"'That in a time of war we could not deal with our government, although disapproving of its policy, without more reserve than was necessary in debating an administrative question during a period of peace; that the reason was that, if we should paralyze the arm of our own government, we yet could not stay the arm of the public enemy striking at us through it; that it was this peculiarity which had sometimes caused minorities to be suppressed in the presence of public danger, and made such periods perilous to civil liberty.' "Mr. Tilden was more solicitous than almost any other prominent man in the country to avert the war, because he saw more clearly than most men the grave proportions it was likely to assume; and when it broke out he did not associate himself publicly with the party which he had thought had unwisely precipitated it, because he could not entirely approve of the methods by which they were conducting it. I have yet to see one particle of authentic evidence that, when the war had become inevitable, Mr. Tilden did not do everything that might have been reasonably expected of him to make all the resources of the country available for its vigorous and successful prosecution. Happily my own convictions on this point are confirmed by abundant testimony, some of which it may be a satisfaction to your friends that I recapitulate: "On the occasion of presenting a stand of colors to the Thirty-seventh Regiment of New York State Volunteers on the 22d of June, 1861, Mr. Tilden was among the speakers, 'and,' says John T. Agnew, who was also present and took part in the ceremony, 'made a stirring appeal to the officers and men of the regiment; a speech not excelled in patriotism by any public speaker during the war of the rebellion.' "At even an earlier period Mr. Tilden made a journey to Washington, at the request of Brig.-Gen. Ewing, in the especial interest of the Seventy-ninth Regiment of Highlanders. "The Hon. J. D. Caton, formerly Chief-Justice of the State of Illinois, and the bosom friend of President Lincoln, in a recent letter to the Hon. Mr. Hewitt, which has already been published, says that during the war of the rebellion he had several interviews with Gov. Tilden on the subject of the war, and ever found him ardent and earnest in its support. "The Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, who, during the war, was in constant intercourse with the War Department, and much depended upon by its chief for his advice at the period, was also in almost daily intercourse with Mr. Tilden. In a recent speech in Congress, which has already become famous, he indignantly repelled the idea that Mr. Tilden ever manifested any sympathy with disunion.