There should be some way of using the NY Times archive to find the quote if it was in the paper. I haven't been able to find it myself. One needs the context to figure out what one-line quotes like this mean. Very often writers use "indirect speech" to convey what they think other people are thinking and saying (They are saying this, not that I necessarily agree with them"). Or they speak hypothetically ("If we do this, that will happen"). So one can't always take such one-sentence quotes at face value.
Here are some from the NY Times. You won’t have to search too hard. I’ll provide the dates for you.
“The predicament in which both the government and the commerce of the country are placed, through the non-enforcement of our revenue laws, is now thoroughly understood the world over....If the manufacturer at Manchester (England) can send his goods into the Western States through New Orleans at less cost than through New York, he is a fool for not availing himself of his advantage....if the importations of the country are made through Southern ports, its exports will go through the same channel. The produce of the West, instead of coming to our own port by millions of tons to be transported abroad by the same ships through which we received our importations, will seek other routes and other outlets. With the loss of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many hundred millions of dollars, to turn into our harbor the products of the interior? They share in the common ruin. So do our manufacturers. Once at New Orleans, goods may be distributed over the whole country duty free. The process is perfectly simple. The commercial bearing of the question has acted upon the North. We now see whither our tending, and the policy we must adopt. With us it is no longer an abstract question of Constitutional construction, or of the reserved or delegated power of the State or Federal Government, but of material existence and moral position both at home and abroad. We were divided and confused till our pockets were touched.” New York Times March 30, 1861
......Similarly, the economic editor of the NY Times, who had maintained for months that secession would not injure Northern commerce or prosperity, changed his mind on 22 March 1861: “At once shut down every Southern port, destroy its commerce and bring utter ruin on the Confederate States.”
Here’s the Old Gray Lady on slavery:
(opposed abolition of slavery….. proposed slaves should be allowed to marry and taught to read and invest their money in savings accounts...)which would “ameliorate rather than to abolish the slavery of the Southern States.”...and would thus permit slavery to be “a very tolerable system.” New York Times Jan 22 1861
LOL! I would say they’d like to have that one back and their articles about how it was all about money.....but remember this is the paper that employed and never gave back Walter Duranty’s apologia for Stalin and efforts to cover up the Holodomor and now there’s the whole Russia Collusion conspiracy theory. So you see the NY Times has been an embarrassment for quite some time.....
I also looked for that quote & couldn't find it.
So I made a small investment in a book of New York Times Civil War reports.
When it arrives we'll see what might be there.
I suspect the full context will show those words simply report what "some people" might say.