"NEW YORK, _Nov. 6, 1876_.
"MY DEAR SIR,--I believe I have never thanked you for the
legislative documents, which I beg now to do.
[13] Mr. Barlow did not overestimate the good sense of the American
people, but he underestimated the depravity of the Republican
leaders in Washington, as he afterwards discovered to his sorrow.
"I did not overlook the last clause of your letter, in which you
express a hope that you may see me on the stump for Tilden. I
have been on the stump for Hayes, doing what I can, and I have
the strongest confidence that we are going to elect him, and that
because I believe there is too much good sense in the American
people to turn over this govt. and its credit to those who 10 or
12 years ago were trying to destroy it. I think this will carry us
through.
"Neither Mr. Tilden nor any one else can stem the rebel influence if
he is elected.
"I have always said that I thought that Tilden, if elected by the
Republican party, would make an admirable President, but with the
rebels and copperheads and the Democratic party, with all its
villainies behind him, he will ruin us.
"On Wednesday you will be as sorry that you did not advocate Hayes,
as I shall be (win or lose) glad that I opposed Tilden.
Yours truly,
"FRANCIS C. BARLOW."
* * * * *
In the last paragraph of this letter the general got both his boots
on the wrong legs. When John Sherman, as the Warwick of the Hayes
dynasty, was sending all of the staff officers of the Republican
party into the South to see not if, but that, Hayes was elected,
General Barlow was one of the number, and the only one, I regret
to say, of that formidable crowd who had the manliness to admit
on their return that the ballot had been tampered with, and that
Hayes was not honestly entitled to the electoral vote. The general,
however, unfortunately both for himself and the country, was too
strong a party man to publicly assail the corrupt scheme devised by
the conspirators to place in the Presidential chair one who was not
the choice of the nation.
I do not think that he was as glad that he had opposed Tilden as I
was and am that I did not advocate the election of Mr. Hayes.