I have been, for eighteen months, collecting materials for a history of your administration, and, after you retire, shall be very glad to receive from you any documents which will shed light upon it, unknown to the public. I consider that it will constitute a bright epoch in our national annals, not surpassed, if equalled, by any of its predecessors. My motive is one of grateful recollections, and partly selfish, wishing to identify my own name with the history of this brilliant period of our country’s progress and glory, so far as an humble historian can thus be identified with the events he records.

Every day confirms me in the regret, that you were committed to decline a second election. You would have been re-elected with certainty, and the good old democratic party preserved intact.

While I do not permit myself to indulge in any attacks on General Cass, I support General Taylor, and think him more to be relied on as the guardian of the equal rights of the North, and of all the states, than either of his competitors. His stability and firmness of character will always render him invulnerable to any sectional or anti-republican tendencies. I am grateful to General Cass for supporting the war measures of the administration, but am rather more grateful to General Taylor for fighting the battles which necessarily add to the lustre of the administration. Besides, I know the temporarising instability of the one, especially on the questions connected with slavery, and equally well know the unchangeable principles of the other in regard to these questions. I support General Taylor on republican grounds, and have no apprehensions of his departure from the policy of Mr. Jefferson. Some of the democratic leaders have, I think, committed a great mistake in letting General Taylor, even partially, become identified with the other party. In this I may prove myself to be mistaken. If I do, I shall retrace my steps, and be as ready to atone for the error as any friend could desire.

A good deal is said here about my removal from office. It has given me no uneasiness. In the first place, as you are not specially and personally interested in the election, and would have nothing to gain by any removals not demanded by the public interest, and must desire to terminate your presidency in peace and tranquillity, I have not supposed that you would act in the premises merely to gratify a gentleman to whom, certainly, I am, in no sense, indebted for my appointment. In the next place, I have thought that if a removal were to be made, you would let General Cass himself, if elected, take the responsibility. And, in the third place, I have known, that on the least intimation from you, I stood and still am ready to resign, and to spare you the pain, which I am sure you will feel, if making the removal.

Your namesake, “the last of our Mohicans,” is remarkably well, and is an improvement on all his predecessors. He is three years old, and looks like a statesman!

With our highest regards to Mrs. Polk, . . . .