"Yours truly,
"S. E. Church."
"Chase is out of the question. He would be the weakest man we could have. We will use him well, but must not think of nominating him.
"The more I consider the question the more I am inclined to favor Hendricks. He would make a good candidate.
"I think we cannot fail to succeed at the election. The other side are dying with the dry-rot, and the people are looking to us for relief. Let us not fritter it away. We rely on you and some of our discreet friends to keep things steady."
A. LOOMIS TO S. J. TILDEN
"Little Falls, June 8, 1868.
"Hon. Samuel J. Tilden:
"Public opinion is being rapidly formed in relation to the candidate for the Presidency at the next election. Your position is potential in influence. I take the liberty of addressing you in advance of the convention to urge upon you and through you upon our Democratic friends to insist, with all our State and Democratic pride, prestige, and weight of influence upon the nomination of Gov. Seymour unless fairly overruled. Gov. Seymour's course during the war was so nobly sound and Democratic that he attained a very strong hold upon the confidence and affections of the Democracy of this and of all Northern and Western States. His name will, I assure you, develop a hearty enthusiasm among Democrats that can be drawn out by no other. The hope of winning friends from our adversaries by taking up a man who has been identified with the other party finds little encouragement in our past experience. Those who do not hate the Radicals worse than they do Democrats will continue to vote with them. It will not be love, but its opposite, that will control their action. Let us stand by our principles and by those who have maintained them when trampled under foot by the despotism inspired and prompted by war. Chase's record is not a good one; it has great defects. Ambitious politicians may deem his acquisition a bargain; but I tell you his name has no strength with Democrats. That pride, in and for the men and for the principles which he has assisted us to sustain in dark times, which Seymour's name would command, will be thrown away without him, and especially with a candidate so recently a leading man in the administration of Mr. Lincoln. The election of Lincoln, taken with all its consequences, was about the greatest calamity that ever befell a great nation. The Democracy all over the land, though hushed to silence by the war spirit, feel it to be so. They ache for an opportunity to show their zeal and their strength. I have no doubt but that Seymour's scruples may be overcome if he deems the interests of the country at stake. I must say that I think his unqualified declension has been injurious to his success in being nominated, but not in being elected if nominated.
"In my judgment, Pendleton's name stands next to Seymour, though I suppose N. Y. city thinks otherwise. His theory, as he himself explained it, was not so very objectionable as some of the N. Y. financiers seem to suppose, but the answer and cure of all that question between greenbacks and gold will be settled under a Democratic administration very shortly by the resumption of specie payments, and this is and should be the only answer to it. With Seymour at the head, take Hendrix for vice. With Pendleton, take, possibly, C. F. Adams, or, better still, our own Church. I believe the Democracy have the power and the will to restore the government to common-sense and the Constitution to its position as the fundamental law of the land, and I believe it must [be] done through the agency [of] men who have not swerved from their principles, whether in peace or War.
"With Great Respect, Yours, &c.,
"Arphaxed Loomis."[47]