"Sept. 1876.
"My dear Sir,—I have an abiding faith that a falsehood never hurts any but those who propagate it. It is also my conviction that no man can pay a much greater homage to another than to deliberately misrepresent him. It is a cowardly confession of weakness and of inferiority. With this sort of homage no public man in this country, so far as I know, has ever been so liberally favored as Mr. Tilden. But two short years ago and there was no American of equal political prominence who could to a greater extent be said to receive the praises of his countrymen, without distinction of party, nor one, perhaps, who had enjoyed fewer of the advantages of adverse criticism. From the moment, however, that he loomed above the horizon as a probable candidate for the Presidency until now, the invention of his political adversaries has been taxed to the utmost to feed whatever appetite remained unsatisfied for calumny and scandal.
"Most of these inventions are so improbable and monstrous that they perish in coming to the birth. As, however, you seem to think the charge of disloyalty during the war has been raised to the dignity of an exception by the recent letter of Gen. Dix, which you enclose, I cheerfully comply with your request to furnish what I trust you and those other Republican friends in Maine, with whom it has been my privilege in times past to co-operate, will regard as a satisfactory answer, not only to the insinuation of Gen. Dix, but to any and every other charge or insinuation that has been or may be made in impeachment of the loyalty or patriotic devotion of Mr. Tilden to the Union, whether before, during, or since the war of the rebellion. To make this perfectly clear I may be obliged to ask your patience, but I will try not to abuse it.
"Let me first dispose of the statement of Gen. Dix that 'Mr. Tilden did not unite in the call for the great Union meeting in New York, after the attack and surrender of Fort Sumter; but he refused to attend it, though urgently solicited to by one of his own political friends.'
"The most charitable construction to be put upon this statement is that the writer had been misinformed; he certainly could have had no personal knowledge upon the subject. It was publicly contradicted when it first appeared in print; it is not true in point of fact; and, if it had been, it would not follow, by any means, that Mr. Tilden did not sympathize in the objects of the meeting.
"Mr. Tilden received a formal written invitation, bearing date the 18th of April, inviting him to act as an officer of the meeting in question. As soon as he found himself at liberty he went to the proper quarter to ascertain what resolutions were to be proposed, and, on being satisfied in regard to them, then and there assented to the use of his name as one of the officers of the meeting. He not only assented to such use of his name, but was himself in actual attendance upon the meeting; and not only did he attend this meeting, but only two days later he attended another meeting of the New York bar, which was called for a similar purpose, and took part in its deliberations.
"Now let me state to you precisely the attitude which Mr. Tilden occupied during the war, and why he manifested so much caution in any action which might possibly influence the course of events at that critical moment.
"It has been my privilege to know Mr. Tilden familiarly, not to say intimately, during his entire public life, embracing a period of nearly or quite forty years. During that time, though we frequently differed about processes, and were often enlisted under opposing political organizations, and though we took widely different views of the fittest way to meet the storm which had been brewing since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, it never occurred to me for one moment to suppose there was any man in the country less tolerant than he of the doctrine of secession, or prepared to make greater sacrifices to preserve our Union and the republican institutions which had been bequeathed to us.
"At the comparatively youthful age of eighteen years Mr. Tilden had acquired settled opinions upon and shared in the public discussions of the subject of secession. In a speech at a Union meeting, held in Union Square, at which Gen. Dix presided, and Hamilton Fish, William H. Aspinwall, James Brown, Andrew Carrigan, and many other Republicans were vice-presidents, on the 17th of September, 1866, Mr. Tilden, in vindication of President Johnson, incidentally alluded to his early investigation of the subject of secession, and to the conclusion to which he then arrived. He said:
"'The Constitution of the United States is, by its own terms, declared to be perpetual. The government created by it acts within the sphere of its powers directly upon each individual citizen. No State is authorized, in any contingency, to suspend or obstruct that action, or to exempt any citizen from the obligation to obedience. Any pretended act of nullification or secession whereby such effect is anticipated to be produced is absolutely void. The offence of the individual citizen, violating the lawful authority of the United States, is precisely the same as if no such pretended authority ever existed.'