"Mr. Edmunds and Mr. Bryant, of the Evening Post, are the gentlemen to whose letters I refer. As the Senate did not meet to-day, I have had the day to devote to business of this character, and I have just returned, at 3 o'clock P.M., from a day most pleasantly spent in attention to them.
"Upon a personal call at the Post-Office Department I learned that, in September last, an application was made to have the name of the post-office at the Springs changed from that of 'Columbia Hall' to that of 'New Lebanon Springs,' and to have Mr. Bull removed as postmaster and Mr. Nichols appointed. Both these things were done, and Mr. Fuller, the Assistant Postmaster-General, who has the charge of the appointments, supposed at the time, and now supposes, that the effect of that action was to remove the office from the Springs to Lebanon village, the location of the New Lebanon post-office, when you kept it. I suppose he is wholly mistaken, and as you are a matter-of-fact man, I wish you to send me papers properly signed by such disinterested men as you may see to be the most proper men, showing where the office was kept under Mr. Bull and where it is kept under Mr. Nichols; and in the same papers you may show, if you please, where your office was kept and where the office you formerly held is now kept. Let the papers be directed to the Postmaster-General, and have no political, but a mere local bearing, and make a map which will be plain, and if convenient let the men who vouch the facts be Whigs as well as Democrats.
"You must find my apology for this very hasty and bad-looking letter in the fact that since I began to write it I have heard of the death of a member of our body, Mr. Dixon, of Rhode Island, and have been summoned to attend his remains and participate in arrangements for his funeral, and I have been anxious that this should go to-night and found it would not if I did not enclose it before I left for that solemn duty.
"Most truly yours,
"Silas Wright, Jr.
"Elam Tilden, Esq."
SILAS WRIGHT, JR., TO ELAM TILDEN
"Washington, February 13, 1842.
"My dear Sir,—I have but a moment to say that your favors of the 4th and 8th and the documents in relation to your P.-O. affairs all came to me together on Friday evening. I saw Mr. McClellan yesterday, and we have agreed to make a visit to the Department together on some day this week, when we can both find leisure to do so, and if possible bring the matter to some final termination.
"I consider it now perfectly certain that either Mr. Tyler must submit unconditionally to Mr. Clay, and must place the administration in his hands or that open and desperate war is to be carried on, not against him simply, but against his administration, for the future. And yet he is daily removing from office our best and most worthy men, even those whom the Whigs dare not attempt to remove, under the delusive idea that he is filling their places with Tyler men. When he shall call upon them he will find them where the great body of his party now is to him, missing and enlisted under another leader.
"In haste, I am,
"Most truly yours,
"Silas Wright, Jr."