Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [50]
Of concern to Reid was a meeting in New York at which leading Liberal Republicans, including Schurz, plotted to dump the convention’s choice. “I knew of the danger of that conference in New York but have no fears,” Pulitzer wrote. “I really think that the conference will result in strengthening Mr. Greeley though the very opposite was its original object. Our element will have the majority in it and our views will prevail.”
A sense of optimism prevailed in the St. Louis Liberal Republican office. Perhaps matters were not as bleak at they seemed. On June 14, Grosvenor and Pulitzer convened a meeting of the executive committee and told the press that a “larger number of Liberal Republicans in Missouri now support the ticket nominated by the Cincinnati National Convention than supported the Liberal State Ticket in 1870.”
But Pulitzer’s work for the Greeley campaign was a nonstop effort at damage control. Not only was the candidate prone to gaffes; Pulitzer’s colleagues in the press were unimpressed by having one of their own as a candidate. Riding a train to New York in midsummer, Pulitzer read in the Philadelphia papers that only one German newspaper supported Greeley, the inconsequential Davenport, Iowa, Demokrat. The Westliche Post, the article added, was also maintaining “an ominous silence.” Pulitzer was incensed. It was bad enough for the item to appear in the Philadelphia Republican press; an appearance in other newspapers around the country would damage the ticket. “Each reprint,” Pulitzer said, is “the theft of a falsehood.”
Upon reaching New York, Pulitzer immediately published an irate correction in the New York Tribune, Greeley’s paper. “Instead of ‘but a single German Republican daily still clinging to Greeley,’” he wrote, “every single German Republican daily (except one) that supported the principles of the Liberal movement previous to the Cincinnati Convention, now supports Horace Greeley.”
As for the “ominous silence of the Westliche Post,” he continued, “I simply say that the paper was never more earnest and outspoken in the good cause than now. I do not hesitate to predict that when the vote shall have been counted in November it will appear even to the blindest or wildest Grant criers that Mr. Greeley has received a much larger proportion of the German vote than has ever before been united upon any Presidential candidate.”
In New York, Pulitzer was cheered by some good news. The Democrats, meeting in Baltimore, decided to support the Liberal Republican ticket and, for first time in party history, chose not to nominate a candidate of their own. But Pulitzer’s growing skill at electoral math left little doubt that even the Democrats’ support would not change the uphill nature of the election. Greeley, one of the most eccentric men ever nominated for president, was not inspiring voters. It did not take much in the way of political tea leaf reading to sense that the election was shaping up as a disaster for Liberal Republicans.
After New York, Pulitzer returned briefly to St. Louis. The campaign had ended Pulitzer’s diligent attendance to his duties with the St. Louis police commission. He missed all the meetings in July and almost every meeting until December. If Pulitzer worried about his attendance, his qualms did not restrain him from collecting his salary. He did make a stab, of sorts, at resigning. He confirmed to a reporter in St. Louis that he had sent a letter of resignation to Governor Brown.
“Has he accepted the resignation?” asked the reporter.
“I don’t know,” replied Pulitzer, smiling.
“As far as you know, has he accepted the resignation?”
“I don’t know—no; the governor wrote me that he wasn’t prepared…” said Pulitzer without finishing the