SUGGESTION FOR PRESIDENT PIERCE IN THE ORGANIZATION AND CONDUCT OF HIS
ADMINISTRATION
"NEW YORK, _Jany. 15th, 1853_.
"MY DEAR SIR,--I thank you for the copy of Hawthorne's _Memoirs_. It
would have reminded me, if I had forgotten, that I promised to write
you my views on the subject of our conversation when I last had the
pleasure to see you. I should have done so earlier, but engagements,
which it is no exaggeration to call incessant, have left me no
opportunity.
"The preliminary question is, on what general theory is the new
administration to be formed? Is the Cabinet to be composed of those
who are commonly regarded as Presidential men--who were candidates for
the recent nomination--and are surrounded by the affiliations which
naturally grow up around those occupying that position? It seems to
me that this would be attempting to stand steadily and firmly on a
half-dozen different stools. The President might himself look after
the success of his administration, while his constitutional helpers
were thinking how each measure and each appointment would affect their
pretensions to the succession; or he might content himself with the
formal honor of presiding over the councils of these heads of factions.
But, in my judgment, he ought to be--not what Victoria is in the
British government, not a grand Elector, as Sieyès would have made
Napoleon, not a mere chooser of the actual rulers--but the real and
responsible head of the administration. That he may be such, he should
have, as far as practicable, a Cabinet able to perform its duty towards
him, faithfully and effectively, and not inviting by the aspirations of
its members internal dissension or external hostility. In the last term
of an administration, it may be difficult to exclude pretensions to the
succession. But why incur the embarrassments which they never fail to
generate, during a first term, unless it be certain that it is also the
last! And is it to be now assumed that the Democracy will look from the
candidate through whom it solved the difficulties of a choice at the
last convention, and to candidates through whom it found itself unable
to solve those difficulties? It is not clear that the party can, after
so recent a disorganization--if it could under other circumstances--be
sufficiently consolidated in a single term to be instrumental to any
great public service. But it is clear what will become of the family
discipline and how the farm will be managed if the old gentleman begins
by announcing his own decease and inviting the boys to scramble for the
inheritance. Polk tried that, secretly meaning all the while to be his
own heir; and while he contrived and they scrambled, the inheritance
went to strangers. Let not Gen. Pierce content himself with being a
loose and temporary bond of union between factions; but rather let him
aim to fuse those factions, and constitute a single, compact party.
"Now what is to be done with New York? Some will say avoid all
difficulties by taking no member of the Cabinet from that State. That
would be better than to do worse; and, if on due reflection it should
be deemed most expedient, I should not personally complain. But it
is not a policy after my heart or my judgment; nor does it tend to
constitute a party out of the fused elements of factions. An evasion
policy, in such a case, is a feeble policy.
"Well, who then shall be taken? The public regard Messrs. O'Conor,
Dickinson, Marcy, and Dix as candidates; and therefore I may be
justified in remarking upon them as such. The first two I shall not say
much about, because I do not suppose their present relations to the
prevailing policies of the State will make them regarded as admissible
selections.
