(MR. TILDEN'S WAR RECORD)
_"Sept. 1876._
"MY DEAR SIR,--I have an abiding faith that a falsehood
never hurts any but those who propagate it. It is also my conviction
that no man can pay a much greater homage to another than to
deliberately misrepresent him. It is a cowardly confession of
weakness and of inferiority. With this sort of homage no public
man in this country, so far as I know, has ever been so liberally
favored as Mr. Tilden. But two short years ago and there was no
American of equal political prominence who could to a greater
extent be said to receive the praises of his countrymen, without
distinction of party, nor one, perhaps, who had enjoyed fewer of the
advantages of adverse criticism. From the moment, however, that he
loomed above the horizon as a probable candidate for the Presidency
until now, the invention of his political adversaries has been taxed
to the utmost to feed whatever appetite remained unsatisfied for
calumny and scandal.
"Most of these inventions are so improbable and monstrous that
they perish in coming to the birth. As, however, you seem to think
the charge of disloyalty during the war has been raised to the
dignity of an exception by the recent letter of Gen. Dix, which you
enclose, I cheerfully comply with your request to furnish what I
trust you and those other Republican friends in Maine, with whom it
has been my privilege in times past to co-operate, will regard as a
satisfactory answer, not only to the insinuation of Gen. Dix, but
to any and every other charge or insinuation that has been or may
be made in impeachment of the loyalty or patriotic devotion of Mr.
Tilden to the Union, whether before, during, or since the war of the
rebellion. To make this perfectly clear I may be obliged to ask your
patience, but I will try not to abuse it.
"Let me first dispose of the statement of Gen. Dix that 'Mr. Tilden
did not unite in the call for the great Union meeting in New York,
after the attack and surrender of Fort Sumter; but he refused to
attend it, though urgently solicited to by one of his own political
friends.'
"The most charitable construction to be put upon this statement is
that the writer had been misinformed; he certainly could have had no
personal knowledge upon the subject. It was publicly contradicted
when it first appeared in print; it is not true in point of fact;
and, if it had been, it would not follow, by any means, that Mr.
Tilden did not sympathize in the objects of the meeting.
"Mr. Tilden received a formal written invitation, bearing date the
18th of April, inviting him to act as an officer of the meeting in
question. As soon as he found himself at liberty he went to the
proper quarter to ascertain what resolutions were to be proposed,
and, on being satisfied in regard to them, then and there assented
to the use of his name as one of the officers of the meeting. He
not only assented to such use of his name, but was himself in
actual attendance upon the meeting; and not only did he attend this
meeting, but only two days later he attended another meeting of the
New York bar, which was called for a similar purpose, and took part
in its deliberations.
"Now let me state to you precisely the attitude which Mr. Tilden
occupied during the war, and why he manifested so much caution in
any action which might possibly influence the course of events at
that critical moment.
"It has been my privilege to know Mr. Tilden familiarly, not to say
intimately, during his entire public life, embracing a period of
nearly or quite forty years. During that time, though we frequently
differed about processes, and were often enlisted under opposing
political organizations, and though we took widely different views
of the fittest way to meet the storm which had been brewing since
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, it never occurred to me for
one moment to suppose there was any man in the country less tolerant
than he of the doctrine of secession, or prepared to make greater
sacrifices to preserve our Union and the republican institutions
which had been bequeathed to us.
"At the comparatively youthful age of eighteen years Mr. Tilden had
acquired settled opinions upon and shared in the public discussions
of the subject of secession. In a speech at a Union meeting, held
in Union Square, at which Gen. Dix presided, and Hamilton Fish,
William H. Aspinwall, James Brown, Andrew Carrigan, and many other
Republicans were vice-presidents, on the 17th of September, 1866,
Mr. Tilden, in vindication of President Johnson, incidentally
alluded to his early investigation of the subject of secession, and
to the conclusion to which he then arrived. He said:
"'The Constitution of the United States is, by its own terms,
declared to be perpetual. The government created by it acts within
the sphere of its powers directly upon each individual citizen. No
State is authorized, in any contingency, to suspend or obstruct that
action, or to exempt any citizen from the obligation to obedience.
Any pretended act of nullification or secession whereby such effect
is anticipated to be produced is absolutely void. The offence of the
individual citizen, violating the lawful authority of the United
States, is precisely the same as if no such pretended authority ever
existed.'
