Washington City, Dec. 8, 1860.
My Dear Sir: A
sense of duty to the State of Georgia requires me to take a step which makes it
proper that I should no longer continue to be a member of your Cabinet.
In the troubles of the country consequent upon the late
Presidential election, the honor and safety of my State are involved. Her people
so regard it, and in their opinion I fully concur. They are engaged in a
struggle where the issue is life or death. My friends ask for my views and
counsel. Not to respond would be degrading to myself and unjust to them. I have
accordingly prepared, and must now issue to them, an address which contains the
calm and solemn convictions of my heart and judgment.
The views which I sincerely entertain, and which therefore I
am bound to express differ in some respects from your own. The existence of
this difference would expose me, if I should remain in my present place, to
unjust suspicions, and put you in a false position. The first of these
consequences I could bear well enough, but I will not subject you to the last.
My withdrawal has not been occasioned by anything you have
said or done. Whilst differing from your Message upon some of its theoretical
doctrines, as well as from the hope so earnestly expressed that the Union can
yet be preserved, there was no practical result likely to follow which required
me to retire from your Administration. That necessity is created by what I feel
it my duty to do; and the responsibility of the act, therefore, rests alone
upon myself.
To say that I regret — deeply regret — this necessity, but
feebly expresses the feeling with which I pen this communication. For nearly
four years I have been associated with you as one of your Cabinet officers, and
during that period nothing has occurred to mar, even for a moment, our personal
and official relations. In the policy and measures of your Administration I
have cordially concurred, and shall ever feel proud of the humble place which
my name may occupy in its history. If your wise counsels and patriotic warnings
had been heeded by your countrymen, the fourth of March next would have found
our country happy, prosperous, and united. That it will not be so, is no fault
of yours.
The evil has now passed beyond control, and must be met by
each and all of us under our responsibility to God and our country. If, as I
believe, history will have to record yours as the last administration of our
present Union, it will also place it side by side with the purest and ablest of
those that preceded it.
With the kindest regards for yourself and the members of
your Cabinet, with whom I have been so pleasantly associated.
I am most truly
and sincerely, your friend,
HOWELL COBB.
To the PRESIDENT.
_______________
* From the Constitution, Washington, D. C, Dec. 12,
1860.
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.
517-8; “The
Resignation Of Secretary Cobb. The Correspondence,”
The New York Times, New York,
New York, December 14, 1860.
No comments:
Post a Comment