"Mr. O'Conor is a man of extensive and accurate legal learning, of
an acuteness of reason somewhat excessive even for the higher uses
of his profession--of great mental activity, indefatigable, vehement
and sarcastic in controversy; remarked at the bar as able rather than
wise, and remarkable for a want of tact. What these qualities--not
weakened by a life almost exclusively forensic--would naturally
make him in politics, where they are not counteracted by the large
knowledge, long experience, and settled rules and habits that modify
their effects in his profession, and where the opposite qualities, the
power, not of dissenting or contesting, but of moulding, constructing,
and organizing, of determining one's self and representing others,
are mainly required, may be imagined. Add inexperience in politics,
very limited acquaintance with its subjects, its questions, its
history, its methods or its men--unsettled convictions, a tendency to
capriciousness, and as little as can easily be found of that capacity
which enables a man instinctively to act with others or make them act
with him, and you have the political aspects of his character. Whether
in personal judgment or action in politics, in administrative council,
in a deliberative assembly, or in leading or aiding to lead a party
of a nation or a ward, his destiny is to illustrate how little fitted
to such purposes may be talents conceded to be eminent in a peculiar
sphere. This opinion is the result of many years' observation. It
was confirmed when I was associated with him in the convention that
formed the present Constitution of this State, and, in an intercourse
constant and never unfriendly, was a daily witness of the development
of his characteristics. The partiality of his friends would not change
the nature, though it might lessen the degree, of this criticism. No
one has suggested him except as Attorney Genl.; and for that station,
I presume, on the idea that its duties are purely professional. If
that office did not share in the general administrative councils of
the President; if, as a legal adviser, he were not required to look
at the mixed questions that come up before him somewhat with the eye
of a statesman as well as that of a mere lawyer--or at least with
the largeness and comprehensiveness of a judicial view; if he had no
duty or utility beyond conducting the cases in the courts in which he
occasionally appears for the United States, certainly there could be
no objection to the personal adaptation of this gentleman, and, if
that member of the Cabinet from New York need have no relation to the
majority of the party there, which has the entire State government, and
whose ascendency is every day becoming more complete and solid, and
but a very ineffective relation to the minority, if he need represent
nobody and be capable of representing nobody, such a selection might
not be injudicious as respects the Democracy of the largest State in
the Union.
"I ought perhaps to add a matter of information without going into
discussion of political antecedents that in our great financial
controversy from 1836-7 this gentleman was with the Whigs, and was not
again visible in our ranks until 1844.
"Inferior to either of the other gentlemen mentioned in general
abilities and acquirements, and to either of them, except Mr. O'Conor,
as a politician--and not strong with his State in any of his political
antecedents--Mr. Dickinson has brought himself into his present
unfortunate relations with a great majority of the party here by the
extreme positions he has occupied on questions which have divided the
State, and still more by the fatuity with which he has followed Judge
Beardsley and Mr. Croswell in a policy which must have been fatal to
the party if it had not sooner been fatal to its advocate. I mean the
policy of resisting every attempt at an honorable or practicable union
of the Democracy of the State--on the chance that, while the prominent
men of the section, which formed a majority of the whole and had many
sympathizers from the rank and file of that section, could be made
through the influence of association with the party in other States;
and that, while the Democracy of the Union should take the risks of the
experiment, those who got it up would, at least, own the wreck. Fairer
and wiser men saw that such an experiment in a party which rarely
commands a majority exceeding two or three per cent. of the aggregate
vote, even if more successful than could be reasonably hoped for,
could have no result but to leave New York as thoroughly federalized
as Massachusetts or Vermont for a generation to come. But the folly
of the scheme was no less in its personal aspects. It mistook the
sentiments as it underrated the sense of the masses of the party. They,
as everybody ought to have seen, were in favor of a reunion on equal
and honorable terms. And the attempt to resist it--which, if openly
made, would have been generally rejected--was sufficiently perceived
to break the hold of its authors upon the masses of their own section,
who, although sometimes in a collateral question where old associations
or prejudices could be appealed to showing a large minority have been
drifting from these gentlemen ever since, and many of them resuming
relations with the radicals with whom they formerly acted.
"Gov. Marcy and Genl. Dix both possess the important requisite of being
of the union Democracy of the State, and are both capable of fulfilling
the duties of a Cabinet station with signal ability and distinction. I
express my judgment between these gentlemen, not without regret arising
from kindly personal disposition towards the one against whom that
judgment, under all the circumstances, must be. But I shall state it
frankly, and briefly some of the reasons on which it is founded.
"It seems to me, in the first place, that the selection of Genl. Dix
is most wise and right in respect to the mutual relations of those
who, acting generally with both these gentlemen, since the reunion of
the party in 1849, would be divided in preference between them. On the
first nomination of Gov. Seymour, in selecting a State candidate for
the recent Presidential nomination--in choosing the two State delegates
to the national convention on the renomination of Gov. Seymour--indeed,
on most of the important occasions since the reunion, the radicals,
while constituting far the larger and more effective element of that
union, have conceded almost everything. The magnanimity with which
they have done so, and the fidelity with which they have carried out
the measures in which it has been done, have been strongly recognized
by Gov. Marcy and his friends. These concessions have sometimes been
not without dissatisfaction at the extent and frequent repetition of
them; nor without large demand on the credit and patience of those who
have been the means of inducing acquiescence in arrangements, in which,
while one side contributed most of the capital of the partnership,
the other received nearly its entire benefits. I feel some right to
speak on this point without suspicion that I am swerved by personal
associations from a fair judgment as respects all parties, as well from
the general position I have held on these occasions as from the part I
took in some of them.
