ance with the guarantees of the Constitution. Let our motto be: "While the rebels are in arms, we will meet them with arms; when they submit to laws, they shall be protected by laws" Your obedient servant, JOHN GANSON. HON. DAVID L. SEYMOUR, OF NEW YORK. Hon. ELIJAH F PURDY, TROY, July 1, 1863. SIR-I am in receipt of the invitation of the Tammany Society to join them in the celebration of the next anniversary of our National Independence, and regret to say that previous engagements will prevent my attendance on that occasion. The circumstances surrounding our country at the present time are fraught with such imminent danger to our government, that an unusual interest attaches to this anniversary. The natal day of the Republic recalls to our recollection the glories of that revolution in which our patriotic ancestors achieved our independence and established the great Republic of the west, founding its institutions upon the principles of eternal truth, and making it the asylum of the oppressed of all nations. For eighty-six years this government stood, strengthening itself and extending its limits until it had spanned the continent, and its power had become known and was respected throughout the civilized world. Such was the position of honor and pride which our nation occupied but yesterday. And as in the ancient Roman Republic, so here, every American however humble he might be, felt a glow of exultation and national pride, as pointing to his country, he exclaimed: "I AM AN AMERICAN CITIZEN." A To-day all is changed. Our glorious Union, the source of our strength and prosperity is severed. Our prestige of power as a nation is gone. bloody civil war is raging in the bosom of our once peaceful and prosperous land. An hundred battle fields are strewed with the mangled corpses of those who have fallen in this unnatural contest Our armies massed around the Capitol, are required to protect the Chief Executive and the officers of our government, while powerful armies of the insurgents are ravaging the country from the Rappahannock to the Susquehannah. The patriotic citizens of the North when they inquire for the causes of these great disasters which have so sadly reversed the glorious picture of our former greatness and glory, will readily find it in the principles and policy of two extreme parties in our country-the secessionists of the South and the abolitionists of the North They both have combined to war upon that Constitution and its compromises, which has made us North and South one people. They both to-day mutually exult in its prostration, and hope for its utter and final overthrow. There is but one party which can save our country in this most trying exigency of public affairs. That party is the party of the Union and the Constitution; a party embracing all the democratic and conservative masses of the country; a party not organized merely to attain power, and to distribute the spoils of office, but inspired, moved and directed by the one all-absorbing idea that the salvation of the country depends upon maintaining "the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was." Your time-honored association will, I doubt not, lead, as it has always done in this noble work, to reestablishing order, Constitutional right, and the sway of the laws. Free speech, a free press, and personal liberty, now ruthlessly assailed and trodden down, must be reässerted and reëstablished at all hazards. The liberties of a people can only exist while these defences are maintained, nor can peace and Constitutional Union ever be restored to our country, until the Constitution and the rights of all the States of the Union, and of all citizens North and South under it, be respected and protected. Very respectfully, yours, &c., DAVID L. SEYMOUR. HON. JOHN R. BRADY, JUDGE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS. ELIJAH F. PURDY, Esq., Grand Sachem. DEAR SIR-I am much pleased to have the opportunity to renew, through the Tammany Society, my vows to preserve the freedom of our country, to maintain its Union and integrity, and to transmit the sacred inheritance unimpaired to succeeding generations. The democratic party has stood firm in its support of the Union, its institutions and its laws, and it will never prove recreant while one voice is left to proclaim its devotion. Dauntless and unswerving it will rise and rule, though vanquished for a time, and under its sway the Republic shall flourish, and make still stronger and broader the base upon which its columns must rest forever. The sovereign gift has a sovereign remedy when abused, and to the ballot we must turn when the power we have conferred is violated, leaving our rights meanwhile to the tribunals of the land. In peace and in war the motto of our party has been: "The Union, it must and shall be preserved." For this our brethren have fought and died, and for this, to-day, they are front to front with the fratricides who would sever our home and rob us and the world of that great united inheritance, which among other blessings secures to us civil and religious liberty. Much as we have done in council and in the field, much is yet to be done by us to restore the Union under the Constitution, and to make it as it has been in brighter hours, a beacon guide and asylum to the oppressed of all climes. I regret that I cannot be with you to express more in detail the love I bear my country, and the hope that our party shall ever be foremost to protect its interest, integrity and honor. Very truly yours, JNO. R. BRADY. HON. WM. W. EATON, OF CONNECTICUT. