"2. No cavilling about the national debt, however incurred; that is sacred as honor, and must be paid, principal and interest. "3. No further patching of the Constitution of the country, nor curtailing the independence of the Supreme Court. "4. The present erroneous expenditures of the genl. government shall be reduced, and taxes equalized and diminished, and tax-gatherers shall no longer be suffered to pry into domestic affairs nor count the spoons. "If such a platform could be put out and _stuck_ to, not dragged out into _side_ issues, or _dead_ issues, success would be sure; so it appears to me; but if I am only another instance of the side allusion above, it would not be strange; but I would like such a nomination as proposed--there could be none better. "Y'rs, &c., "R. C. ROOT." S. J. TILDEN TO R. C. ROOT (PROBABLY) "NEW YORK, _Feb. 28th, 1868_. "MY DEAR SIR,--Two successive absences, between which I was in town but one day and passed that ill in bed, have prevented an earlier answer to your letters. "I concur in your judgment that the paramount issue in the coming election would be 'the restoration of the ten absent States to the Union, with all the rights and privileges of the other States, and with their local government in the hands of the white population; and that all else must be subordinate and secondary.' "Our position must be _condemnation and reversal of negro supremacy_ in the ten States (added to that in Tennessee), created by the measures of the Federal government--_first_, by disfranchising the whites and overawing them by military force, and, _secondly_, by admitting the blacks and organizing them through the Freeman's Bureau, not only involving us in a partnership in self-government with a mass of voters (in all the U. S. over 900,000), confessedly incompetent at the present time to exercise the suffrage wisely or safely, and without any of the training, habits, or aspirations of freemen, but, by thus obtaining control of nearly one-third of the Senate and nearly one-quarter of the House, establishing a practical dominion of the same character over the great free States of the North and over the whole country. "Associated with this issue are all those measures by which the Senate is to be packed by the admission of new States--the subdivision of the present States--added to the control of 20 from the ten States and others constituting a Senatorial dynasty of long tenure, and the usurpation by the Senate thus constituted of the opportunity, power, and the absorption by it and the House of the rightful authorities of the Executive and of the Judiciary. "In my judgment, if we obscure or weaken this issue, we shall not only fail to meet the necessities of the present condition of the country, but we shall commit a great political blunder.