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

by Samuel J. Tilden

"This opinion was in accord with the view Mr. Tilden had frequently expressed on other occasions, and was also in accord with the opinion which he subsequently gave when his advice was solicited by the then Secretary of War. The week preceding and the week following Mr. Stanton's assuming the duties of Secretary of War, and at his invitation, Mr. Tilden had frequent conferences with him, at the first of which he is reported to me to have said in substance: 'You have no right to expect a great military genius to come to your assistance. The whole human race have been able to furnish such men only once in a century or two; you can only count on the average military talent; you have three times the available population and perhaps nine times the industrial resources of your antagonist; though you occupy the exterior line, you have an immense advantage in the superior capacity of your railways to move men and supplies. What you have to do is to make your advantages available; you must make your combinations so as to concentrate your forces and organize ample reserves to be ready to precipitate them on critical points. In the probable absence of military genius you must rely on overwhelming numbers, wisely concentrated.' Mr. Stanton appeared to adopt these views, but unhappily they did not prevail in the councils of the government.

"A year and a half later, when Mr. Tilden, accompanied by ex-Gov. Morgan, visited Washington for the purpose of securing greater harmony of action between the Federal and State government, Mr. Stanton, in a conversation with Mr. Tilden, referred to this advice, and added: 'I beg you to remember I always agreed with you.' I refer the more freely to the deference which Mr. Stanton testified to Mr. Tilden's judgment in these matters, because it is known not only to the Hon. Peter H. Watson, then Assistant Secretary of War, but to some, at least, of the members of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet who are now living.

"On the subject of the finances, an element so vital to the successful prosecution of a war, Mr. Tilden's views were at variance with those adopted by the administration; he had more faith in the people, in their readiness to bear the burdens and make the sacrifices which the occasion required, than was manifested by the authorities at Washington. Before their financial policy was fully determined upon he advised that the money for carrying on the war should be chiefly drawn from loans to be supplemented by taxes, and no more Treasury notes not bearing interest issued than were barely necessary to supply the new uses created by the government in its own payments. He was of the opinion that if these measures were promptly adopted, so that the supply should keep pace with the wants of the government, the war might be carried on without any serious embarrassment, without any exorbitant inflation of prices, and without any extreme depreciation of the government bonds. In discussing the financial situation of our own State in his first message to the Legislature in 1875, Gov. Tilden briefly restated the views which he then entertained and expressed upon this subject.

"Though Mr. Tilden foresaw the disastrous consequences of the policy which prevailed at Washington, the wild inflation of prices, the ruinous depreciation of government securities, the extravagant premium on gold, and the certainty that the continuation of that policy would lead, as it has done, to incalculable disaster; and believing, as he did, that it might even endanger the ability of the government to continue the war, he rigorously abstained from any public discussion of them that might tend to create the discredit which he apprehended, and restricted himself to private remonstrances with the more influential friends of the administration.

"While doing all he could to counteract what he deemed the errors of the government, both in the management of the war and of the finances, he was determined neither to be made responsible for nor to be compromised by either. His attitude throughout that pregnant period of our history was, so far as possible for a private citizen holding no official or even active relations with any political party, that of patriotic constitutional opposition to supposed errors of administrative policy, openly co-operating with all the measures of the government of which he approved, and privately discouraging those of which he disapproved.

"At the same time he said, in a speech:

"'That in a time of war we could not deal with our government, although disapproving of its policy, without more reserve than was necessary in debating an administrative question during a period of peace; that the reason was that, if we should paralyze the arm of our own government, we yet could not stay the arm of the public enemy striking at us through it; that it was this peculiarity which had sometimes caused minorities to be suppressed in the presence of public danger, and made such periods perilous to civil liberty.'

"Mr. Tilden was more solicitous than almost any other prominent man in the country to avert the war, because he saw more clearly than most men the grave proportions it was likely to assume; and when it broke out he did not associate himself publicly with the party which he had thought had unwisely precipitated it, because he could not entirely approve of the methods by which they were conducting it. I have yet to see one particle of authentic evidence that, when the war had become inevitable, Mr. Tilden did not do everything that might have been reasonably expected of him to make all the resources of the country available for its vigorous and successful prosecution. Happily my own convictions on this point are confirmed by abundant testimony, some of which it may be a satisfaction to your friends that I recapitulate:

"On the occasion of presenting a stand of colors to the Thirty-seventh Regiment of New York State Volunteers on the 22d of June, 1861, Mr. Tilden was among the speakers, 'and,' says John T. Agnew, who was also present and took part in the ceremony, 'made a stirring appeal to the officers and men of the regiment; a speech not excelled in patriotism by any public speaker during the war of the rebellion.'

"At even an earlier period Mr. Tilden made a journey to Washington, at the request of Brig.-Gen. Ewing, in the especial interest of the Seventy-ninth Regiment of Highlanders.