune?

Few candidates are able to bear the truth, or to believe that the friend who utters it is truly one.

Nearly forty years of experience leaves us in some doubt whether, with political friends, an open, frank, and truthful, or a cautious, calculating, non-committal course is not the right, but the easiest and most politic.

We had no sympathy with, and little respect for, a constituency that preferred 'Jim' Brooks to Horace Greeley.

For years, therefore, we placed Horace Greeley far above the 'swell mob' of office-seekers, for whom, in his letter, he expresses so much contempt.

We believed him indifferent alike to the temptations of money and office, desiring only to become both 'useful' and 'ornamental,' as the editor of a patriotic, enlightened, leading, and influential public journal.

Greeley was much abler, more indomitably industrious, and, as we believed, a better man in all respects.

The Tribune takes with it, wherever it goes, an indomitable and powerful pen, a devoted, a noble, and an unselfish zeal.

But when carried away by its convictions of duty to other, and, in its judgment, higher and more beneficent objects, we have as little right as inclination to complain.

He understood as well as I did that my position with regard to him, though more independent than it had been, was nowise hostile, and that I was as ready to support his advancement as that of any other statesman, whenever my judgment…

I judge, as we might indeed well know from his nobleness of disposition, that he has no idea of saying or doing anything wrong or unkind; but it is sad to see him so unhappy.