Sunday, June 8, 2014

Thomas Ritchie to Congressman Howell Cobb.

Private.
Richmond [va.] — Monday evening [May 6, 1844].

My Dear Sir: I am deeply sensible of the kindness you have shown me and the confidence you have reposed in me by your candid and manly letter. It is worthy of the character which I have heard ascribed to you by those who personally know you.

For 40 years (on Thursday next) have I been the Editor of a paper — and never have I seen the Republican party in so much danger. We are breaking up into factions. The great Dictator marching on to power with a strong and invincible party at his heels whilst we are divided by miserable contests and contemptible jealousies.

You ask me to interpose my good offices between the contending presses at Washington. I might as well attempt to stop the Ocean with a bullrush. The Globe now will hearken to no good counsels. An arrogant spirit presides over it at the very moment that it should most conciliate and bind us together. And again my able and noble friend, Dromgoole,1 whose only fault in the world is on some occasions a dogged tenax propositi, is rushing before the public, instead of treating me like his real friend, and I trust in God, if not as able at least as pure and disinterested a politician as himself, by remonstrating with me privately, if he thought I had done wrong, and seeking by arguments to which I am never deaf, to bring me right. But, sir, Dromgoole is groping in the dark. He does not know the sentiment of Virginia. She will demand the annexation of Texas if it can be obtained. But he does not know the condition of things in relation to the presidential slate. Dromgoole and a hundred Globes cannot stop the current of public sentiment in the South. I send you confidentially a letter I received to-day from a Republican.

He is a lawyer in Petersburg. Don't show it but return it to me. I recd. 5 others of a similar character yesterday from different parts of the State.

I have this moment received the proceedings of the Democrats of this county (Henrico) assembled today at their Court House. The oldest, staunchest Republicans unanimously voted for relieving W. H. Roane and his colleagues of the Baltimore convention, from their instructions to vote for V. B.2 and leaving them to their sound discretion. You know the character of W. H. Roane (former U. S. Senator and the devoted friend of Mr. V. B.). It was he not I, who passed the last Resolution which the Globe and Dromgoole attack. The meeting of Henrico to-day was about at one time, I understand, to instruct the Baltimore delegates to vote for no man who was not for Texas. As it was, they expressed their earnest desire for their Baltimore delegates to procure the nomination of a Democrat friendly to the immediate annexation of Texas.

I spoke very freely to Mr. Stiles, about what I thought was the duty of our friends in Congress, for no member, unless he be a delegate to the B. convention, to have anything to say to the presidential election and for them only to collect information about the candidates and await the public sentiment.

Do write me now and then. Inform me what is going forward.

[P. S.] Do cultivate the acquaintance of my friend, Gen. Bayley, the new member.
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1 George C. Dromgoole, congressman from Virginia, 1835-1837, 1845-1847.

2 Van Buren.

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. 56-7

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