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he couldn't raise five hundred dollars. So we go, and the worst not come yet. We are lucky who are not under the necessity of borrowing. ...
The hope of putting up the price of daily papers in New York, although favored by the
Herald, came to naught, because, under the influence of
Raymond, the
Times opposed it. In the end the reduction of expenses proved to be the salvation of the
Tribune, which never missed an issue, but continued with renewed determination to be the organ of all who were in any way opposed to the extension or favored the destruction of slavery.
On May 2d, in reply to the ominous warnings which reached it from many sides, it declared, this time in the unmistakable language of
Greeley:
We do not believe the Union in any present danger, yet we say most distinctly that we should prefer to belong to a peace-loving, art-developing, labor-honoring, God-fearing confederacy of twenty millions of Freemen, rather than to a filibustering, war-making, conquest-seeking, slavery-extending union of thirty millions, one-sixth of them slaves.
If this be treason, make the most of it.
On the passage of the
Nebraska bill through the House of Representatives, a few days later, the
Tribune exclaimed:
Whatever may be the issue of the immediate struggle, we will unswervingly trust that the forces are silently maturing which shall rid our land ere many years of the scandal and crime of enslaving and auctioneering the countrymen of Washington and Jefferson-nay, we will trust that even the outrage just consummated, which seems for the moment so disheartening, shall in God's good providence be made signally instrumental in hastening that glorious day when the sun shall look down on no American slave.
... The permanence of the Union is predicable only
