R.

NEW YORK HOTEL, August 16, 1863.

Colonel ROBERT M. RENICK, Saint Louis:

DEAR RENICK: I embrace the first opportunity afforded me since leaving home to write to you my impressions. I arrived here after a week's journey, having stopped at Chicago, Detroit, Suspension Bridge, and Albany. On yesterday I again went up to Albany to see Governor Seymour and just returned. I endeavor to gather my ideas and impressions in order to make system out of a chaos of views and notions, as they more or less guide the mind from apparent reason to downright inconsistencies, and vice versa.

I spent a day with Storey, at Chicago, and what he failed to say when at Saint Louis he told me. You understand me. I still regard him as the truest and best man we have to deal with. Storey gave me a strong letter to Vallandigham, whom I met at the Clifton and with whom I spent some pleasant hours, the more so as my wife and Mrs. V. and her sister had an opportunity to become acquainted, and Pendleton and old Caldwell, from Cincinnati, arrived during the same time. Vallandigham made a good impression on mu, though I can neither understand nor appreciate his policy. This is neither an occasion nor a means to exchange a full opinion on a matter of this kind, but, to be candid, the mystery surrounding Ohio politics bewilders my simple notions of right, and, in my judgment, bodes no good. Nevertheless, incomprehensible or bewildering as the case may be, Vallandigham is the representative man for the great West, and I am reluctant to apply my partial and one-sided judgment in passing on the policy which he deems best to pursue. At least not for the present. So, for instance, the friends of V., in Ohio, it seems to a man counseled him against returning to his State at once, for reasons at once incompatible with any notion of political generalship learned by me up to this time; but, as Storey said, Ohio politics are peculiar. Let us hope that their "peculiarity" may not render them entirely unacceptable after we shall have had an opportunity to pass judgment on them. You will find below that in passing on Seymour I shall also pass on Vallandigham. The two occupy the same ground at present, the difference being only that Seymour has the power which Vallandigham endeavors to obtain.

After informing myself as fully as the short period of time allotted me afforded respecting the general feeling of the masses hereabout, I took occasion to visit Governor Seymour in company with a friend of mine from this city, who knows him well and enjoys his confidence not only, but that of the Democracy hereabout. What shall I tell you of the interview? Read the New York World and you have my conclusions for to-day. Seymour is an able man, a faithful officer, a Democrat, and of necessity a gentleman. I sincerely believe that Seymour is infinitely more radical at heart than he can be permitted to express, for he is a public officer, under responsibilities appalling to weak and ordinary men, and well calculated to test the nerve of strong men and men of balance even. He and his advisers toward saving the country, for the time being, have set up as a species of counterfeit Machiavellian wisdom what we at home in plain English would term "cowardice," in the shape of a destructive inactivity. Not being courageous enough to make history themselves they look forward for others to make it for them, and like Micawber, wait for something to turn up. This is the way it looks to an outsider at least. "Let us have the power first and then we shall know how to act. " This is their motto. As our present