History of Westchester County, New York, Vol. I
As soon, however, as the National Democratic Convention assembled in 1880, he felt constrained to address to the chairman of the New York delegation the memorable letter in which he proclaimed his well-considered intention to retire from public life, for the labors of which he had long felt his health and strength were unequal. In 1884 he was obliged to repeat his resolution, to prevent his nomination by the delegates to the National Convention, who were almost unanimously chosen because of their avowed partiality for Mr. Tilden as their candidate, notwithstanding his impaired and failing health. Finding it impossible to obtain
his consent to run, the convention accepted a candidate of his choice from the State which he had served so long and faithfully, and his choice was ratified by the nation at the general election.
Mr. Tilden is now enjoying the repose he has so fially earned, and such health as repose only could confer, at his princely home of Greystone on the banks of the Hudson, now the pilgrim's shrine of the reinstated party, which Jefferson planted and which Jackson and Van Buren watered.
"He is one of tlie few surviving statesmen who had the good fortune to receive early political training in the golden age of the Democratic party, when public measures were thoroughly tested by the Constitution and by public opinion, and when by ample debate the voters of the whole nation were educated, not only to embrace, but also to comprehend, the principles upon which their government was conducted,-- a training to which his subsequent political career bears continual testimony. Whatever heresies of doctrine have crept into our public policy since those days, the responsibility for them will not rest with him. In all the papers and speeches with which from time to time he has endeavored to enlighten his countrymen, it will be difficult to find a line or a thought not in harmony with the teachings of the eminent statesmen who, during the first fifty years of our national history, traced the limits and defined the functions of constitutional Democracy in America.