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MAY SESSION, A. D. 1863. HARTFORD, CONN., June 26th, 1863. } MY DEAR SIR:-I desire to express my sincere thanks for the honor conferred upon me by the Tammany Society, in requesting me to participate in the celebration of the anniversary of American Independence. I regret to say that my official engagements will prevent my being present on the occasion The present condition of the country demands the wise exertion of every friend of order and of Constitutional law, and, while we should use our utmost efforts to restore our old Union with all its checks and balances, the democracy should sternly demand that all public servants should faithfully adhere to the powers conferred upon them by the organic law, and any departure therefrom should be denounced by the people. That time-honored old Tammany will perform her full part in this crisis of our history I do not permit myself to doubt. I greatly regret that it will not be in my power to accept the invitation of the Tammany Society, of which I have long been a member, and which contains so many valued friends, to unite with them in celebrating the approaching anniversary of our Independence You do right in assuming that the present exigency attaches a peculiar and absorbing interest to the day, and to no celebration of it will that interest be more carefully extended than to yours. Members of an ancient and honorable fraternity, established in 1789, not as a political association, but bearing on its roll the names of some of the truest patriots that ever lived, our action in this crisis should be worthy of the reputation the society has now, and the responsibility that belongs to us. The country is involved in a war, for the commencement of which, as well as the mode of its prosecution, we are in no degree responsible. Rebels against the lawful authority of the general government have assumed to dissolve the Union. In such a crisis you fitly recur to the patriot's pledge: "The Union must and shall be preserved." The whole effective force of the loyal States should be bent to this object; a cordial union of sentiment should sustain our armies in the field. Measures of questionable expediency should be avoided; a generous forbearance should be used in criticising or opposing the action of the general government. Party considerations, and action should be hushed in the present peril of the Republic, and the absorbing patriotism which presided over our revolutionary history, and marked the initiation of our society, should resume its sway. Rely upon it, those who act upon this platform now, will not only serve to save the country, but will prove in the end the truest friends of their party organizations and political associates. That this spirit will breath through your celebration, I trust and believe. And again express my regret at being unable to participate in a festival which will thus reflect credit upon the society, and go far to sustain the honor of the country. Thanking you for the kindness of your invitation, I am, truly yours, J. VAN BUREN. JUDGE ALONZO C. PAIGE. SCHENECTADY, July 1, 1863. ELIJAH F. PURDY, Grand Sachem of the Society of Tammany. DEAR SIR-I regret my inability to accept the invitation of the Society of Tammany to meet and participate with its members in the celebration of the next anniversary of our Independence. Nothing can be conceived by any lover of his country more appropriate, than on that day "to renew his vows to preserve its freedom, maintain its union and integrity, and transmit the sacred inheritance unimpaired to succeeding generations.” This object, dear to the heart of every American citizen, can only be accom plished by the preservation of the Constitution. This Constitution created -its maintenance will restore the Union. Devotion to it, and reverence for it, must be cultivated. It was the violation of the obligations it imposes, and the open assaults upon it, and upon the rights it guarantees, that destroyed the fraternal relations between the North and the South, and arrayed the two sections against each other in deadly strife. The example and the warning voice of our revolutionary fathers were disregarded. The farewell admonitions of Washington ceased to influence us. Sectionalism was suffered to spring up in the North and South to divide us. Fraternal love by the acrimony of Northern and Southern disunionists was turned into fraternal hate. Political fanaticism at the North and devotion to Southern institutions at the South, and exasperation there at Northern attacks made upon them, suggested at the North the dogmas of the higher law, and that the States must necessarily become all slave or all free; and at the South the Revolutionary doctrines of nullification and secession. The authors and advocates of these false and disorganising dogmas and doctrines will be held by the future historian responsible for the civil war which is now devastating our fair land with fraternal blood. The nomination of a sectional candidate for the presidency, standing upon a sectional platform, and elected by a sectional vote, as might have been expected, and as the supporters of this candidate were during the canvass daily admonished, was