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

by Samuel J. Tilden

[31] Mr. Tilden's private secretary, and, for intimate correspondence, his synonyme.

[32] This is the draft of a letter doubtless emanating from Mr. Tilden, as it is in the handwriting of one of his secretaries.

[33] While knowing nothing of this correspondence, Mr. Tilden asked me one day while it proves to have been going on, "how the office of Secretary of Treasury would suit me, or rather how I would like it." I replied very promptly that I would not like it at all, nor would I accept it under any imaginable conditions; that I was principled against accepting any station, private or public, that I did not believe I could fill creditably, and that I did not feel competent to fill that office creditably; nor would I take it if I did, for its duties would be, from the beginning to the end, absolutely uncongenial to me.

[34] As Mr. Noyes had been one of the conspicuous Republican emissaries from Washington to corrupt the electoral vote in the South in 1876, Mr. Tilden regarded his appointment by Mr. Cleveland to any public office as not only a personal indignity to him but as an outrage to the country.

[35] Of this amount, 5,147,660 tons is the tonnage for twelve months of the N. Y. P. & O. R. R. Co., leased by the Erie.

[36] Originally printed in the New York Sun of March 4, 1886.

[37] On withdrawing from a cabinet meeting a day or two before the date of this letter, Mr. Manning experienced a burst of a blood-vessel at the base of his brain, from which he never entirely recovered.

[38] Mr. Husted, then Republican leader in the Assembly at Albany, had charge of some resolutions urging the New York members in Congress to push Mr. Tilden's policy of strengthening our coast defences. The paper that immediately follows this letter, entitled "Sea-coast Defences," is a contribution which Mr. Tilden made to Mr. Manning, with a view of its being made a part of the annual report.

Transcriber's note:

Minor typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.