D. BURWELL TO TILDEN
"My dear Sir,—I presume you have observed the canal bill, which increases the State debt $9,000,000. Will you not devote some time to-morrow to get letters from the money kings—Messrs. Beekman and Morgan and Williams—to have the bill defeated?
"An effort is to be made to press the bill through this week, and it is very important there should be some delay.
"I write you because I know you will feel an interest in defending those constitutional provisions you contributed so essentially to form. I have heard that many of the sound financial men of Wall Street are opposed to this new scheme of debt, and particularly Mr. C. W. Lawrence, of the Bank of the State of New York. I hope you will devote one day more to defend the public faith.
"I should not write, but I really feel it a solemn duty to urge every one I can think of to the defence of the Constitution.
"If you could get up a short remonstrance you would do something worthy of your past labors; but have it sent up by Tuesday or Wednesday.
"Yours truly,
"D. Burwell."
By the death of President Taylor, in 1850, the Vice-President, Millard Fillmore, of New York, became Acting President.
Whether, and if any, to what extent, the free State and the slave State partisans in New York, on whose political course the next Presidential election was largely dependent, would be able to act together at the ensuing Presidential election, had become an absorbing question throughout the nation in 1851. Gideon Welles had for many years been prominent among political journalists as editor of the Hartford Times. He had also been a devoted champion of the principles and policies of Presidents Jackson and Van Buren, and was at this time a warm partisan of the Free-soil wing of the Democratic party. He later had the honor to be selected by President Lincoln in 1861 for his Secretary of the Navy, the department of the military service which during the Civil War of 1861-5 proved most uniformly victorious and efficient.