"It may not be improper to mention an instance. When the two State
delegates to the national convention were to be chosen, Gov. Marcy, as
desiring to be presented as the State candidate for the Presidency, and
Gov. Seymour as a candidate before his own party the first time after
his defeat before the people, felt their fortunes very deeply involved
in the result. Gov. Marcy wrote to me requesting me to attend the
meeting of the district delegates at Albany, and I did so. I never knew
either of those gentlemen manifest more anxiety or having to confront
more serious embarrassments. It had been the settled understanding that
one Hunker and one radical should be taken for the State delegates.
Most of the votes relied on to make the choice were radicals; and
prominent men of that section, some of whom the radicals most desired
to send, strongly wished to go. It seemed to Gov. Marcy necessary
to take two Hunkers, but he felt the embarrassment of asking it,
especially on the grounds that could alone be rendered; and others, who
had to make the choice or were in firmer association with those who
had to make it, were not easily convinced of the necessity or propriety
of such a course. The difficulty was at length solved by our passing
our favorite men and assenting to elect Mr. Seymour and another Hunker.
Those of us who have, on this and other occasions, felt the strain
with our own friends of keeping the elements of the union Democracy
working harmoniously and efficiently under such circumstances, have a
right to be heard when we express the conviction that the present is
a fit time for Gov. Marcy and his friends to evince some mutuality in
their relations towards the radicals; and that a more safe, proper,
and unobjectionable opportunity to reciprocate the magnanimity with
which they have been treated cannot be offered than in assenting to
the selection of Genl. Dix for the Cabinet. Such I believe to be the
general sense of those who have formed four-fifths of the majorities in
our State conventions and elsewhere since the reunion of the party from
which Gov. Marcy and Gov. Seymour have received support.
"Regarding the question simply as it affects the party in this State,
I think it highly desirable and important that the occasion should be
embraced to manifest that mutuality towards the radicals without which
the elements of a party cannot be kept in cordial or lasting union,
and I think that, on such a question, the general sense of fair men is
more wisely conformed to than disregarded. Certainly I do not mean to
censure Gov. Marcy for allowing his name to be presented, or that we
have any right or disposition to limit the range of selection by Genl.
Pierce; but simply to state considerations which, in my judgment, are
important in deciding the choice.
"This brings me to the question how the party in New York, as a whole,
stand affected as between these two gentlemen? The radicals, who are
a full majority in numbers and more in efficiency, are for Gen. Dix,
and would, under the circumstances, feel some sense of exclusion
in a choice of a different nature. Gov. Marcy and his personal
friends, though preferring him, cannot, as the case stands, make
any actual opposition to the appointment of Gen. Dix; and, if it be
made, will acquiesce--most, if not all of them, with cordiality. The
considerations I have alluded to appeal strongly to their judgment
and sense of justice, if failing to change their wishes; and with the
relations which have grown up with many who are for Genl. Dix, secure
this result. The opposition of the extreme Hunkers to Marcy or Dix will
be most manifest towards the one appearing most likely at the moment to
be appointed; but I think that they are generally less repugnant to the
selection of Dix, towards whom there is less of violence and bitterness
in individual leaders. So far as this may be supposed to arise from
the part Gov. Marcy took in promoting the union of the party, I
regard it as a merit; and for that, with a friendly construction of
acts and motives, we have handsomely acquitted ourselves towards him.
This animosity has other causes, among which is that he has been in
the way of other gentlemen who have grown faster in their own esteem
than in his appreciation (in which difference I think he is more
right than they); and especially that Mr. Dickinson regards him as
having, by being a candidate for the Presidency, kept that distinction
from alighting on fitter shoulders--which it is certain that Mr. D.
confidentially calculated the convention would find, after trying Cass'
awhile, to be of exactly his own management.
