one thing I desire you to know and depend upon. Whatever difference of judgment there may be between us I shall, in our intercourse, always tell you the truth exactly as I understand it, without color or concealment; and if there be anything unpleasant in it, I shall tell it to you directly instead of to other people and rely upon your good sense and generous impulses for a just appreciation of my motives. In that way I can serve the cause I have at heart and you, personally, better than in any other. I tried the same thing with Grant when he made his first mistakes, and failed. Were he not so narrow-minded as he is, he would probably now remember with regret some interviews I had with him.
I wish to dispel some misapprehensions you seem to be laboring under. If you believe the “revenue reformers,” or, if you prefer the word, the “free-traders,” spent money to bring delegations from the South to Cincinnati, you are surely mistaken. The Southern delegates brought on in that way were in the Davis interest. I know of what I speak. The free-traders did not spend a penny. Those from New York, of whom you say that they were no Republicans, were very [few] in number and exercised no influence.
On the whole, I think that element is entitled to great consideration. In the West it started and directed the movement and made it strong; without it the movement would never have assumed its great proportions. In the Convention its conduct was honorable throughout and conciliatory, and now it ought not to be disregarded or treated with neglect.
As to the Germans in the West, the temperance question is not the only nor the main difficulty, nor the tariff question either. They went in for reform in the best and largest sense of the term. What they found most objectionable in the Convention and its results was the appearance of the movement being taken possession of and