"On the subject of slavery, Mr. Tilden's opinions were no less
fixed. Though never what used to be known as an Abolitionist,
neither was he ever the advocate or apologist of servile labor.
In the controversy which grew out of our territorial acquisitions
from Mexico in 1847, he was for doing everything to secure those
Territories the benefit of the social and industrial institutions
of the North. In that sense he acted in 1848 in opposing the
extension of slavery into any of the free Territories by the act of
the Federal government; and again, in 1854, when the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise was under consideration in Congress, and the
flames of sectional controversy broke out afresh, Mr. Tilden was
open and decided in his opposition to the repeal, in reference to
which he stated in a letter to Wm. Kent in 1860:
"'I used all my influence, at whatever sacrifice of relations,
against the repeal ... because I thought a theoretical conformity
to even a wise system dearly purchased by breaking the tradition of
ancient pacification on such a question and between such parties.'
"Accustomed as I was to converse with Mr. Tilden freely upon all
public questions, even when our views were most at variance, having
always been in the habit of reading everything which I knew to come
from his pen, I feel that I may safely challenge anybody to produce
a particle of evidence, either oral or in print, of any sympathy on
his part either with secession or with slavery, or any evidence that
in the course he felt it his duty to pursue he was not actuated by
his best judgment as to what was wise and right for the government
and for the welfare of his country. After the breach with the South
in 1854, I think I am competent to affirm that he had no partisan
relations whatever with slave-holding States. In a letter to the
_Evening Post_, written in February, 1863, he speaks of being
taunted by Senator Preston King as an object of proscription by the
South, and of being asked if he thought his name could pass the
Senate of the United States.
"'I answered,' said Mr. Tilden, 'that it was a matter of very little
consequence to me whether it could or not; but that it was of great
consequence to me that I should do what I thought best for the
country.'
"Every act and every expression of his during the war, so far as
it has come under my cognizance, was in full accordance with this
position, and, what is more, in entire harmony with the whole tenor
of his life.
"Better than any person that I knew, he comprehended the
irreconcilability of the forces that were arraying themselves
against each other in the country. Exaggerating, perhaps, the danger
of attempting to rule the country by a sectional party, he deemed it
the part of wise statesmanship to postpone as long as possible, in
the hope, through the mediatorial offices of time and its inevitable
changes, of avoiding a collision.
"No one contested the force of his reasoning on this subject; but
they derided his apprehensions of a civil war. So preposterous
did they appear to the impassioned multitude in the North, that I
remember myself to have been asked by one of his personal friends
whether he was quite in his right mind on the subject.
"In 1860, after the failure of the Democratic party at
Charleston--though he was then and had been for several years
withdrawn from political life--he did not hesitate openly to
proclaim his conviction that the dissolution of the Democratic
party and the attempt to govern the country by a party like the
Republican, having no affiliation in the Southern States, would
inevitably result in civil war. He was asked to fill a vacancy
in the delegation from New York at the adjourned meeting of the
Democratic convention of that year in Baltimore. In that body
he made two speeches, in which he portrayed, as an inevitable
consequence of a sectional division of the Democratic party, a
corresponding division of the States and an armed conflict. These
speeches were described by those who heard them as inspired by
a solemn sense of patriotic duty and a most vivid perception of
impending dangers. After the election of Mr. Lincoln, and when the
dangers he had foretold were becoming realities, he took part in
several conferences in which Hamilton Fish, the late Charles H.
Marshall, the late Daniel Lord, Moses H. Grinnell, the late Wm. B.
Astor, Moses Taylor, William B. Duncan, Richard M. Blatchford, A. A.
Low, and other gentlemen of more or less prominence participated;
and on two of these occasions he made speeches in which he sought
to impress upon his hearers a juster sense than was generally
entertained of the threatened dangers, and of the fittest means of
averting them.
"Earnestly as Mr. Tilden labored to avert the war and to thwart the
measures which seemed to him calculated to precipitate it; anxious
as he had been to contribute no fresh ingredient of hatred to the
seething caldron; when, without any responsibility on his part, the
war came, he never for a moment hesitated as to the course he was
to pursue. He felt it to be the duty of every citizen to sustain
the government in its resistance to territorial dismemberment. To
those who thought, as did many then calling themselves Republicans,
that on the whole it would be as well to consent to a peaceful
separation, Mr. Tilden always answered that peaceful separation was
an illusion; that the questions in controversy would be rendered
infinitely more difficult by separation, and new ones still more
difficult would be created; that, if the antagonized parties could
not agree upon peace within the Union, they certainly would not
have peace without the Union. They never could agree upon terms
of separation, nor could they agree upon the relations to subsist
between them after the separation; and, however lamentable might
be the consequences, force could be the only arbiter of their
differences.