"Looking to this State, therefore, I think the appointment of Genl. Dix
would be the most wise, expedient, and prudent, with his moderation
and conciliatory conduct always, and conciliatory disposition, it
will prove generally satisfactory. Not that all can be pleased. Still
less that a few impracticables in this city will be--who never have
been for twenty years, when the party was strong and prosperous--I
mean the leading spirits. Their idea of building up the party has
been to exclude from it a majority as Barnburners, and the most of
the Hunkers as having traitorous sympathies and affiliations with the
Barnburners; and, incapable of more than one idea at a time, they have
continued faithful to this, until they have pretty much exhausted
the credit they acquired in 1848 with the masses of those who voted
for Gen. Cass; and have lost their influence in the organization of
the party even in this city, while their crotchets are not and have
not been shared in by a tenth of those who were nominally classified
with them. They may be safely disregarded. There will be no local
dissatisfaction in this city arising from appointments, if those which
are of a local nature be judiciously made. The truth is the divisions
and factions which appear on the surface of our city politics are
pretty much confined to the petty leaders, and excite attention or
interest in but a very small portion of the masses. They are generated
by the very large number of offices, contracts, and other objects of
cupidity, municipal, State, and national, which are concentrated here,
and perhaps in some degree by the stirring and heterogeneous character
of our population. They always exist, and have little to do with any
settled general classification. Their effect is to render opinion and
individual character less influential than in the more natural and
sound condition of the rural districts, and to make the organization
of the party, always scrambled for to promote personal ends, a much
less true index of the real sentiments of the party. So far as the
relations of the administration with the party in this city are to be
effected at all by its appointments, assuming them, of course, to be
intrinsically proper and reputable, it would be incomparably more by
the multitude of little ones than by the large. While the appointments
here should be made with primary reference to the honest and efficient
discharge of official duties, a judicious care should be had for the
harmonizing and conciliating the entire party. The one or two which
have extensive subordinate patronage should not be surrendered to
the bigotry of clique or of individuals on the idea of a partition
between factions, but should be entrusted to persons who have largeness
of views, judgments, and local knowledge enough to administer the
subordinate patronage on the same principle on which the administration
itself acts. With such a policy the disturbing causes will be reduced
to a minimum and the party will move on in general unity and strongly
ascendant. I will venture what character I have for political judgment
that no perceptible obstacle to this result would be found in the
selection of Gen. Dix for the Cabinet.
"There is another consideration in respect to that gentleman. He is a
model of a Cabinet officer. Able, accomplished, and judicious, capable
of doing a given quantity of work in a specified time, not having made
himself or been made a candidate for the Presidency, he will serve the
administration faithfully, and without aiming to control or manage it
to personal ends; and being in nobody's way for the succession, with no
affiliations formed to secure it to him, not looked to with any such
view by those who present his name, he will draw on the administration
no jealousies on that score from those who fear passive not less than
active rivals, and will not believe that Presidential ambition, once
entertained, can ever be practically relinquished.
"To the force of all these considerations is opposed nothing but an
alleged repugnance of the South or portions of it to Genl. Dix's
appointment arising from his position in 1848. I do not suppose Genl.
Pierce will be disposed to, or can listen to, an objection of this
nature, and I think it will be found to have as little real existence
as it has cogency. Mr. Dickinson's friends thought before the last
convention that they should ruin Gov. Marcy by charging him with
having allied with the Barnburners; but it rather proved an element of
strength, and the votes he received were, notwithstanding, from the
extreme South. Our friends there, as elsewhere, wanted a candidate who
could win. Every man of sense, then, must see now that if the party
would maintain itself, it must do so by the same policy by which it
regained the ascendency. The real difficulty in respect to the South
will be in composing their own dissensions, in which all sides there
will feel infinitely stronger interest than in any New York question.
Such an objection to Genl. Dix may be entertained by bigotry or the
narrowness of views of some, or more likely it may be the pretence
of men dissatisfied on grounds interesting them personally. If this
pretence be wanting to such, others equally available will be found.
