James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

[311] I approve of the appropriation for the books, provided they are honestly disposed of according to the intent of the appropriation.

Mr. Edwards. Why, then, did you make the denial in the Tribune, and say that you voted against it?

Mr. Greeley. I did vote against it. I did not vote for it, because I did not choose to have some sort of gentlemen on this floor hawk at me. The gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Hudson] submitted considerations to me of which I admitted the force. I admit them now; I admit that the House was justifiable in voting for this appropriation, for the reason ably stated by the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means; and I think I was justifiable, as this Hall will show, in not voting for it. In no particular was there collision between what I said on this floor, the editorial, and what I said in conversation. The conversation to which the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Darling] refers is doubtless the same of which the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Hudson] has spoken.

Mr. G. having concluded—

On motion of Mr. Vinton, the Committee rose and reported the bill to the House, with sundry amendments.

After the flurry was over, Mr. Greeley went home and wrote an explanation which appeared a day or two after in the Tribune. It began thus:

‘The attack upon me by Dr. Edwards of Ohio to-day, was entirely unexpected. I had never heard nor suspected that he cherished ill — will toward me, or took exception to anything I had said or done. I have spoken with him almost daily as a friendly acquaintance, and only this morning had a familiar conference with him respecting his report on the importation of adulterated drugs, which has just been presented. I have endeavored through the Tribune to do justice to his spirited and most useful labors on that subject. Neither in word nor look did he ever intimate that he was offended with me—not even this morning. Conceive, then, my astonishment, when, in Committee of the Whole, after the general appropriation bill had been gone through by items and sections, he rose, and moving a sham amendment in order to obtain the floor, sent to the clerk's desk to be read, a Tribune containing the substance of my remarks on a recent occasion, repelling the charge that I had voted for the Congressional books, and that having been read, he proceeded to pronounce it false, and declare that he had three wit ’