"I remain truly your friend,
(Signed) "S. J. Tilden."[19]
TILDEN TO FRANKLIN PIERCE
"Harrisburg, Feb. 23d, 1853.
"Confidential.
"My dear Sir,—A little matter of business, which called me here for a day, has brought me again in contact with Gov. Bigler, and his impressions are so strong on a point I casually mentioned to you in New York that I think it not improper to repeat his suggestion more formally. It is that, in case you have decided to take Mr. Campbell[20] into your cabinet, you should, if practicable, put him in the Interior or Navy, rather than the Post-Office. The Gov. says the Catholics are very numerous in this State—enough to make it probable that, in many instances, they may become candidates for appointment as postmasters—and enough to awaken little neighborhood jealousies respecting them. He deems it undesirable that Mr. C., as the head of the department, should be called upon officially to decide on these cases, and be exposed to the suspicion of appointing from religious partiality, or to the necessity of doing injustice in order to avoid that imputation. It is worth considering whether these views have not more force than your own observation in the different condition of things existing in New England would induce you at first to give them. In expressing them, the Gov. can have no motive but the welfare of your administration and of the party here, and his observation of the state of opinion here is entitled to a consideration. He seems to entertain these ideas so strongly, and so much to desire that they shall be presented to you, that I take the liberty of drawing your attention once more to them;—not to press them upon you, but that your mind may pause upon them and take their exact measure before you conclude the question.
"I am not sure that my engagements will permit me to be in Washington at the inauguration; but I hope, at any rate, to have the pleasure of seeing you soon after.
"With great respect,
"I remain, truly,
"Your friend."
"His Exy. Franklin Pierce."
We have here a continuation of suggestions which Mr. Tilden felt called upon to present to President Pierce to guide him in his dispensation of his patronage in the State of New York. It makes one sad to think what an opportunity was lost by this President, and through him by the country, from his failure to see the wisdom of this advice and to adopt it. Had Mr. Pierce respected the public opinion of the State of New York and properly recognized the political sentiments and sympathies of the majority there, as he did in the Southern States, the presumption is that the Nullification party would have been as effectually disarmed under his administration as it was by President Jackson a quarter of a century before. Franklin Pierce, however, was a different man from Andrew Jackson, and the conditions under which he received his nomination did not leave him a free agent.
It was only at this stage of Pierce's administration that Tilden began to indulge in the deplorable error of walking by sight and not by faith. He did not believe, nor did he ever again seem to comprehend, that in the slave States all other questions even the Constitution of our government and the integrity of our territory, were subordinate throughout the South to the preservation and extension of slavery; that every person who ventured publicly to express a doubt of the wisdom of allowing slavery to extend to the free Territories was pronounced there a suspect, and was proscribed as a person who tainted every one who associated with him politically. The Nullifiers saw, and saw correctly, that the anti-slavery sentiment could only be resisted in America as heresy was resisted by Louis XIV. in France—by crushing the heretics or driving them from the country. To reason with Pierce in favor of dispensing his patronage in the State of New York in accordance with the public opinion of the State, was as idle as the lambs reasoning with the wolf in the fable.