"_Private and confidl._
"WASH., _4 Apl., '53_.
"DEAR SIR,--The appraisers have been up, but I have got the appts. put
off for a few days. Let me know who (you think) ought to be app'd.
"Dickinson is to be here to-morrow--and it is expected by his friends
that he will interfere and have a potential voice in N. Y. appts. What
of Thompson for Appr. at Large? Redfield has telegraphed me that he
shall accept and come on here. See him if you can, as he passes thro'
N. Y.
"Yours truly,
"W. L. MARCY."
"_S. J. Tilden, Esq._
"P. S.--Pomeroy is nominated as Appraiser at Large."
The accession of Pierce to the Presidency was soon followed by the
retirement of F. P. Blair, who had edited the _Globe_, a semi-official
press since the inauguration of President Jackson, and by the
establishment of the _Union_ as the new administration organ, under the
editorship of Mr. Ritchie, the proprietor of the leading Democratic
print in Virginia. This was the first unmistakable evidence of the
deliberatively proscriptive policy of the new Cabinet.
Mr. Forney, who for many years had been the Washington correspondent
of a Philadelphia print, was assigned to a prominent command on the
skirmish-line of the allied pro-slavery press. Though not a wit
himself, the following skit will warrant his friends to claim for him
the credit of being once very nearly the cause of wit in another. Its
chief interest to the reader now consists in its glimpses of many
transitory political issues which only live in the daily press and
private correspondence of the period.