"WASHINGTON, _December 12, 1840_.
"MY DEAR SIR,--I have your letter of the 7th inst., and thank you for
the copy of the excellent speech of your son, which for the facts
it contains, and sound, practical views, is worth more than all the
speeches Daniel Webster has delivered on the currency question. The
principal article in the _Globe_ on prices and the wages of labor was
from my pen, and I am pleased to learn that it met your approbation.
"That measures will be adopted before Congress closes to reorganize the
Democratic party and settle on the course of action for the future is
so manifestly proper, not to say indispensable, that I cannot doubt it
will be attended to.
"Arrangements should be adopted for obtaining the facts from every
country, town, and precinct in the Union, in relation to the foul
frauds practised in the late elections. The statements and certificates
of these facts should be verified by oath when it could be done; and
the whole ought to be published in a volume and put into the hands of
every honest elector in the United States. This mass of information
would be used by the Democratic papers as they might have occasion.
"It is true, as you say, that the battle is not yet really begun;
the true issues which divide the Democracy and the Federalists cannot
be presented before the country except the latter are in power. They
are then forced to come out with their measures and disclose their
principles.
"There will be a glorious fight for the next four years, the result
of which, I confidently believe, will be highly auspicious to the
Democratic cause and the preservation of our popular institutions.
"I am, respectfully,
"Y'r ob't ser't,
"JOHN M. NILES."
_"E. Tilden, Esqr.,
"New Lebanon,
"New York."_
President Harrison died just one month after his inauguration, a
casualty from which the Whig party never fully recovered. To the
Congress which convened in extra session May 31, 1841, President Tyler
intimated his desire that the members of that body should request
a plan for a national bank from Mr. Ewing, then Secretary of the
Treasury. In pursuance of the resolutions for this purpose adopted
by both Houses, Mr. Ewing sent in a bill for the incorporation of
the "Fiscal Bank of the United States," the essential features of
which were framed in accordance with the President's suggestions. The
bill passed Congress August 6, with a clause concerning branch banks
differing from Mr. Ewing's, which was vetoed by the President. The
letter from Mr. Tilden which follows was a criticism of this bill, and
probably had something to do with its untimely fate.
It does not appear from the copy to whom this letter was addressed by
Mr. Tilden, but it was probably to Senator Wright.
Congress subsequently passed another bill intended to meet the
objections of President Tyler. He concluded he could not approve it
without inconsistency, and therefore vetoed that bill also, by which
act he alienated the United States Bank wing of the Whig party to such
an extent as to make many friends among the party of the opposition. It
is to that phase of that absorbing bank issue at Washington that Mr.
Tilden refers in the succeeding letter to Mr. Nelson J. Waterbury, then
a very earnest, active, and intelligent Democratic politician, a few
years Mr. Tilden's junior.