The times., 1898-11-14
DANGER IN LETTERS.
Some That Have Brought Disaster
to Public Men.
(From the Forum

KILLED by a Letter was the significant
heading of Havana newspaper over an
article telling of eX-Minister de Lomes
fail This legend would be an appropriate
epitaph over the political graves of many
public men. says the St. Louis Globe
Democrat The rivalry between Hamil-
ton. the leader de facto of the Federal
party, and Adams the leader de jure in
cited Hamilton's letter during the cam
paign of 1900 arraigning Adams. which
was one OF the causes Of the rupture and
overthrow of that party and the triumph
OF jefferson and the Democracy. Hamil-
tons letter attacking Burr were the ctuse
of the duel in which Hamilton lost his
life.
Jeffersons letter to his old neighbor,
Mazzel, in 1896, in which. by pretty plain
Implication. he traduced Washington and
other men whom the American people
honored, kept jefferson denying and ex-
planning for many years. his historic let
ter of Van Buren on this subject having
been written shortly before his death
and twenty-eight years after the Mazzel
epistle was penned. The preservation and
publication of Jefferson's ''Anas," or di-
airy, which is really a sort of letter to
posterity. with its spiteful assaults on
the memory of Hamilton and other emil
nent men. showed an amazing lack of
called out from all his editors and bios-
raphers excuses which accuse.
Never write a letter" said Talleyrand
"and never burn one that you receive
If Nicholas Biddle had observed the first
part of this injunction the fate of the
United States bank. over which he pre-
sided would probably have been different.
Jackson would not have been able to
perform that second labor of Hercules
in Staying the bank hydra" and the pol
itics of the 3Os would have lost one of its
most picturesque episodes.
An interesting and usually level-headed
parsonage. Blddle had what Juvenal called
an "incurable itch for writing" and this
led him and his institution to their doom
defeated Clay and the national Republican
party in 1892. and. as one of the conse-
quences of the banks overthrow, brought
on the panic of 1887. The 'Rhea letter.
precipitated the contest in 1880 between
Jackson and Calhoun, which put Cal
houn out of the line of succession to
Jackson in the Presidency: made Van
Buren Jackson's political heir; dwarfed
Calhoun from a national to a local fig
ure. and turned him to the partisan met
aphysics. out of which were evolved null
lification and that morbid and wire-drawn
political philosophy in defense of slavery
that brought on the war which destroyed
slavery.
There is fine touch of poetic irony in
the circumstance that Van Buren,. the
man who said he would rather walk forty
miles to tell person something than to
intrust his thoughts to a letter. met his
doom through the medium of letter. 1t
was etter, however, which he was alb
solutely forced to write. and it was called
out in the spring of 1s4. by the necessity
of declaring himself on the burning issue
of Texas annexation. The letter. in which
he mildly and tentatively opposed annex
alton, defeated him for the nomination for
the Presidency few weeks later and gave
the candidacy to the dark horse Polk an
outspoken annexationist.
Everybody remembers the wreck which
letter-writing inflicted on Blaine's for
tunes by defeat in the conventions of 1876
and 1880 and at the polls in 1854.
His fatal readiness with his pen
brought an Iliad of woes to Clay. II
| am the most unfortunate man in
American history" exclaimed Clay after
one of his reverses to Henry A. Wise.
| II get the nomination in the years when
no Whig can be elected, and in the years
| when any Whig can win, the candidacy
goes to somebody else In the year,
/ however, in which his success seemed
/ certain, 1874, he was defeated by his cam
! paign letters on the Texas question. I'VE
/ are beaten exclaimed Joshua r. Gid
! dings to Cassus NJ. Clay, as somebody
( put into his hand a paper containing one
! of Clay's letters. just before both of them
! mounted the stand at Clay mass meet
ing at which they were to speak. He was
right. The letter. which made a surren-
/ der on the slavery question. sent enough
| anti-slavery Wings over to Birney the
| liberty party's candidate in the decisive
4 a nf m siy hat ";
/ the Presidency to Polk
THE chief qualification which I shall
require of a Wing Presidential candidate
! hereafter" said Meredith P. Gentry a
few days after Clay's defeat, .is that he
shall be able to neither read nor write"