"Whatever it be, the sooner the administration shall show that it does
not intend to reverse the policy which brought it into existence the
better. Without a prompt, firm, and decisive course in this respect,
we shall have nothing--from cabinet minister down to tide-waiter--but
discussions of past dissensions, which it is the policy and duty of
Genl. Pierce, with all his power as the head of the party, to bury.
It is a case in which boldness is the highest prudence. If the party
cannot be kept large enough to contain all the great divisions of it
which have predominated in powerful States or sections of the Union,
it cannot be kept in the majority. In the face of the certain results
of any other system, I feel courageous in supporting this, on the
principle on which Moreau said he rendered his soldiers brave--by
making them fear more to run than to fight.
"Asked the other day by a Hunker friend if I thought it prudent to
take a man of Gen. Dix's class, I replied, most certainly to take one
such. If past positions on the slavery question as it existed among
Democrats, are to be the grounds of a classification, it is proper
and necessary to represent the divisions to which Genl. Dix belonged
as well as others. Can it be done anywhere else as well as in New
York? He will be in line with the majority of the party and the entire
government in that State, which the minority of the party there, if
that classification be the criterion, will still be amply represented
in other members of the cabinet, whereas if he be not taken, and the
section to which he belongs be not represented elsewhere, as we may
presume it will not, the results will be regarded by the country as a
practical exclusion of that interest.
"It seems to be, therefore, desirable to take a man of Genl. Dix's
relations; and to take one or more of the States-rights Democrats
from States in which they stand with a majority of the party, and to
represent the other great interests, as there will be abundant room
to do, in the rest of the cabinet. A strong administration cannot be
made by combining negations. If it be formed, as it should be, by men
who have a predominant regard to its unity and success, the more its
members have of the confidence and favor of the interests and States
they are respectively taken to represent, the better. Of course I mean
only men of qualifications and character, and of fitness in these
respects and from their Democratic antecedents--and the objection to
whom is merely the part they had in the recent Democratic divisions
North and South. Let unfriendly critics, if they please, call such a
cabinet mosaic. If the joiner work be good, as I believe it may be,
and the materials be of the right general character, I do not care how
firm the texture or strong the colors of the parts. It will dovetail
the party together for a basis on which the administration may stand
securely. Certainly, I assume that in this there will be no violation
of principle and honor to shock the confidence of the country. Those
who think there is, and have acquiesced thus far, might feel some
delicacy that their scruples arise for the first time when they are
asking for themselves and on this ground a monopoly of the fruits of
the wrong. Restitution to the true owner would be more becoming. If
the party that elected Gen. Pierce be an alliance of those who cannot
honestly act together, it ought to be dissolved; but if it could
honestly unite, there can be no objection to proclaiming the intention
to continue that union, or to carrying it out in the most effectual
way.
"At the late election, the large popular majorities as well as large
electoral votes were in the great States of New York, Pennsylvania,
and Ohio. Notwithstanding the clamor about the identification of Scott
with Seward, the South did not do equally well, except in States where
personal antipathies to that interest or personal commitments of Whig
leaders produced systematic defections. No administration or party can
stand without the support of at least two of the great free States.
And the conceded abandonment at the outset of the canvass of either
of the two largest, especially if it be the first in electoral votes,
and of metropolitan action or opinion, usually loses one or both of
the others. No man has been elected President against the vote of New
York in the six successive elections since it has been cast unitedly
and by the people; nor, indeed, ever but in a single instance, the
circumstances of which scarcely constitute it an exception. Her vote
has been often an unnecessary addition to his majority--and a hopeful
contest for it would often enable the other States to do without her;
but it is not easy to measure the force of her conceded or apprehended
loss, representing, as her population does, elements that affect the
equilibrium of so many other States.
"The interest, headed by Gov. Seward, which nominated Scott, is a
powerful minority in these great States. Carrying almost the whole
Whig party against an existing Whig administration and the influence
of the great Whig leaders, it may, as an opposition and surviving
those leaders, absorb the third party, now almost holding the balance
of power, without disintegrating itself. It will be likely to try
the experiment. The defection from it last fall, tho' encouraged by
the commanding patronage of the administration and the name of Mr.
