Letters and Literary Memorials of Samuel J. Tilden, v. 2Tilden, Samuel J. (Samuel Jones)
History
Letters and Literary Memorials of Samuel J. Tilden, v. 2
Tilden, Samuel J. (Samuel Jones)
Tilden, Samuel J. (Samuel Jones), 1814-1886
"When I came down to breakfast in the morning, William R. Pelton,
Gov. Tilden's nephew, told me that 'the fat is all in the fire';
that at two o'clock in the morning _one of the Senators_, whose
name, for reasons personal to myself and to him, I do not feel at
liberty to use, had come to Senator Conkling and told him that
he did not dare to go any further with the enterprise; that his
political and perhaps his personal future would be ruined if he
did not vote for Hayes. Conkling thereupon made up his mind that
the game was lost, and took the earliest train to Baltimore,
where he would, as Pelton said, spend the day, and where he did,
as I afterwards learned, spend the day. Although I possessed
Mr. Conkling's confidence and regard (I have a letter from him
somewhere, couched in more earnest terms of gratitude than I ever
received from any other human being), I never spoke with him on this
subject. My information was derived entirely from Senator Stevenson
and William T. Pelton, with the latter of whom I was, as I have
already explained I was with the former, on terms of confidence.
"During this period I never heard Mrs. Sprague's name mentioned.
I do not know whether she was in Washington or not. I was her
father's friend, as you probably know, and I was her friend, and in
the matter of the divorce from Gov. Sprague I was (with Winchester
Britton, of Brooklyn) her counsel, and procured her divorce. I
have had many consultations with both Pelton and his uncle upon
various political and personal matters, but never heard this matter
alluded to by either of them, or by Mrs. Sprague, and I do not
believe that the story has any foundation in truth whatever. She
knew perfectly well, for many years before she died, that I was a
friend of Gov. Tilden's; that my wife and I both had enjoyed his
personal hospitality, and knowing, as she did, my feelings towards
her father, and having been her legal agent and representative, as I
was, in association with the late Richard T. Merrick, in an attempt,
which never came to daylight, to kill Judge Warden's grotesque
biography of S. P. Chase, this is the first time I ever heard any
interference of hers in the matter of the electoral tribunal even
referred to. Mrs. Sprague has left children and friends who mourn
over her sad fate and grieve at her death, and, among others,
"GEO. HOADLEY.
"[Judge Hoadley's means of information are certainly
unsurpassed. We accept his statement as conclusive on the point
at issue.--ED. _Evening Post_.]"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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