"58 E. 34TH ST., NEW YORK, _March 10, 1880_.
"HON. G. PITMAN SMITH.
"DEAR SIR,--Mr. Tilden has shown me your favor to him of
the 25th ult., and desires me to thank you for its friendly counsel.
In complying with his wishes, I will take the liberty of adding a
few words on my own account for which I trust my cordial sympathy
with the manifest objects of your communication will be a sufficient
apology.
"There is no one in this country, I suppose, who can suffer more
from a popular misunderstanding of his motives than Mr. Tilden, but
circumstances constrain him, no less now than heretofore, to leave
the vindication of his conduct as the leader of his party in the
last Presidential contest to its good sense and its love of justice.
There has been no time when he could participate in any public
discussion of the methods finally adopted for counting the electoral
vote, without appearing to criticise the conduct of statesmen
standing high in the confidence of the Democratic party and whose
patriotism is above suspicion. That alone would be a sufficient
reason with him for maintaining silence, and for declining to make
of what might seem to some a personal grievance a provocation of
unprofitable party dissension.
"But in my judgment he had another and a better reason. He knew
that whenever, if ever, it should become necessary for the people
of the United States to pass judgment upon his conduct during and
subsequent to the canvass of 1876 they could not fail to acquit him
of any responsibility for its final result.
"The logic of nations is far more rigorous than that of the
individuals composing it, and it would be doing the understanding of
the American people great injustice to suppose they cannot see that
there was no time when Mr. Tilden could have taken any step towards
seizing the Presidency with any color of right or with any prospect
of success. There were just two contingencies, and only two, in
which it would have been lawful and obligatory on Mr. Tilden to take
the oath as President of the United States.
"The first one would have been presented if Congress had performed
its constitutional duty: had counted the electoral votes, and
declared Mr. Tilden the chosen of the electoral colleges. The duty
of verifying the electoral votes is given by the Constitution to
the two Houses of Congress and to them only; it has always been
exercised by them at the choice of every previous President from
the foundation of the government. It was known to all who came in
contact with Mr. Tilden--for he was unreserved in the expression of
his opinion upon that subject--that in his view this power and duty
of Congress was lodged nowhere else.
"The two Houses of Congress, however, did not see fit to exercise
that power nor to discharge that duty, and as a consequence this
contingency in which it would have been proper for Mr. Tilden to
take the official oath never presented itself. Before the time
fixed by law for counting the electoral votes, Congress passed
the electoral bill by which they practically abdicated in favor
of a tribunal unknown to and, in my judgment, unknowable by the
Constitution, and enacted that the electoral commission should in
the first instance make the count, and that its count should stand
unless overruled by the concurrent action of the two Houses. This
electoral tribunal counted Mr. Tilden out, and counted in a man
who was not elected. Congress did not overrule their count, in
consequence of which the false count stood as law under the act of
Congress.
"The only other contingency in which it would have been obligatory,
or even lawful, for Mr. Tilden to have taken the oath of office was
in case of a failure in the choice of President by the electoral
colleges, the House of Representatives had itself proceeded to make
the election, voting by States in the manner prescribed by the
Constitution and pursued in the election of John Q. Adams.
"This contingency, like the first, never presented itself, and,
both failing, any attempt on the part of Mr. Tilden to seize the
Presidency by violence would have been not statesmanship, but simply
brigandage.
"Courage is too common a virtue among Americans for any one to make
a boast of it, and the lack of courage too rare to explain the
conduct of any body of representative men. At the same time, there
is no doubt that if there was any place where a special display of
heroism could have prevented the defeat of the popular choice and
installed the elect of the people in the Presidential chair, that
place was the floor of Congress. I suppose I say nothing which any
Democratic member of that Congress will be disposed to dispute when
I state that it was the fear that the Senate would lead a resistance
to the rightful judgment of the House, and that President Grant
would sustain this revolutionary policy with the army and navy, and
with the militia of the great States in which the Republicans had
possession of the State governments, that deterred the House of
Representatives from the assertion of its rights, and induced its
vote for and acquiescence in the electoral commission.
"But without speculating upon the causes or motives for such
vote and acquiescence the facts are beyond dispute. The House of
Representatives did not elect Mr. Tilden in the manner prescribed by
the Constitution or in any other. On the other hand, it did concur
with the Senate in anticipating and preventing the contingency in
which it might have had to act, and in providing beforehand an
expedient which incapacitated it for supplying a failure of an
election by the colleges. It adopted the electoral law, and went
through all the forms of the electoral scheme. True, it afterwards
rebuked itself by passing a declaratory resolution condemning the
electoral commission, and asserting that Mr. Tilden had been the
choice of the people. But the Constitution had not provided that
a man should or could take office as President on a declaratory
resolution of the House of Representatives. If that resolution could
have had full effect to abrogate the electoral law which the House
had assisted to enact, it would still have furnished Mr. Tilden
with no warrant of authority for taking the oath of office. Had Mr.
Tilden been declared President-elect by either of the constitutional
methods, no one who knows him can doubt that he would have taken the
oath and the office or sealed the people's choice with his blood, as
he was in duty bound to do.
"I do not weary you with the recapitulation of these facts, because
I suppose any of them new to you. On the contrary, they are all now
matters of history. It is because they are of public notoriety, and
because they point so directly to the one and inevitable conclusion
that Mr. Tilden's responsibility in the late canvass terminated at
the ballot-box, that I recall them here to justify in your eyes his
silence upon the subject referred to in your letter, and his perfect
faith in the good sense and justice of his countrymen.
"I need hardly say that in what I have here written in explanation
of Mr. Tilden's attitude before the country I have written as his
friend, not for him.
"Very truly yours,
"JOHN BIGELOW."