William Alexander Linn, Horace Greeley Founder and Editor of The New York Tribune

“ [165] and slavery is king. How long shall this monarch reign? This is now the question for the Northern people to answer. . . . Conspiracy has done its worst. Treason has done its worst. Who comes to the rescue . . . Perhaps some such gigantic outrage upon the living sentiment of the North as the defeat of the Missouri compromise was necessary to arouse and consolidate the hosts of freedom in the free States.”

The Kansas-Nebraska question created a new alinement of parties. Greeley credited Douglas and Pierce with having made more Abolitionists in three months than Garrison and Phillips could have made in fifty years. The purpose of the slave power was rendered clearer, and the Northern determination to resist it was strengthened. The Tribune's files are a sufficient demonstration of the part it took in the formation of the new Northern sentiment, and Greeley's willingness to accept the compromise measures when they were in process of formation increased his authority when he interpreted the actual result. Now Whigs like Greeley and Seward, Free-soilers like Sumner and Chase, Abolitionists like Owen Lovejoy and Giddings, and Democrats like Trumbull and Blair saw a common ground on which they could fight