Letters and Literary Memorials of Samuel J. Tilden, v. 1

by Samuel J. Tilden

"I ought perhaps to add a matter of information without going into discussion of political antecedents that in our great financial controversy from 1836-7 this gentleman was with the Whigs, and was not again visible in our ranks until 1844.

"Inferior to either of the other gentlemen mentioned in general abilities and acquirements, and to either of them, except Mr. O'Conor, as a politician—and not strong with his State in any of his political antecedents—Mr. Dickinson has brought himself into his present unfortunate relations with a great majority of the party here by the extreme positions he has occupied on questions which have divided the State, and still more by the fatuity with which he has followed Judge Beardsley and Mr. Croswell in a policy which must have been fatal to the party if it had not sooner been fatal to its advocate. I mean the policy of resisting every attempt at an honorable or practicable union of the Democracy of the State—on the chance that, while the prominent men of the section, which formed a majority of the whole and had many sympathizers from the rank and file of that section, could be made through the influence of association with the party in other States; and that, while the Democracy of the Union should take the risks of the experiment, those who got it up would, at least, own the wreck. Fairer and wiser men saw that such an experiment in a party which rarely commands a majority exceeding two or three per cent. of the aggregate vote, even if more successful than could be reasonably hoped for, could have no result but to leave New York as thoroughly federalized as Massachusetts or Vermont for a generation to come. But the folly of the scheme was no less in its personal aspects. It mistook the sentiments as it underrated the sense of the masses of the party. They, as everybody ought to have seen, were in favor of a reunion on equal and honorable terms. And the attempt to resist it—which, if openly made, would have been generally rejected—was sufficiently perceived to break the hold of its authors upon the masses of their own section, who, although sometimes in a collateral question where old associations or prejudices could be appealed to showing a large minority have been drifting from these gentlemen ever since, and many of them resuming relations with the radicals with whom they formerly acted.

"Gov. Marcy and Genl. Dix both possess the important requisite of being of the union Democracy of the State, and are both capable of fulfilling the duties of a Cabinet station with signal ability and distinction. I express my judgment between these gentlemen, not without regret arising from kindly personal disposition towards the one against whom that judgment, under all the circumstances, must be. But I shall state it frankly, and briefly some of the reasons on which it is founded.

"It seems to me, in the first place, that the selection of Genl. Dix is most wise and right in respect to the mutual relations of those who, acting generally with both these gentlemen, since the reunion of the party in 1849, would be divided in preference between them. On the first nomination of Gov. Seymour, in selecting a State candidate for the recent Presidential nomination—in choosing the two State delegates to the national convention on the renomination of Gov. Seymour—indeed, on most of the important occasions since the reunion, the radicals, while constituting far the larger and more effective element of that union, have conceded almost everything. The magnanimity with which they have done so, and the fidelity with which they have carried out the measures in which it has been done, have been strongly recognized by Gov. Marcy and his friends. These concessions have sometimes been not without dissatisfaction at the extent and frequent repetition of them; nor without large demand on the credit and patience of those who have been the means of inducing acquiescence in arrangements, in which, while one side contributed most of the capital of the partnership, the other received nearly its entire benefits. I feel some right to speak on this point without suspicion that I am swerved by personal associations from a fair judgment as respects all parties, as well from the general position I have held on these occasions as from the part I took in some of them.

"It may not be improper to mention an instance. When the two State delegates to the national convention were to be chosen, Gov. Marcy, as desiring to be presented as the State candidate for the Presidency, and Gov. Seymour as a candidate before his own party the first time after his defeat before the people, felt their fortunes very deeply involved in the result. Gov. Marcy wrote to me requesting me to attend the meeting of the district delegates at Albany, and I did so. I never knew either of those gentlemen manifest more anxiety or having to confront more serious embarrassments. It had been the settled understanding that one Hunker and one radical should be taken for the State delegates. Most of the votes relied on to make the choice were radicals; and prominent men of that section, some of whom the radicals most desired to send, strongly wished to go. It seemed to Gov. Marcy necessary to take two Hunkers, but he felt the embarrassment of asking it, especially on the grounds that could alone be rendered; and others, who had to make the choice or were in firmer association with those who had to make it, were not easily convinced of the necessity or propriety of such a course. The difficulty was at length solved by our passing our favorite men and assenting to elect Mr. Seymour and another Hunker. Those of us who have, on this and other occasions, felt the strain with our own friends of keeping the elements of the union Democracy working harmoniously and efficiently under such circumstances, have a right to be heard when we express the conviction that the present is a fit time for Gov. Marcy and his friends to evince some mutuality in their relations towards the radicals; and that a more safe, proper, and unobjectionable opportunity to reciprocate the magnanimity with which they have been treated cannot be offered than in assenting to the selection of Genl. Dix for the Cabinet. Such I believe to be the general sense of those who have formed four-fifths of the majorities in our State conventions and elsewhere since the reunion of the party from which Gov. Marcy and Gov. Seymour have received support.

"Regarding the question simply as it affects the party in this State, I think it highly desirable and important that the occasion should be embraced to manifest that mutuality towards the radicals without which the elements of a party cannot be kept in cordial or lasting union, and I think that, on such a question, the general sense of fair men is more wisely conformed to than disregarded. Certainly I do not mean to censure Gov. Marcy for allowing his name to be presented, or that we have any right or disposition to limit the range of selection by Genl. Pierce; but simply to state considerations which, in my judgment, are important in deciding the choice.