Webster, was scarcely more than one--certainly not two--per cent.,
and was confined to a few localities. If the previous State elections
had not practically decided the contest, that defection would have
been inconsiderable. Hereafter, not only are these disturbing causes
stilled, but it will have the cementing influence of a common
opposition.
"The characteristics of this interest, in our State politics, have
been profligate jobbing and reckless enterprise and expenditure. The
only effectual barrier to its predominance has been in the radicals.
They include the prominent men who, with Wright, Hoffman, and Flagg,
fought all our great financial contests; and a majority of the masses
who maintained their measures, although large numbers of the latter
were--temporarily, as I believe--detached by the divisions of 1848 and
bound with the opposite interest about half of the entire party. While
the questions on which they separated were occasional and temporary,
questions of honest financial policy and administration are ever
present. Indeed, in our time the chief political duty seems to be to
protect the people from plunder under the forms of legislation and in
the abuse of administration.
"On all these questions, as well as doctrines of States'-rights,
free trade, and in most general views of government, the radicals of
New York (as I should have remarked while speaking of the relations
between them and the State-rights Democrats of the South in a composite
cabinet) sympathize with the radical Democracy of the South; and,
indeed, are the only unflinching coadjutors the latter have had in New
York.
"Agreeing in what is the only safe reliance of constitutional rights,
as well as the cardinal point of the Democratic faith--embracing, as
each does, the flower of the Democratic youth, enterprise, and energy
in its own region--without discussing individual views of the course of
either, antecedent to the general reunion of the party, and admitting,
if you please, that they are somewhat alike in the boldness with which
they maintain their opinions, and repel aggressions on what they deem
to be their rights--it is obvious that there are points of sympathy
between them which make it easy and natural for them to fraternize,
when out of the presence of any immediate course of difference, as they
did all through the late Baltimore convention and in its result.
"The radicals of New York include as much talent, courage, enterprise,
and fearless devotion as can be found in any party. They have the
advantage of being, on an average, half a generation younger than the
other. These circumstances, as well as those I have before mentioned,
mark them as the future of the Democracy of New York. Since Silas
Wright's death they have given their affections to no providential
man. They fell into the support of Genl. Pierce with alacrity at the
convention, and with generous enthusiasm in the canvass, because they
recognized in him qualities in common with those of their lamented
leader, attested as well by the warm regard generated between them
in former years by mutual sympathies, as by the whole career of the
survivor.
"As a matter of mere party calculation, I do not think it wise, with
reference to the reconstitution and reconsolidating of the party on a
comprehensive basis, to leave them the only large and powerful class
not represented in the cabinet; nor, in undertaking to represent
them, to pass over a statesman of great merit and in all respects
unobjectionable, unless because he is one of their number. The
administration will, I believe, ensure their support by its principals
and measures. But looking to the condition of domestic politics, in
New York and the other great States on which the strength of the
party mainly depends, I do not think it would be a mistake to add
the cordiality that comes from a sense of equality and reciprocity
in party relations and the energetic and efficient co-operation
which will result. There are other considerations, but my letter has
already reached an unconscionable length, my apology for which is,
that writing my thoughts as they arose while writing they would not
stop, and I could not--I have set them down frankly, not without some
delicacy, at seeming so much to advise, but remembering that nobody
need follow, while I would be unwilling to mislead. If I can contribute
any information or suggestion to the general stock which you have
a right to advise, and He whose province it is to judge must needs
gather from all quarters, my end will be attained. I am too sensible
of the difficulties of filling up a cabinet on principles which seem
essential, or any general principal and at the same time securing
the highest individual fitness, worth and weight and a reasonable
concurrence of our friends in the various localities,--to be willing to
increase them. A just and firm policy will solve them, as nearly as is
ever attainable in such cases, to the satisfaction of the country. With
the best wishes of one who may speculate safely because he is without
the responsibility of acting--and who, except as a citizen, a Democrat,
and a friend of the new administration, has, and can have, no interest
in the result, though not exempt from the influence of sympathies of
opinion and association in attempting to take a fair view,
"I remain truly your friend,
(Signed) "S. J. TILDEN."[19]