GEORGE HOADLY TO TILDEN
"Executive Chamber, Columbus, O., December 13, 1884.
"My dear Sir,—Your letter of the 5th inst. was received in due course of mail, and I embrace the first opportunity to reply.
"While my ambition, and I think my qualifications, for public service are in the line of my profession, I should not feel at liberty to refuse any duty consistent with my personal dignity and self-respect which the President might assign me. I am well aware that he must have a wider survey of the situation than I can have, and that he must bear the chief responsibility of failure. As I said in my former letter, I am too good a soldier not to take orders cheerfully and obey them ungrudgingly.
"My dear Mr. Tilden, if I had had the least doubt of your esteem and regard I should not have written you as I did or as I do.
"You intimate a doubt whether you will be consulted by President Cleveland with reference to his cabinet. This disturbs and distresses me. To begin by ignoring you, especially if the men whose timidity and self-seeking sacrificed you and the cause in 1877 are taken into confidence, would be a sad prophecy of disaster to come. A statesman can get along, sometimes, by selfishly disregarding considerations of gratitude to the elements that made him—in other words, by kicking down the ladder by which he has climbed; but if he add to this the closing of his ears to the wisest and most far-seeing of his counsellors he is lost. The new administration may perhaps safely throw Ohio overboard, although our fight here in October made success in November possible, as the national committee has fully acknowledged to our State committee; the new President may perhaps safely turn his back upon the men who risked their own political lives to save his at Chicago, but it will be a sad day for him and for his government if he ignore you and do not seek your counsels.
"The circumstances to which I alluded as not to be written are well known to Mr. Smith M. Weed and to Mr. William L. Scott (I think) and possibly to Mr. Daniel Manning.
"I have the honor to be,
"Very truly your friend,
"Geo. Hoadly."