"There are some few good men in the delegation, but it is completely under Gorman's control, who will do everything he can to secure Bayard's nomination, but directs his efforts principally to appear on the successful side. I beg leave to suggest that you intimate to such of your friends at Cincinnati as may have your confidence, and be in possession of your views and wishes, to be on their guard in any consultation or interview they may have with this gentleman or the members of this delegation.
"I presume Mr. Blair has written—he carried his county, though not his district, and for reasons similar to those indicated above is not a member of the delegation.
"With most profound respect,
"Sincerely your friend,
"R. T. Merrick."
As introductory to the following letter, I quote the following from my diary under date of May 12, 1880:
"Mr. Tilden has finally determined, I believe, to be a candidate for the Presidency before the Cincinnati convention.
"I have no responsibility for advising him to expose himself to such an ordeal in his present state of health, though I rather congratulate myself that he has taken that responsibility for himself. He has been so abominably calumniated that nothing but a renomination and re-election can fully vindicate him and his friends. Should the exposure cost him his life, could it be spent in a better cause for him? As long as he can make himself heard, he is capable of making a better President than any man besides him that either party is likely to nominate.
"While the Terre Haute and Alton suit was pending against him, I think he was fully determined to withhold his name from the convention. He complained to me, as we were riding one day, of his want of the requisite strength to prepare his defence, though sure of winning if the case were promptly presented. He then added, 'If I have not strength enough to prepare a case for trial I am not fit to be President.' In saying this he turned to me as if it were in answer or as a remonstrance against pressure to run. I said to him: 'Governor, I am the last one to ask you or to urge you to run. No one has a right to ask you to accept a burden like that at the risk of your life, and there is no disguising the fact that there is nothing from which you have so much to apprehend as from excitement of any kind, and especially of the kind and degree to which a canvass for the Presidency, and the first six months' service in that position, would inevitably expose you.' It was on that ground that I advised him to settle the Terre Haute and Alton suit without reference to the cost in money. It was fretting the life out of him.
"Then just before the State convention for the election of delegates to Cincinnati the income tax suit was noticed for trial. This completely unsettled him for several weeks, so completely that I was again confirmed in the conviction that any increase, or even continuance, of excitement like that under which he was laboring would soon destroy him."
Mr. Tilden's brother Henry took with him to Cincinnati Mr. Tilden's letter to the Democratic national convention in 1880 declining a renomination to the Presidency, and this letter pictures the confusion into which the convention was thrown by it.