[1] Henrietta was the sister of Samuel J. to whom, on the fifth of
the month preceding the date of this letter, for the first and only
occasion in his life he opened his mind on the subject of matrimony, a
topic at that time of serious concern to her. See _Bigelow's Life of
Tilden_, Vol. I., p. 80. Before the expiration of the year of which
this letter bears date, she died. The brother when he wrote this letter
was living with an aunt who kept a boarding-house at what was then the
upper part of Broadway.
[2] Proprietor of the Hartford _Times_ at the date and United States
Senator from Connecticut.
[3] Lewis Gaylord Clark.
[4] The place of attorney for the City and County of New York for which
this address to the Democratic members of the Common Council, was the
only office Mr. Tilden ever held by appointment. He held it but about
one year, during which time he docketed 123 judgments for violations of
city ordinances.
[5] This letter first appeared in print in the _Life of Tilden_, Vol.
I., p. 102.
[6] The paper here referred to was the New York _Daily News_. For an
account of Tilden's connection with its establishment and management,
see _Life of Tilden_, Vol. I., p. 108.
[7] The triumph of the Native American party.
1845-1850
The purpose of the advisers of President Polk to prostrate the
political organization of which Mr. Van Buren and Governor Wright
were the most conspicuous representatives was scarcely disguised in
the appointment of Mr. Van Ness as Collector of the Port of New York.
Their part in preventing the organization of five more slave States,
with their ten pro-slavery Senators, instead of one State with but two
pro-slavery Senators, was such an offence to the Nullifiers of the
South that the President, a citizen of a slave State, was compelled
very reluctantly to yield to it and use his patronage accordingly.
The effort was made to seduce Tilden from his allegiance to his friends
in New York by the offer of the naval office, then a lucrative and
honorable position. Tilden had but just completed the thirty-first year
of his age; the emoluments of the office were some twenty thousand
dollars a year; the labor and responsibility inconsiderable. Tilden
was poor, and many years must elapse before he could hope for any
such revenue from his profession. The offer, however tempting it was,
he promptly declined, saying that he did not labor for the election of
President Polk to push his private interests; that when he was admitted
to the bar he resolved that he would hold no merely lucrative office,
and that, if he took any, it must be in the line of his profession or
a post of honor, but under the then existing circumstances he could
accept of nothing from this administration.
From this time forth there were practically two Democratic parties,
so called, in the State of New York: one led by William L. Marcy, and
vulgarly known by their adversaries sometimes as "Hardshells," and
sometimes as "Hunkers," who were either in favor of or not opposed
to the extension of slavery into the free Territories from which it
had been excluded by the ordinance of 1789; and the other led by
Silas Wright while he lived, also vulgarly known sometimes as the
"Softshells," and sometimes as "Barnburners," who were opposed to the
extension of slavery into those Territories.
Though the division lines of these parties, like those of latitude and
longitude, were not visible to the eye, nor the parties themselves
sufficiently organized to occupy hostile camps, the ends towards which
they were severally working were quite as distinct as if they were.
The following letter was probably addressed to William L. Marcy, who
had allowed himself to be made the instrument of the pro-slavery
contingent in New York, and had been on that account selected by the
President as his Secretary of War.[8]