"I regret that I could not see you and say farewell, and wish you God-speed in the work with which you are so prominently identified.
"I leave in the faith that fearless honesty will place its heel on fraud and corruption, and that you will be the standard-bearer selected at St. Louis and surely prove victorious in November next.
"The best men of each party are beginning to see the necessity for just such action, and you are daily receiving numerous recruits.
"Don't give way an inch.
"Very respectfully, your friend,
"A. E. Orr."
"MR. TILDEN AND THE DEMOCRATS
[From the New York "Tribune" (Republican) of May 27, 1876.]
"Mr. Tilden is by no means the only Democrat at the East whom good citizens might rejoice to see nominated for the Presidency. His name would undoubtedly do honor to the ticket to be made at St. Louis; but it is not essential to the credit of the party, and if some of his own political brethren are bitterly opposed to him, that is, in one sense, a family affair, over which the outside world need not greatly vex itself. As an indication of the tendencies of the Democratic party, however, the causes of the hostility to Tilden becomes a matter of national concern. The first serious manifestation of enmity came from Tammany Hall, and it finds expression in the columns of the Express, where it is alleged that Gov. Tilden has made use of his position to organize a personal party. But this is such a strange complaint to come from the Tammany Hall autocracy that there must be something more behind it. The World, whose change of proprietorship is generally interpreted as a blow at Mr. Tilden's pretensions, has not a word to say against the Governor; it only insists, with good sense and good temper, that there are other eminent Democrats whose merits and whose chances are entitled to consideration. But on Wednesday a conference of leading Democratic politicians was held at Albany to consider how Mr. Tilden could be most conveniently thrown overboard, and from them it would seem that we ought to obtain some light upon the interesting question which neither the World, nor the Express, nor Tammany has seen fit to answer. There were present at this conference Chief-Justice Church and Justice Allen, ex-Lieut.-Gov. Beach, ex-Gov. Hoffman, ex-Speaker Littlejohn, and other well-known men, and the judgment of the meeting is understood to have been unanimous that Mr. Tilden, having alienated a large faction of the Democracy, is not the man for St. Louis.
"We mean no reflection upon the integrity of any of these estimable gentlemen, but it is a significant fact that pretty nearly all the most reputable Democrats whose names have been, either rightly or wrongly, connected with the Tweed and Canal Rings, were found on Wednesday in their company. It was probably not the fault of Judge Church and Judge Allen that the Canal Ring and what was left of the old Tammany Ring united in 1874 to run them both against Tilden, first one and then the other, in the canvass for the nomination; but it was certainly their misfortune. That fight of the Rings against Tilden was a matter of notoriety, and the nomination of our present Governor, instead of Judge Church or his cousin, Judge Allen, was generally recognized throughout the State as a triumph of the better elements of the Democracy over the thieves and corruptionists. It seems to be the same fight that is renewed now. Judge Allen is known as the author of the much-criticised decision of the Court of Appeals which released Tweed from Blackwell's Island. Mr. Beach is remembered as the gentleman who made such a strange exhibition of himself last Summer by publishing a card in which he intemperately denounced a report of the canal investigating commission as "unfounded in every particular," and who then, being subpœnaed by the commission, swallowed his card and convicted himself of official neglect out of his own mouth. The history and affiliations of ex-Gov. Hoffman are well enough known.