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etc. I do not desire any sympathy.
At all events, I don't wish to beg for it.
On February 6, 1856, he wrote to
Dana:
I had to meet Clayton last evening at Seward's, where I had a quiet talk with him, Colonel Benton, and Governor [Stanton] as to Kansas and what is to be done.
Judge whether it is either pleasant for me, or profitable for the Tribune or the cause, to have had him assailed in the Tribune as he was.
I rode home with Colonel Benton, who is every inch as vulnerable as Clayton.
But he is now on the right side doing good service.
Would it be wise to attack him for any of his by-gone errors?
And above all, should you attack him. in New York in utter disregard that I am in friendly understanding with him here? . . .
I do wish you would consider my position.
In yesterday's paper I see you talk of Rust as drunk when he assaulted me. Now I don't know this, and have never asserted it. Of course the barbarian will regard this as a fresh attack upon and defiance of him by me, and I can do nothing to undeceive him. . . . Let others denounce or revile Rust; I mean never to speak of him unless obliged to. ...
A few days later he wrote to Pike, “Charge
Dana not to slaughter anybody, but be mild and meek-souled like me.”
But this was not the end of his troubles.
With his own carelessness in mailing his letters, and the bad postal service between
Washington and the
Tribune office, there was necessarily much in the editorial columns which gave him trouble.
He was a querulous and hesitating man, and while he felt deeply and wrote caustically about the public men of the day, he could not always reach his subordinates in time to prevent them from taking action in opposition to his advice.
In one of his letters he says:
