Greeley’s go-in-peace editorials represented a dual gambit, one part aimed at the North and the other at the South. Like most Republicans, Greeley believed at first that southern states did not really intend to secede; “they simply mean to bully the Free States into concessions.” Even after South Carolina went out, Greeley wrote to Lincoln that “I fear nothing . . . but another disgraceful backdown of the free States. . . . Another nasty compromise, whereby everything is conceded and nothing secured, will so thoroughly disgrace and humiliate us that we can never again raise our heads.”42 To
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