Letters and Literary Memorials of Samuel J. Tilden, v. 2

by Samuel J. Tilden

"5. I send you a letter of Senator Gibson, who is entitled to consideration. Please return it to me when you have read it.

"6. I think it would be well for you to ask Mr. Marble about men—what he knows about the existing officers, and what he knows about any experts with whom he is acquainted."

A. M. GIBSON TO S. J. TILDEN

"Private and confidential.

"17 Dupont Circle, Washington, D. C., Mch. 8/85.

"My dear Sir,—I am dreadfully embarrassed financially, and, although very reluctant, seek employment in the government, since I see no other way open to me as a means of livelihood. I have rendered the Democratic party some service. You, perhaps more than any one else, know and appreciate the work I have done during the past ten or twelve years. I came to Washington comparatively unknown to all the public men of the country save Judge Black. Grant's first term was just closing, and jobbery and fraud were rioting in every department of the government. At considerable personal peril, and with inevitable social ostracism to myself and family, I began the work of exposing rogues and roguery, rascals and rascality. You signalized your life by overthrowing the Tweed ring, and destroying those who organized it and profited by its robberies. You exposed and broke up the canal frauds. You were rich and powerful politically, but you know how potent those whom you brought to grief were to do you injury.

"My first work in Washington was to assail the Navy ring, and to make known the jobs and frauds by which the Navy had been ruined, and millions of dollars stolen from the public treasury to enrich contractors. I followed this work systematically for years, and I do not exaggerate when I say that the country would not have a realizing sense to-day of the way its Navy has been destroyed and its Treasury robbed of hundreds of millions if my work had not been done.

"The first Democratic House of Representatives after the war was elected chiefly because of the exposure of the Credit Mobilier fraud and other disclosures of jobbery which resulted from my work. I broke up the Shepherd ring in this city and drove out the robbers. For eight years I labored without intermission to destroy the Star Mail-route ring, and finally made it possible to bring the guilty to punishment. That the result was a scandal upon, and a perversion of, justice was no fault of mine. That I was deprived of the credit due me for exposing the frauds never grieved me, because I was not working for glory, but to make good government possible. What I did to bring to just punishment the authors and abettors of the great fraud of 1876, and to make forever odious that great crime, you know.

"That I have incurred the hostility of many and excited the envy of still more is but the natural sequence of the work I have done. Politicians are not prone to remember those who made their success possible, unless you are a present potential factor. Of course, in all that I did I had a fearless newspaper with a great circulation as an engine to work with. But I created, in no small degree, the power I used and the influence I exerted. When I began my work here the Sun had only a local circulation and a local reputation. It secured, largely through my work, a national circulation and reputation. It profited largely by my work, while I received only a modest salary and fell heir to all the enmities provoked.

"Pardon me for wearying you with this long letter, but of all the Democrats I know you are the only one upon whom I feel that I can rely for some appreciative exertion in my behalf, now that the party, in whose faith I was born, and for which the best years of my life, and the best energies of my poor abilities have been exerted, is in power. I know I am not egotistical when I say that I know more of the inner workings of the government than any man in Washington. I have, for nearly fourteen years, made every department of the Federal government a close study. I know where and how the jobs and frauds have been worked, and how the rottenness can be exposed, and, moreover, can point out the defects of the Treasury system which made many of these possible. I could be invaluable in many ways here, but I would prefer a quiet place abroad. I confess that I am not en rapport with many of those who are likely to be most influential with the administration. My tastes are naturally literary, and I have been at work for several years upon the history of the last four months of Buchanan's administration. I have a book of 600 pages nearly ready for the press, the principal data for which I got from Judge Black. The preparation for this work naturally led me to study closely and carefully the political history of the United States, so I could succinctly and graphically deal with the course which led to the Civil War. Becoming deeply interested in the subject, I began writing The Political History of the United States. I have nearly completed the first draft of the first volume of this work, and I want the means and leisure to complete it. The place of all others which I would like, and which would enable me to have the resources at hand, would be the Consul Generalship to London; but I presume that it is useless to aspire to that. Some one with more social and political influence than I can command will get it. But I think that I might aspire to be Consul at Liverpool. That place was given to Packard, of Louisiana, as the price of his yielding gracefully to the Hayes Commission, which, in pursuance of the bargain made with Southern Democrats in 1876, went to Louisiana to install the Nichols government. Inasmuch as I contributed largely to make the work of that commission odious, and to have the Returning Board indicted and convicted, I think it would not be presumptuous to claim Packard's place.