"Though Mr. Tilden was opposed to any illusory concessions to the
spirit of disunion; though he was satisfied, after the attack on
Fort Sumter, that the differences between the two sections could
only be settled by the last argument of kings; and though he was
disposed to do everything in his power to make that argument as
effective and decisive as possible--his co-operation with the
administration of President Lincoln was qualified by a fixed
difference of opinion upon several points.
"This opinion was in accord with the view Mr. Tilden had frequently
expressed on other occasions, and was also in accord with the
opinion which he subsequently gave when his advice was solicited by
the then Secretary of War. The week preceding and the week following
Mr. Stanton's assuming the duties of Secretary of War, and at his
invitation, Mr. Tilden had frequent conferences with him, at the
first of which he is reported to me to have said in substance: 'You
have no right to expect a great military genius to come to your
assistance. The whole human race have been able to furnish such men
only once in a century or two; you can only count on the average
military talent; you have three times the available population and
perhaps nine times the industrial resources of your antagonist;
though you occupy the exterior line, you have an immense advantage
in the superior capacity of your railways to move men and supplies.
What you have to do is to make your advantages available; you
must make your combinations so as to concentrate your forces and
organize ample reserves to be ready to precipitate them on critical
points. In the probable absence of military genius you must rely on
overwhelming numbers, wisely concentrated.' Mr. Stanton appeared
to adopt these views, but unhappily they did not prevail in the
councils of the government.
"A year and a half later, when Mr. Tilden, accompanied by ex-Gov.
Morgan, visited Washington for the purpose of securing greater
harmony of action between the Federal and State government, Mr.
Stanton, in a conversation with Mr. Tilden, referred to this advice,
and added: 'I beg you to remember I always agreed with you.' I refer
the more freely to the deference which Mr. Stanton testified to Mr.
Tilden's judgment in these matters, because it is known not only to
the Hon. Peter H. Watson, then Assistant Secretary of War, but to
some, at least, of the members of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet who are now
living.
"On the subject of the finances, an element so vital to the
successful prosecution of a war, Mr. Tilden's views were at variance
with those adopted by the administration; he had more faith in
the people, in their readiness to bear the burdens and make the
sacrifices which the occasion required, than was manifested by the
authorities at Washington. Before their financial policy was fully
determined upon he advised that the money for carrying on the war
should be chiefly drawn from loans to be supplemented by taxes,
and no more Treasury notes not bearing interest issued than were
barely necessary to supply the new uses created by the government
in its own payments. He was of the opinion that if these measures
were promptly adopted, so that the supply should keep pace with the
wants of the government, the war might be carried on without any
serious embarrassment, without any exorbitant inflation of prices,
and without any extreme depreciation of the government bonds. In
discussing the financial situation of our own State in his first
message to the Legislature in 1875, Gov. Tilden briefly restated the
views which he then entertained and expressed upon this subject.
"Though Mr. Tilden foresaw the disastrous consequences of the policy
which prevailed at Washington, the wild inflation of prices, the
ruinous depreciation of government securities, the extravagant
premium on gold, and the certainty that the continuation of that
policy would lead, as it has done, to incalculable disaster; and
believing, as he did, that it might even endanger the ability
of the government to continue the war, he rigorously abstained
from any public discussion of them that might tend to create
the discredit which he apprehended, and restricted himself to
private remonstrances with the more influential friends of the
administration.
"While doing all he could to counteract what he deemed the errors
of the government, both in the management of the war and of the
finances, he was determined neither to be made responsible for nor
to be compromised by either. His attitude throughout that pregnant
period of our history was, so far as possible for a private citizen
holding no official or even active relations with any political
party, that of patriotic constitutional opposition to supposed
errors of administrative policy, openly co-operating with all the
measures of the government of which he approved, and privately
discouraging those of which he disapproved.
