"NEW YORK, _December 25, 1845_.
"MY DEAR SIR,--A few days since I received a note from your brother
requesting me to call and see him, and I was distressed to find that
in the short interval since I had last met him his health had become
so dangerously worse. He is anxious to obtain a consulship or some
other place which will give him the benefit of a climate better
adapted to a chronic pulmonary disease, and a reasonable support while
subjecting himself to its remedial influence. I need not say I felt
a strong sympathy for him; but I feel some disability for rendering
him useful aid, which I will in part explain and which he and you
will appreciate. Although he sustained the Democratic ticket at the
late general election, and did service which I understand has been
handsomely recognized by the President, his course was so little
conspicuous that the impression left by his association with former
events will naturally predominate in the minds of the party generals.
If, therefore, the administration should regard the case in the light
of mere party expediency, I do not think I could in candor towards them
say what would be of much avail to him; especially as caution in my
expressions being the more necessary lest I should expose myself to be
quoted not merely as offering a particular instance in regard to which
I should have no hesitation if it stood alone, but as contributing to
and thus sanctioning a general distinction of local patronage which
is objected to, in part on the same ground on which this might be
exposed to unfriendly criticism, and which has prevailed here in the
lesser appointments which most interest the mass of the party to an
extent that excites very great dissatisfaction. Nor does it seem to
me that formal recommendations can at all benefit your brother, nor
anything which I might say in his behalf, unless the administration
desired affirmatively to do something for him. If such be their real
feeling--if they regard his case as one to be controlled by liberal
considerations, if they recognize the strong appeal it makes to their
humanity, and if they are nevertheless restrained by solicitude as
to how the appointment would be received by their political friends
here--it is possible that I may be of some little service to him,
in the only contingency in which it seems to me any service can be
efficient. The object of my letter is to assure you that if the
administration take favorable views of the matter, as I hope and trust
they may, I shall be ready to do what I can to cause the appointment
to be well received by the party here; and that such, I believe,
will be the general disposition of those of our friends to whom the
circumstances are made known. The only hesitation I have in saying this
is lest it may be assuming in me; but if you think it will do your
brother any good, you may communicate it for that purpose. I did not
venture to write to anybody other than yourself lest, in my ignorance
of the state of feeling on which my letter might fall, and however
guarded my language might be, I should unwittingly do harm, which,
however frankly I may write to you, I shall avoid, even if I fail to do
good.
"With the best wishes for the success of this object and your welfare,
Truly y'rs,
"S. J. TILDEN."
The Albany _Argus_, since the election of President Polk, had become
the organ and an extreme partisan of the so-called Hunker party and
champion of the policy of the Slavery Extensionists. One of the
consequences was the establishment of the _Atlas_ at Albany by the
friends of Van Buren and Wright. The _Argus_ was conducted by Edwin
Croswell, a then veteran journalist, and the _Atlas_ by a Mr. Van Dyke,
assisted by a very clever young man of Irish extraction named Cassidy.
These two prints registered the stages of the ineffectual struggle of
the Van Buren and Wright party with the administration at Washington, a
specimen of which is disclosed in the following correspondence between
Mr. Croswell, Mr. Tilden, and John Van Buren, a gifted son of the
ex-President Van Buren, and then rapidly becoming a conspicuous figure
in national politics.