I am very glad that you imagine that I agree with you in politics for since the Nation stampeded I have felt lonely Before any guess could be made as to the votes of at least three states, the World and every other Democratic paper that I saw began systematically to sound the public mind and prepare the way for a pronunciamento. There was no excuse for it whatever except that Chandler and the republican newspapers did not all at once accept a solid South for Tilden as a foregone conclusion. I had never any fear that anything substantial would come of it for I know Tilden and I know what Copperhead bluster means but I remembered the draft riots, and my family being not one block away from a considerable cluster of Irish tenement houses I felt a little savage about it. Finding that the republicans proper did not scare very badly that game has been abandoned and one can look at the matter quietly. The only difference is that it obliges me, at least, to look at it more strictly from the point of view of a republican than I might otherwise. I can’t help feeling, that is to say, that there was before “McDowell advanced on Manassas” a pretty deep difference of opinion as to the true basis of statesmanship between Mr. Chas O’Connor and myself and that there is today the same difference between Mr Tilden and myself—a difference which has justified the killing of great many thousand men and the waste of a vast amount of honest industry. I do not welcome as President a man with whom I have that difference. I prefer a man who has less ability, who is less of a reformer, even one who can regard as friends and give public trusts to men less respectable than John Morrisey, Jimmy O’Brien and Andy Green. Standing in this position even ten years after the men of Mr Tilden’s ways of thinking had their arms taken away from them I simply do not think that it has been so fully proved that Mr Tilden has become our President elect by the honest legal vote of the nation that it is my duty to abandon hope of the contrary. And on this point I don’t propose to be thrown off my balance by an impatient apprehension of injustice to those [278] with whom I differ any more than I propose to be bullied into acquiescence in their plans. Ever since the day of the election as I understand, Mr Tilden has had Mr O’Connor and 50,000 young men, (candidates for 2d class clerkships), engaged in the compilation of his case. When he has completed it and the Nation has reduced it to a comprehensible statement of proven facts then I shall be ready to consider it fairly I hope and to accept a reasonable conclusion. But so long as there is reasonable room for doubt I mean that the theory of the nation which I have hitherto upheld shall have the benefit of it and if anybody wants to fight about it I shall refer them to my man of business whose name for the present is U. S. Grant.

The situation is critical but I don’t on the whole think it a bad one. The republicans are doing a good deal of thinking without being any less republicans. The democrats are learning that their antebellum tactics don’t have precisely the effect on their opponents that they formerly did, and that there are other men in the country whom neither firearms nor commercial depression can frighten out of their senses besides the Fire eaters. I don’t believe that the republicans are weakening any more than I believe they are Mexicanizing. If Tilden is elected he will be President and if he is President he will be opposed by a much stronger, better disciplined, more serious and earnest party than he would have been had there been no doubt of his election and no demonstration of the continued dangerous character of his own party.

I have not seen Sturgis for a year past but I believe that he knows that we of the Advisory Board (now the firm of Eidlitz, Richardson & Co Architects to the Capitol) have stood by his friend Eaton and between him and his pursuers all the time, formally and informally, publicly and privately. I should not have any fear that a hair of his head would be touched if Uncle Sammy were not so very past finding out and if he had not taken such a mysterious interest in the matter.

The design of the Capitol has since last winter grown more Romanesque but also, I hope, a little more quiet and coherent.

There will be much historical incongruity in it and some that I would gladly have escaped. But we must take men as we find them and Eidlitz would not if he could have it otherwise. If he had been a man who could and would we might have more weak and meaningless and pottering work and it is a comfort that we are likely to escape that.

I have just returned from Albany. Fuller has given notice that he intends to appeal to the legislature and I suppose that he will have his old backing. I don’t know what we have to expect, but, though Dorsheimer has both branches of the legislature against him, his colleagues unhappy and the governor not personally friendly he seems resolute & confident.

While writing, the Nation of today has been laid on my table and I have glanced at the work to see if there is any change. None. I wonder if the World and the Sun and the Express and the Albany Argus, all of which I have [279] chanced to see within a few days, & the World daily, are never seen in the Nation office. I am demented if Zach Chandler and the Times and the very hottest of the republican mercenaries have at any time shown more rabid partisanship, impudence, arrogance and “Mexican” spirit than Mr Hewitt and the coolest and most cultured of the Democratic press that I see.

Ah! well, I’m afraid we none of us have advanced so very far from the simplicity of savage life. We are all alike crazy when our blood is up. & it seems to get up without our knowing it.

I sent my boy on last week to see Richardson’s church before the scaffolds were taken down. I want very much to see it myself—perhaps I shall. I should like to know if you like it.

Kindest regards for the New Year for your mother, your sister & yourself from