"I address this letter to you, though its contents are for Mr. Stanbery, Mr. Hunter, and Judge Sherman, to whom I pray you to offer my best respects.
"Yours truly,
"S. J. Tilden."
"W. H. Swayne, Esq.,
"New York, Dec. 6, 1860."
TILDEN TO W. B. OGDEN
"New York, Dec. 17, 1860.
"My dear Sir,—As you leave in the morning to return to Chicago, I seize a few moments this evening to submit to you some suggestions as to the present crisis in the affairs of our country. I know you have no personal aspirations; that you are exempt from the blinding and misleading influence of active partisanship; that your disposition is equitable; that you have no motive but the public good—no interest except in common with all patriotic citizens; and that, far better than most men, you understand that there is usually another side to a controversy than 'our side.'
"Your situation may enable you to be of great service to your country and to mankind, and of not less service to a gentleman who to-day occupies a more important and responsible position than has been the fortune of any other of his generation. Of course I allude to Mr. Lincoln. His patriotism I do not doubt. The impression he made on me, upon two occasions when I casually met him, was that of a frank, genial, warm-hearted man. In the actual duties of the Presidency he cannot but take conservative views. No man can have a motive so strong and yet so noble to prevent his own name from closing, amid public sorrow and shame, the illustrious roll of American Presidents which began with Washington.
"It must be his renown or his calamity to decide whether he shall be the Chief Magistrate of a whole country or of half a country. Providence has cast upon him that immense responsibility. In saying this I do not touch the question, What has caused the mischief? I speak only as to the question, Who has the power to save the country?
"1. The reality of the danger of disunion, I think, cannot be doubted. The cotton States are far more unanimous for secession than our fathers were when they made our revolution despite of the royalist majority. Practically, their people are unanimous. We can only hope for an effective minority forming itself in some qualified position within the current of popular opinion. A statesmanlike policy would be to aid the formation of that minority—to strengthen it that it may become a majority, to create, to hasten, to swell the reaction for which we hope.
"2. Our first necessity is to comprehend the crisis. That is difficult. A man on one side of a question cannot easily turn out the set of ideas which fill his mind and admit the opposite set, even for an experiment. Nothing is so difficult in ordinary experience as to see both sides of a question. For us who have been educated with Northern ideas or in party controversies, we must be almost more than mortal to be able to take a perfectly candid and impartial view of the position of our adversaries. It is necessary to do more—to imagine ourselves in their position, in order to form a policy adapted to their case."