"I was in Washington at the time, and possessed the confidence of the Democratic leaders, and argued, as you know, the Florida and Oregon cases. My information was, in one sense, second hand. I possessed Mr. Conkling's confidence with regard to the general subject. I knew perfectly what his views were. He did not hesitate to express them fully, even going so far as to state them at length in conversation with myself and my wife and Senator John W. Stevenson, of Kentucky, on the street in front of the Arlington, a few days before the decision of the electoral tribunal. He put the case as it stood in his mind in the most vivid terms. He was a master of vituperative language, as you know, and he did not spare anybody; but more especially he put the matter as a question of law, and with more ability than I have ever heard it done by any one else, but I have not time within the confines of a letter to repeat what he said. Whether Mrs. Sprague was in Washington at this time I do not know. "The only person on the Democratic side who communicated with Mr. Conkling was Senator William H. Barnum, of Connecticut, chairman of the Democratic National Executive Committee. Mr. Barnum talked to others, as he deemed it discreet, but we all thought it unwise that any one on our side should approach any one on the opposite side of politics, except Senator Barnum. During the afternoon of the day before the final vote was given in the Senate on the Louisiana case, Senator Stevenson, whose daughter was the wife of one of my partners, and who was until he died my very dear and honored friend, communicated to me, as having come to him from Senator Barnum, all the details of what I may call, for brevity's sake, 'this plot' to arrest the high-handed dealings of the Republicans, and I went to bed that night in full confidence that Mr. Tilden would be placed on a legal basis for inauguration to the Presidency in the morning. Eight (or nine) Senators had agreed with each other to cast their votes in the Senate so as to reverse the judgment of the electoral tribunal in the Louisiana case.