"To the Honorable the Common Council of the City of New York:
"I have expected at each of your meetings to be removed, but have been disappointed. In case my successor as Attorney to the Corporation shall not be selected this evening, I respectfully present to you my resignation, to take effect on the day after your next joint meeting, until which time the public interests entrusted to my care shall not be embarrassed.
"I am, respectfully, your, &c.,
"Samuel J. Tilden."
Comparatively recent note in pencil in Mr. Tilden's handwriting:
"In the haste of preparing to leave the city for the Baltimore Convention this wish was omitted, and while I was there I was removed."
Senator Wright yielded very reluctantly to the irresistible pressure of both divisions of his party that he should accept the nomination tendered him for Governor at the fall election of 1844. It was apparent to the friends of Mr. Polk that he could not carry the State of New York without the support of the friends of Mr. Van Buren and Wright, and no less of a sacrifice than the transfer of Mr. Wright from the Senate to the Governorship could make the State reasonably secure for the Presidential ticket. How reluctantly Mr. Wright yielded to this pressure is not to be measured solely by his far-sighted doubt of its policy and of the advantages of a victory for the Slavery-Extension party at that time. He had other reasons of a domestic nature presented some three years before in a most pathetic and touching letter addressed to Mr. Tilden's father.[5]
The logic of the situation presented by Mr. Wright's nomination for Governor in 1844 required that he should by his election save the Presidential ticket and then "succeed President Polk in 1848 or retire from public life," and Mr. Marcy to defeat Mr. Wright's re-election as Governor, or himself retire from public life. It was practically to engage in such a duel that Mr. Wright went to Albany and took the oath of office on the 1st of January, 1845. He had in his favor a great parliamentary reputation, and a character for wisdom, probity, and political sagacity, enjoyed in a superior degree by no other American statesman of his generation.
On the other hand, he had to contend with an administration in whose eyes all these virtues, when enlisted against slavery, were regarded only as so many additional reasons for crushing their possessor. He had also to contend with a very considerable number who still called themselves Democrats, but who had deserted the party from mistrust of the success of its financial policy, and who were impatient to recover some sort of party standing.
Mr. Tilden engaged in this canvass for President Polk with more zeal than in any other except, perhaps, the last, in which he was himself a candidate, and in both instances was betrayed by his party.
Not the least efficient of his services in this campaign was the establishment of the Daily News in connection with John L. O'Sullivan.