"At the same time he said, in a speech:
"'That in a time of war we could not deal with our government,
although disapproving of its policy, without more reserve than was
necessary in debating an administrative question during a period
of peace; that the reason was that, if we should paralyze the arm
of our own government, we yet could not stay the arm of the public
enemy striking at us through it; that it was this peculiarity which
had sometimes caused minorities to be suppressed in the presence of
public danger, and made such periods perilous to civil liberty.'
"Mr. Tilden was more solicitous than almost any other prominent man
in the country to avert the war, because he saw more clearly than
most men the grave proportions it was likely to assume; and when
it broke out he did not associate himself publicly with the party
which he had thought had unwisely precipitated it, because he could
not entirely approve of the methods by which they were conducting
it. I have yet to see one particle of authentic evidence that, when
the war had become inevitable, Mr. Tilden did not do everything
that might have been reasonably expected of him to make all the
resources of the country available for its vigorous and successful
prosecution. Happily my own convictions on this point are confirmed
by abundant testimony, some of which it may be a satisfaction to
your friends that I recapitulate:
"On the occasion of presenting a stand of colors to the
Thirty-seventh Regiment of New York State Volunteers on the 22d of
June, 1861, Mr. Tilden was among the speakers, 'and,' says John T.
Agnew, who was also present and took part in the ceremony, 'made a
stirring appeal to the officers and men of the regiment; a speech
not excelled in patriotism by any public speaker during the war of
the rebellion.'
"At even an earlier period Mr. Tilden made a journey to Washington,
at the request of Brig.-Gen. Ewing, in the especial interest of the
Seventy-ninth Regiment of Highlanders.
"The Hon. J. D. Caton, formerly Chief-Justice of the State of
Illinois, and the bosom friend of President Lincoln, in a recent
letter to the Hon. Mr. Hewitt, which has already been published,
says that during the war of the rebellion he had several interviews
with Gov. Tilden on the subject of the war, and ever found him
ardent and earnest in its support.
"The Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, who, during the war, was in constant
intercourse with the War Department, and much depended upon by
its chief for his advice at the period, was also in almost daily
intercourse with Mr. Tilden. In a recent speech in Congress, which
has already become famous, he indignantly repelled the idea that Mr.
Tilden ever manifested any sympathy with disunion.
"In October, 1862, Mr. Tilden prepared, in behalf of the Democratic
party, a declaration of its adhesion to the Union, and of the war to
preserve it. This declaration was made in substance as written, and
in so authentic and authoritative a form as to produce a profound
popular impression, both in the South as well as in the North. I
have examined the manuscript, which has fortunately been preserved,
and, with a perfect familiarity with the Governor's handwriting,
have no difficulty in verifying its authenticity.
"In 1864, Mr. Tilden, though absorbed by his profession and holding
no relations with the public not shared by any private citizen,
found himself appointed a delegate to the Democratic National
Convention at Chicago. He deemed it his duty to attend. In the
delegation he made a speech, the substance of which was briefly
reported. The points of it were:
"1. Opposition to any declaration in favor of an armistice.
"2. He insisted that the adjustment of the controversy pending
between the North and the South, on any other basis than the
restoration of the Union, was manifestly impossible.
"At this convention Mr. Tilden used all his influence to resist,
though ineffectually, the adoption of certain expressions in the
platform that might have a tendency to discourage the further
prosecution of the war; he always refused to acquiesce in them, and
subsequently sent a message to Gen. McClellan, the nominee of the
convention, urging him to disregard them in his letter of acceptance.
"To these evidences of Mr. Tilden's earnestness in the prosecution
of the war, let me add one more, which is perhaps more conclusive
than all the rest.
"All the members of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet were perfectly cognizant
of his position during the war, and were in the habit of soliciting
his advice; and two of the three who still survive, and with whom
Mr. Lincoln had the most intimate and durable relations, are now
publicly advocating his election to the Presidency.
"I wish you to realize, as I do, how utterly wanton and shameless is
this attempt to associate Mr. Tilden's name with the enemies of his
government, and how desperate must be any cause which has to rely
upon such methods for success.
"As it seemed to be my duty as a journalist to oppose and often to
criticise the course pursued by Mr. Tilden, both before and during
the war, I feel it but simple justice to him to bear this testimony
to the honorable and patriotic motives with which I never doubted
him to be animated.
"JOHN BIGELOW.
"_Highland Falls, Orange County, New York._"