"LITTLE FALLS, _June 8, 1868_.
"HON. SAMUEL J. TILDEN:
"Public opinion is being rapidly formed in relation to the candidate
for the Presidency at the next election. Your position is potential
in influence. I take the liberty of addressing you in advance of the
convention to urge upon you and through you upon our Democratic friends
to insist, with all our State and Democratic pride, prestige, and
weight of influence upon the nomination of Gov. Seymour unless fairly
overruled. Gov. Seymour's course during the war was so nobly sound and
Democratic that he attained a very strong hold upon the confidence and
affections of the Democracy of this and of all Northern and Western
States. His name will, I assure you, develop a hearty enthusiasm among
Democrats that can be drawn out by no other. The hope of winning
friends from our adversaries by taking up a man who has been identified
with the other party finds little encouragement in our past experience.
Those who do not hate the Radicals worse than they do Democrats will
continue to vote with them. It will not be love, but its opposite, that
will control their action. Let us stand by our principles and by those
who have maintained them when trampled under foot by the despotism
inspired and prompted by war. Chase's record is not a good one; it
has great defects. Ambitious politicians may deem his acquisition a
bargain; but I tell you his name has no strength with Democrats. That
pride, in and for the men and for the principles which he has assisted
us to sustain in dark times, which Seymour's name would command, will
be thrown away without him, and especially with a candidate so recently
a leading man in the administration of Mr. Lincoln. The election of
Lincoln, taken with all its consequences, was about the greatest
calamity that ever befell a great nation. The Democracy all over the
land, though hushed to silence by the war spirit, feel it to be so.
They ache for an opportunity to show their zeal and their strength.
I have no doubt but that Seymour's scruples may be overcome if he
deems the interests of the country at stake. I must say that I think
his unqualified declension has been injurious to his success in being
nominated, but not in being elected if nominated.
"In my judgment, Pendleton's name stands next to Seymour, though
I suppose N. Y. city thinks otherwise. His theory, as he himself
explained it, was not so very objectionable as some of the N. Y.
financiers seem to suppose, but the answer and cure of all that
question between greenbacks and gold will be settled under a Democratic
administration very shortly by the resumption of specie payments, and
this is and should be the only answer to it. With Seymour at the head,
take Hendrix for vice. With Pendleton, take, possibly, C. F. Adams,
or, better still, our own Church. I believe the Democracy have the
power and the will to restore the government to common-sense and the
Constitution to its position as the fundamental law of the land, and
I believe it must [be] done through the agency [of] men who have not
swerved from their principles, whether in peace or War.
"With Great Respect, Yours, &c.,
"ARPHAXED LOOMIS."[47]