more pregnant with future mischief, than would be _now_ a confirmed separation. However, therefore, I may deplore, with heartbroken grief and shame, all the disasters of these fratricidal battle-fields, yet truth and justice and conviction extort from me the avowal that I hope the South will be successful in beating back from their own rightfully defended soil this most fatal and iniquitous invasion; and for this sentiment, though it may be the extreme of treason, I am willing to stand responsible before God and man. "God bless you, my dear old fellow, whether you now go with me the full length of my opinions, or whether I may have to regret, as a sensible addition to all the rest of my present affliction, that we no longer stand united in our old accord of sentiments. _Eadem sentire de re publica._ Just as I would have shouldered a Northern rifle to unite in the defence of Washington against menaced invasion from the South, so would I now, were I at home, stand up in aid of the rightful defence of the Southern soil against this equally unjustifiable invasion from the North; and this, were I on that side of the Atlantic, or were it possible for me to get there, I would do, unless I could do better service to the cause of the right by speaking, writing, and acting for it at the North. It is only the foolish and mad co-operation of the deluded Democracy that has enabled the Republican administration to undertake this war, and now enables it to carry it on. In that sense the Democratic party is, though secondarily, as much responsible for it as the Republicans. If it were now to draw back and insist on peace, it has the power to enforce that policy. This is what I would labor for, and it is with a view to this that I have written to urge my views upon you and upon the public, so far as you may have consented to publish my letters, every word of which I should be glad to see in the columns of the _News_ or of the _Day Book_. "Ever faithfully Yours, "J. L. O'SULLIVAN." J. D. ANDREWS TO TILDEN "_Private._ "NATIONAL HOTEL, "WASH'G., _Aug. 18, 1861_. "MY DEAR SIR,--The wheel of public events is rolling rapidly, and soon the good men of the country will have to combine outside of President and Cabinet to protect the national honor and save our institutions. "Seward is premier and President, and under his weak, mischievous rule the ship of state is rapidly approaching the breakers. He nor the rest of the Cabinet have any administrative ability, nor any comprehension of the immensity of the crisis. They are all governed by a narrow policy, and are so intent upon personal objects that the higher duties of the citizens are made subordinate in this emergency of a nation's life to the success of the partisan. "Seward is the great failure, but he is egotistical, false, flippant, grotesque as usual.