The effort was made to seduce Tilden from his allegiance to his friends in New York by the offer of the naval office, then a lucrative and honorable position. Tilden had but just completed the thirty-first year of his age; the emoluments of the office were some twenty thousand dollars a year; the labor and responsibility inconsiderable. Tilden was poor, and many years must elapse before he could hope for any such revenue from his profession. The offer, however tempting it was, he promptly declined, saying that he did not labor for the election of President Polk to push his private interests; that when he was admitted to the bar he resolved that he would hold no merely lucrative office, and that, if he took any, it must be in the line of his profession or a post of honor, but under the then existing circumstances he could accept of nothing from this administration. From this time forth there were practically two Democratic parties, so called, in the State of New York: one led by William L. Marcy, and vulgarly known by their adversaries sometimes as "Hardshells," and sometimes as "Hunkers," who were either in favor of or not opposed to the extension of slavery into the free Territories from which it had been excluded by the ordinance of 1789; and the other led by Silas Wright while he lived, also vulgarly known sometimes as the "Softshells," and sometimes as "Barnburners," who were opposed to the extension of slavery into those Territories. Though the division lines of these parties, like those of latitude and longitude, were not visible to the eye, nor the parties themselves sufficiently organized to occupy hostile camps, the ends towards which they were severally working were quite as distinct as if they were. The following letter was probably addressed to William L. Marcy, who had allowed himself to be made the instrument of the pro-slavery contingent in New York, and had been on that account selected by the President as his Secretary of War.[8] S. J. TILDEN TO---- "NEW YORK, _1845_. "I cannot give you in full detail the grounds of the almost universal odium with which Mr. Van Ness is regarded by the Democracy of this city and State, but will briefly allude to some of them. "His appointment was not originally recognized as a Democratic one or received from a recognized Democratic President. He was personally and politically a stranger; did not occupy that proper representative relation to the party here to make his selection proper or acceptable, or to give him or entitle him to their confidence. On the contrary, all that was known of his private character and of his political tendencies was calculated to repel such confidence.