vents of nearly five-and-forty
years ago to invoke and awaken any of the passions of that time, nor my
purpose to assail the character or motives of any of the leading actors.
Most of them, including the principals, I knew well; to many of their
secrets I was privy. As I was serving, in a sense, as Mr. Tilden's
personal representative in the Lower House of the Forty-fourth Congress,
and as a member of the joint Democratic Advisory or Steering Committee
of the two Houses, all that passed came more or less, if not under my
supervision, yet to my knowledge; and long ago I resolved that certain
matters should remain a sealed book in my memory.

I make no issue of veracity with the living; the dead should be
sacred. The contradictory promptings, not always crooked; the double
constructions possible to men's actions; the intermingling of ambition
and patriotism beneath the lash of party spirit; often wrong unconscious
of itself; sometimes equivocation deceiving itself--in short, the
tangled web of good and ill inseparable from great affairs of loss
and gain made debatable ground for every step of the Hayes-Tilden
proceeding.

I shall bear sure testimony to the integrity of Mr. Tilden. I directly
know that the presidency was offered to him for a price, and that he
refused it; and I indirectly know and believe that two other offers came
to him, which also he declined. The accusation that he was willing to
buy, and through the cipher dispatches and other ways tried to buy,
rests upon appearance supporting mistaken surmise. Mr. Tilden knew
nothing of the cipher dispatches until they appeared in the New York
_Tribune_. Neither did Mr. George W. Smith, his private secretary, and
later one of the trustees of his will.

It should be sufficient to say that so far as they involved No. 15
Gramercy Park they were the work solely of Colonel Pelton, acting on his
own responsibility, and as Mr. Tilden's nephew exceeding his authority
to act; that it later developed that during this period Colonel Pelton
had not been in his perfect mind, but was at least semi-irresponsible;
and that on two occasions when the vote or votes sought seemed within
reach Mr. Tilden interposed to forbid. Directly and personally I know
this to be true.

The price, at least in patronage, which the Republicans actually paid
for possession is of public record. Yet I not only do not question the
integrity of Mr. Hayes, but I believe him and most of those immediately