"NEW YORK, _Sep. 10th, 1853_.
"DEAR SIR,--Your letter was received yesterday. I do not think there
will be any considerable difficulty in respect to resolutions. The
general disposition will be to go to every reasonable extent to disarm
those who are predetermined to make mischief. The true and only serious
difficulty is to get the convention organized. The plan of those who
are hostile to the union of the party is to have two conventions, if it
be possible to confuse the public mind as to which really represents
the party and its organization. All the moderation, prudence, and
liberality consistent with the preservation of the convention must be
exercised to avoid a disorganization; or, if that cannot be avoided (as
it cannot be, if any considerable minority are bent on it), to leave
the disorganizers with as little of a case as possible. The danger is
in the large number of contested seats--real and pretended. In about
half of the cases there is no shadow of claim on the part of the
hard-shell contestants; and such cases can be multiplied indefinitely,
so as to form with the extreme men in the convention and the
contestants out of it a sufficient number to be a quorum of a separate
body. I think we can stand the large number of these now known, if
the moderate and union Hunkers can be held, as we anticipate. I have
heard from various sources that the President feels the same solicitude
which your letter expresses, and that he thinks that the defeat of the
party here would revive and reorganize the Whigs all over the country.
In that he is quite right. On the encouragement of a disaster in this
State, the Whig party would spring to new and full life. It was so in
1837 and in 1846, and in both those cases the results spread over the
whole country. Neither you nor the President need doubt that we are
fully aware of the peril, both to the party in the Union and in this
State; or that any reasonable effort will be omitted to avert it.
"But we are put to great odds when 30 or 35 of our districts are
neutralized by contested claims, and in all this part of the State
the mass of the patronage of the genl. government is used most
unscrupulously against us, and--"