Clarksville, Geo., February 2nd, 1844.
My Dear Sir: I
hope you are not too deeply engaged with the affairs of this great republic to
pass idly by a letter from one of your constituents in the true sense of the
word. I am a native Georgian and true American citizen, and feel a deep and
abiding interest in the perpetuity of our institutions, and I feel that I
hazard nothing when I say that the continual agitation of the abolition
question will blow into fragments, aye into dust that cannot be seen, our
glorious Union which cost the blood of the best set of men that ever lived or
died. It is not the South that alone is interested in this momentous question.
The same torch (lit by the abolitionists of the North) that will consume our
humble cottages at the South will also cause the northeastern horizon to
coruscate with the flames of northern palaces.
Sir, it is no spirit of flattery that I say I felt proud as
a Georgian when I read your manly effort in favour of the extension of the 21st
rule. For myself, if I was in Congress I would forestall the agitation of the
question, if the Members of Congress from the non-slaveholding States will
force discussion upon that question. The true course, in my humble opinion, for
the Southern Members to pursue would be to shake the dust of the Capitol from
their feet and return to the bosom of their families. Come back to us, and we
will take such measures as will best defend us from their incendiary
proceedings and will convince the sticklers for the right of petition that
there is another appeal when life, liberty and property are at stake.
I am as ardently attached to our Union and institutions as
any man, but when our Northern brethren, forgetful of the spirit of compromise
which resulted in the formation of our Constitution, and regardless of our
rights as members of this Union, force issues upon us which were intended by
the framers of our government to be buried and closed forever, it is time that
we should hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, “enemies in war, in peace
friends.” I am opposed to any temporizing on this question; it should be met at
the threshold, at the door; the assailants should be met and never suffered to
enter the citadel till they walk over our prostrate bodies. What will it avail
us at the South for the incendiaries to cease their work after our throats are
cut and our houses burned? Sir, the negroes in Georgia are already saying to each
other that great men are trying to set them free and will succeed, and many
other expressions of similar import. And if the agitation of the subject is
continued for three months longer we will be compelled to arm our Militia and
shoot down our property in the field. If the thing is not already incurable,
tell the agitators we had rather fight them than our own negroes, and that we
will do it too. They shall not skulk behind our negro population and thus save
themselves; if fighting must be done, we will fight white folks at the North — those
who are moving heaven and earth to provoke insurrection at the South. I have
expressed myself as I feel, and it is the feeling of the whole South. Please
let me hear from you.
_______________
* John W. H. Underwood was a member of
Congress from Georgia, 1859-1861.
SOURCE: Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, Editor, The Annual
Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911, Volume 2: The
Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb, p.
54-5
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