W. L. MARCY TO S. J. TILDEN
"Private and confidl.
"Wash., 4 Apl., '53.
"Dear Sir,—The appraisers have been up, but I have got the appts. put off for a few days. Let me know who (you think) ought to be app'd.
"Dickinson is to be here to-morrow—and it is expected by his friends that he will interfere and have a potential voice in N. Y. appts. What of Thompson for Appr. at Large? Redfield has telegraphed me that he shall accept and come on here. See him if you can, as he passes thro' N. Y.
"Yours truly,
"W. L. Marcy."
"S. J. Tilden, Esq.
"P. S.—Pomeroy is nominated as Appraiser at Large."
The accession of Pierce to the Presidency was soon followed by the retirement of F. P. Blair, who had edited the Globe, a semi-official press since the inauguration of President Jackson, and by the establishment of the Union as the new administration organ, under the editorship of Mr. Ritchie, the proprietor of the leading Democratic print in Virginia. This was the first unmistakable evidence of the deliberatively proscriptive policy of the new Cabinet.
Mr. Forney, who for many years had been the Washington correspondent of a Philadelphia print, was assigned to a prominent command on the skirmish-line of the allied pro-slavery press. Though not a wit himself, the following skit will warrant his friends to claim for him the credit of being once very nearly the cause of wit in another. Its chief interest to the reader now consists in its glimpses of many transitory political issues which only live in the daily press and private correspondence of the period.