"NEW YORK, _Jan. 13, '61_.
"MY DEAR SIR,--I read your letter, and the printed one you were kind
enough to send me, with much pleasure, and gave them to Mr. Miller,
with the stipulation that they should go to Messrs. Hewitt and Cooper
in succession. In the main I assent to your views.
"I have no doubt--
"1. That the late election[31] was not a verdict of the Northern States
on the theoretic questions urged by the Republicans. Masses went for
Lincoln, from habit and association, as a lineal succession from
Whiggism. Masses from mere opposition to the Democratic party, and from
all the causes which gradually operate to make a revolution between
the ins and the outs. The drift created by the disorganization of the
Democratic party, and our inability to present any single candidate as
a point of union to the conservative sentiment, and the concession from
April till October that we must inevitably be beaten; I say this drift
alone might fairly be 24,000 out of 675,000 voters, or 3-1/2 per cent.,
which would have changed the result in N. Y. and in the Union.
"2. That a very important reaction has already taken place.
"3. That, even if we had not had our present difficulties to bring
men to consider, Lincoln's administration must necessarily go utterly
to pieces when it came either to _present affirmative measures_ or to
_distribute the patronage_.
"4th. That, on the whole, through all these struggles and much apparent
increase of the anti-slavery element, there is growing a larger and
stronger party, capable of doing the Southern States full justice,
than ever has existed for half a century past; I mean, capable of
recognizing, on reason and principle, the right and the necessity
the Southern States have to grow in the natural expansion of their
industrial and social systems. In 1820 the North was unanimous in
claiming the right to attack conditions operating after a State should
be admitted. That idea is now abandoned by a vast majority of our
people. It is natural that when a new question arises, assumed to be
within our constitutional jurisdiction, our people should all start to
apply to it the ideas on which they have acted at home. To see that it
cannot be wisely disposed of by their merely voting in respect to it as
if it were a purely domestic question; that they must calculate for the
co-existence and expansion of the two systems; that they must partition
the Territories--is a later stage in their political education.
"I am of opinion that prevalent errors have, in the main, run their
course; and we need only to give our people a fair chance to secure
the adoption of a wiser and better system than they have ever before
understandingly accepted.
"If the present Congress continues unable to do anything adequate,
I think the next best thing will be a convention of all the States
to propose amendments to the Constitution, with an arrangement, if
practicable, to keep the parties in _status quo_ while those amendments
are being perfected and submitted. The convention should be elected in
districts on the basis of the House of Rep. The submission should be to
conventions.
"That would make two popular elections necessary. The convention
would be sure to be conservative. By summer the disintegration of
the Republican party would be completed, the reaction perfected, and
three-quarters of the States would ratify amendments substantially on
the basis of Crittenden's propositions.
"Our people are temporarily misled, but by a vast majority conservative
at the bottom. We only need time to bring them to a sound position.
"Excuse the haste with which I am compelled to write, and believe me,
"Very truly,
"Your friend,
"(sd.) S. J. TILDEN.
"_Hon. Wyndham Robertson,
"Richmond, Va._"
Dudley Burwell was a prominent lawyer in Albany, a thoughtful and
estimable man, and had been an active Democratic partisan of Van
Buren in opposition to General Cass in 1848. He shared Mr. Tilden's
apprehensions of a civil war as the inevitable result of Mr. Lincoln's
election. He held no office himself, and I am not aware that he
ever sought any. His letter is valuable as an illustration of the
diversity of opinion among leading men of all parties by which Mr.
Lincoln's government was perplexed during the three first years of
his administration. Advice was in abundance, but no two counsellors
entirely agreed about what the government should do or abstain from
doing. It was impossible to divine the opinions of the people upon any
subject, the succession of new and unfamiliar events was so rapid and
surprising.