seized upon by Southern disunionists to precipitate the Southern States into open rebellion The celebration of the ensuing anniversary will be an appropriate occasion for constitutional union men, the democratic and conservative citizens of the United States to survey calmly the present critical and disastrous condition of our country, and to determine upon means and a policy to accomplish a restoration of the Union upon the principles of the Constitution. There will be a demand upon them for the exercise of all their wisdom and patriotism, and of the greatest forbearance. They will, doubtless, see that there is a class of politicians at the North who are enemies of the present Constitution and of the old Union; and that these reckless men seek to annihilate the insurrectionary States, to subvert the Constitution and to reconstruct the Government upon the principles of abolition of Slavery by the aid of the military power. The moral guilt of these men is not less in degree than that of the rebel in arms. The designs and machinations of these men must be watched with ceaseless vigilance and defeated. The unconstitutional policy which has been adopted by the President and Congress in the conduct of the war, and which by uniting and exasperating the South, changing loyalty into treason, has given increased power and energies to the rebellion, must be abandoned. The war must be a constitutional war, prosecuted solely to restore the Union with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several States unimpaired. Only men who respect the Constitution and the principles of civilized warfare must be placed at the head of our armies, and selected as the advisers of the President. But the most efficacious remedy for our national calamities is the overthrow of the party in power by the agency of the peaceful, but the resistless ballot. We have waited long and anxiously for an improvement in the management of our national affairs. But we have waited in vain. Disaster has succeeded disaster to our armies, until we have become satisfied, that unless the President will dismiss his cabinet and change his policy, it is only under a democratic and conservative administration that the war can be prosecuted with sufficient vigor, wisdom and skill to overthrow the rebellion. That it is only under such an administration that the Constitution and the principles of a civilized warfare will be respected; that the wealth of the nation and the blood of our heroic soldiers will only be expended in the cause of the Union, and that the several States can be re-united upon the principles of the Constitution, with all their original rights unimpaired. Yours, respectfully, A. C. PAIGE. BRIG.-GENERAL JOSIAH T. MILLER. STATE OF NEW YORK, NEW YORK GENERAL'S OFFICE,} ALBANY, July 1, 1863. GENTLEMEN :--I am in receipt of an invitation to participate in the celebration of the approaching anniversary of our National Independence, with the Society of Tammany, or Columbian Order. I desire very much to meet with you on this occasion, and regret that unexpected official duties prevent my acceptance of your invitation. Permit me, however, to return my thanks to the Sachems for their courtesy to me, and to express my appreciation of the patriotic services, in the past, of the ancient, and very honorable order, which they represent. Tammany is inseparably connected with the best days of the Republic, and with the brightest pages in the history of the democratic party, and of the American Union. When dangers threaten, the eyes of true men turn to her Council Chamber, and they have never been disappointed. Tammany has never failed to declare for the right with a will, and with a power. She will not fail in the dark hour of our country's humiliation and trial. Had the people of the North heeded her warnings in the past, the present affliction would have been spared our land, and if her teachings shall be followed in the future, peace and prosperity will again return to, and bless our people. That such may be the speedy issue of our nation's trials, is the sincere wish of your humble servant, ELIJAH F. PURDY, Esq., JOSIAH T. MILLER. and others, New York. HON. FRED. A. TALLMADGE, CLERK COURT OF APPEALS. E. F. PURDY, Esq., STATE OF NEW YORK, COURT OF APPEALS, CLERK'S OFFICE. ALBANY, July 1st, 1863. } DEAR SIR:-Be pleased to present my sincere thanks to the officers of "the Society of Tammany, or Columbian Order," for their kind and cordial invitation, to meet with them and participate in the festivities of the coming anniversary of our National Independence. Descended from an ancestry, who zealously, but feebly, aided in its attainment, I should prove a reckless son were I to hesitate to unite with the patriotic sons of "old Tammany," in commemorating the glorious results of the efforts of our fathers. I shall be proud to be with you on this interesting occasion, if the duties, incident to the situation, in which your kind partiality has placed me, will permit, and am truly and sincerely the Committee's humble servant. F. A. TALLMADGE. HON. J. S. BOSWORTH, JUSTICE OF SUPERIOR COURT. HON. ELIJAH F. PURDY, Grand Sachem of the Society of Tammany. DEAR SIR-It will give me pleasure to unite with the Society of Tammany in celebrating the next anniversary of our National Independence, if it is practicable for me to be in the city, I must go into the country on Monday |