No sooner did all that, which Mr. Greeley had been striving during many years to bring about, seem to be on the point of consummation, than the demoralized and panic-stricken reformer became desirous to undo his own achievements, and to use for the purpose of effecting a sudden retrogression all the influence which he had gained by bold leadership. November 9, 1860, it was appalling to read in the editorial columns of his sheet, 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;" that, while the "Tribune" denied the right of nullification, yet it would admit that "to withdraw from the Union is quite another matter;" that "whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in."[117] At the end of another month the "Tribune's" famous editor was still in the same frame of mind, declaring himself "averse to the employment of military force to fasten one section of our confederacy to the other," and saying that, "if eight States, having five millions of people, choose to separate from us, they cannot be permanently withheld from so doing by federal cannon." On December 17 he even said that the South had as good a right to secede from the Union as the colonies had to secede from Great Britain, and that he "would not stand up for coercion, for subjugation," because he did not "think it would be just." On February 23, 1861, he said that if the Cotton States, or the Gulf States, "choose to form an independent nation, they have a clear moral right to do so," and if the "great body of the Southern people" become alienated from the Union and wish to "escape from it, we will do our best to forward their views." A volume could be filled with the like writing of his prolific pen at this time, and every sentence of such purport was the casting of a new stone to create an almost impassable obstruction in the path along which the new President must soon endeavor to move. Thurlow Weed, editor of the Albany "Evening Journal," and the confidential adviser of Seward, wrote in favor of concessions; he declared that "a victorious party can afford to be tolerant;" and he advocated a convention to revise the Constitution, on the ground that, "after more than seventy years of wear and tear, of collision and abrasion, it should be no cause of wonder that the machinery of government is found weakened, or out of repair, or even defective." Frequently he uttered the wish, vague and of fine sound, but enervating, that the Republicans might "meet secession as patriots and not as partisans." On November 9 the Democratic New York "Herald," discussing the election of Lincoln, said: "For far less than this our fathers seceded from Great Britain;" it also declared coercion to be "out of the question," and laid down the principle that each State possesses "the right to break the tie of the confederacy, as a nation