"This brings me to the question how the party in New York, as a whole, stand affected as between these two gentlemen? The radicals, who are a full majority in numbers and more in efficiency, are for Gen. Dix, and would, under the circumstances, feel some sense of exclusion in a choice of a different nature. Gov. Marcy and his personal friends, though preferring him, cannot, as the case stands, make any actual opposition to the appointment of Gen. Dix; and, if it be made, will acquiesce—most, if not all of them, with cordiality. The considerations I have alluded to appeal strongly to their judgment and sense of justice, if failing to change their wishes; and with the relations which have grown up with many who are for Genl. Dix, secure this result. The opposition of the extreme Hunkers to Marcy or Dix will be most manifest towards the one appearing most likely at the moment to be appointed; but I think that they are generally less repugnant to the selection of Dix, towards whom there is less of violence and bitterness in individual leaders. So far as this may be supposed to arise from the part Gov. Marcy took in promoting the union of the party, I regard it as a merit; and for that, with a friendly construction of acts and motives, we have handsomely acquitted ourselves towards him. This animosity has other causes, among which is that he has been in the way of other gentlemen who have grown faster in their own esteem than in his appreciation (in which difference I think he is more right than they); and especially that Mr. Dickinson regards him as having, by being a candidate for the Presidency, kept that distinction from alighting on fitter shoulders—which it is certain that Mr. D. confidentially calculated the convention would find, after trying Cass' awhile, to be of exactly his own management.

"Looking to this State, therefore, I think the appointment of Genl. Dix would be the most wise, expedient, and prudent, with his moderation and conciliatory conduct always, and conciliatory disposition, it will prove generally satisfactory. Not that all can be pleased. Still less that a few impracticables in this city will be—who never have been for twenty years, when the party was strong and prosperous—I mean the leading spirits. Their idea of building up the party has been to exclude from it a majority as Barnburners, and the most of the Hunkers as having traitorous sympathies and affiliations with the Barnburners; and, incapable of more than one idea at a time, they have continued faithful to this, until they have pretty much exhausted the credit they acquired in 1848 with the masses of those who voted for Gen. Cass; and have lost their influence in the organization of the party even in this city, while their crotchets are not and have not been shared in by a tenth of those who were nominally classified with them. They may be safely disregarded. There will be no local dissatisfaction in this city arising from appointments, if those which are of a local nature be judiciously made. The truth is the divisions and factions which appear on the surface of our city politics are pretty much confined to the petty leaders, and excite attention or interest in but a very small portion of the masses. They are generated by the very large number of offices, contracts, and other objects of cupidity, municipal, State, and national, which are concentrated here, and perhaps in some degree by the stirring and heterogeneous character of our population. They always exist, and have little to do with any settled general classification. Their effect is to render opinion and individual character less influential than in the more natural and sound condition of the rural districts, and to make the organization of the party, always scrambled for to promote personal ends, a much less true index of the real sentiments of the party. So far as the relations of the administration with the party in this city are to be effected at all by its appointments, assuming them, of course, to be intrinsically proper and reputable, it would be incomparably more by the multitude of little ones than by the large. While the appointments here should be made with primary reference to the honest and efficient discharge of official duties, a judicious care should be had for the harmonizing and conciliating the entire party. The one or two which have extensive subordinate patronage should not be surrendered to the bigotry of clique or of individuals on the idea of a partition between factions, but should be entrusted to persons who have largeness of views, judgments, and local knowledge enough to administer the subordinate patronage on the same principle on which the administration itself acts. With such a policy the disturbing causes will be reduced to a minimum and the party will move on in general unity and strongly ascendant. I will venture what character I have for political judgment that no perceptible obstacle to this result would be found in the selection of Gen. Dix for the Cabinet.

"There is another consideration in respect to that gentleman. He is a model of a Cabinet officer. Able, accomplished, and judicious, capable of doing a given quantity of work in a specified time, not having made himself or been made a candidate for the Presidency, he will serve the administration faithfully, and without aiming to control or manage it to personal ends; and being in nobody's way for the succession, with no affiliations formed to secure it to him, not looked to with any such view by those who present his name, he will draw on the administration no jealousies on that score from those who fear passive not less than active rivals, and will not believe that Presidential ambition, once entertained, can ever be practically relinquished.

"To the force of all these considerations is opposed nothing but an alleged repugnance of the South or portions of it to Genl. Dix's appointment arising from his position in 1848. I do not suppose Genl. Pierce will be disposed to, or can listen to, an objection of this nature, and I think it will be found to have as little real existence as it has cogency. Mr. Dickinson's friends thought before the last convention that they should ruin Gov. Marcy by charging him with having allied with the Barnburners; but it rather proved an element of strength, and the votes he received were, notwithstanding, from the extreme South. Our friends there, as elsewhere, wanted a candidate who could win. Every man of sense, then, must see now that if the party would maintain itself, it must do so by the same policy by which it regained the ascendency. The real difficulty in respect to the South will be in composing their own dissensions, in which all sides there will feel infinitely stronger interest than in any New York question. Such an objection to Genl. Dix may be entertained by bigotry or the narrowness of views of some, or more likely it may be the pretence of men dissatisfied on grounds interesting them personally. If this pretence be wanting to such, others equally available will be found.