═════════════════════╧═════════╧══════════╧════════╧════════╧══════════╧══════╩═══════╧════════╧═════════╧═════════╧═══════╧══════════╧═════════╧══════════╧═════════ [24] Rejected by Congress. From the time that Greeley was nominated in May, until probably a month after the meeting of the Democratic convention in July, everything pointed to his triumphant election. Leading men of the party were daily announcing themselves as his supporters, and a tidal wave that would sweep Greeley into the Presidency seemed certain. But in August the great business interests of the country, then rocked in the tempest of inflation created by the war, became appalled at the prospect of the election of Greeley, whose financial and business policy would be but an experiment. All knew that the business of the country was dangerously inflated, and that disaster must come sooner or later, but they felt that it would be delayed by the re-election of Grant, and in the brief period of one month the Greeley tide began its ebb, which doomed him to a most humiliating defeat. Had David Davis been the candidate there would have been no such apprehension in business and monetary circles, and I have never doubted that he would have been elected as the logical successor of Abraham Lincoln. Although I had opposed the nomination of Greeley, he well understood that it was solely because I felt that I was thus a better friend to him than he was to himself, and I devoted my time to tireless effort to give him success. Outside his editorial duties, in which he was a master of masters, he was as guileless and unsophisticated as a child, and even his closest friends trembled when they regarded his election to the Presidency as more than probable. About the 1st of August, before the revulsion had become visible, I was sent for by Waldo Hutchings to meet the friends of Greeley in conference at the Astor House. Among those present were Mr. Hutchings, Whitelaw Reid, ex-Congressman Cochran, and several others, and they informed me that I had been sent for to call upon Greeley and earnestly admonish him against making any pledges or promises whatever, before the election, as to his Cabinet appointments. They said that if elected President his safety would be in having about him an able, faithful and discreet Cabinet, and they feared that in the kindness of his heart he would become complicated with those who sought to importune him for preferment. In order to keep him from visitors he was then hidden away in a private upstairs room in Brooklyn, where I was directed to call on my mission.