"You allude, in this connection, to other liabilities hanging over you; by which, I suppose, you mean the claim on the drafts held by the Stark Bank. I should think that if anything _could_ add to the obligation to protect me from a liability on your confidential paper, it would be that I have been engaged, and am still, with infinite care, labor and trouble, in trying to rescue you from that unjust claim--that the intricacies of the case, the complexity of the transactions out of which the claim grows, the witnesses being out of the State--" [The rest wanting.] M. VAN BUREN TO MOSES TILDEN[24] "LINDENWALD, _Septr. 1st, '56_. "MY DEAR SIR,--I am happy to find that the 'sober second thought' has brought you to the right conclusion, as I was quite sure it must do. I may add, too, that I honor the scruples by which you have been embarrassed. It requires no small share of moral courage for men of our antecedents to keep the posts of right and duty against the influence of such resentments as we have been exposed to. But it would have been a crying shame to have had a single link broken in a family so pre-eminently Democratic as yours has been--from Dr. and Mrs. Younglove to Sammy. "We are not only right, but the crisis is, in my judgment, the most imminent and critical of any we have ever experienced. That union should so long have been preserved in a confederacy which contains an element of discord of such magnitude and of so disturbing a nature as that of slavery, is a wonder--more surprising than its dissolution would be. This has been owing to the fact, I firmly believe, the single fact that there have always been neutralizing considerations of sufficient force to maintain party cohesions between men of the free and slave States. Slavery questions have from the beginning had more or less to do with our political contests, but have never before had the effect of dissolving old party connections and sympathies, and the balance-wheel has thus been preserved. Now, for the first time in our history, one side, and that the one in which we reside, has undertaken to carry an election, including the control of the Federal government, and against the united wishes of the other. It has placed itself in a position which, for the first time cuts itself loose from all hope, if not desire, of assistance in the slave States. It not only admits that this is its position, but avows that it is a desirable one. It wishes to accomplish its mastery by its own unaided arm. Now, it needs no ghost to tell us that one successful effort of this description will be followed by another, for men have too much the quality of wild beasts in them to stop the pursuit when they have once tasted blood, and it would be against reason and experience to expect a Union, in which political mastery is so plainly exhibited and organized, to continue. From this evil we have been saved by the state of parties which