Washington, March 4, 1861.
MY Dear Major,
— I have just come from the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, and in a day or two
more I expect to be relieved from my duties as Secretary of the Treasury and
return to my family, after my short, but laborious and responsible, term of
official service. I shall send you, by the same mail which takes this note, an
answer to a call made upon me by the House of Representatives for information
in regard to certain transactions in the extreme Southern States. It discloses
demoralization in all that concerns the faithful discharge of official duty
which, if it had pleased God, I could have wished never to have lived to see.
The cowardice and treachery of General Twiggs is more disheartening than all
that has transpired since this disgraceful career of disloyalty to the
government commenced. No man can help feeling that he is himself stained in
reputation by this national degradation. I can hardly realize that I am living
in the age in which I was born and educated.
In the midst of these evidences of degeneracy — in the face
of the humiliating spectacle of base intrigues to overthrow the government by
those who are living upon its bounty, and of a pusillanimous or perfidious
surrender of the trusts confided to them — the country turns with a feeling of
relief, which you cannot understand, to the noble example of fidelity and
courage presented by you and your gallant associates. God knows how ardently I
wish you a safe deliverance! But let the issue be what it may, you will connect
with your name the fame of historical recollections, with which life itself can
enter into no comparison. One of the most grateful of my remembrances will be
that I was once your commanding officer.
I write in haste, but from the heart, and can only add, may
God preserve you and carry you in triumph through the perils of your position!
I have never doubted, if you were assailed, that the honor of the country would
be gloriously vindicated, and the disgrace cast upon it by others would be
signally rebuked by your courage and constancy.
I am, my dear Major,
faithfully your friend,
John A. Dix.
Major Robt. Anderson.
P.S. — It is gratifiying to know that your State remains
faithful to the Union.
My kind regards to Lieutenant Hall.
SOURCE: Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John Adams Dix,
Volume 2, p. 7-8
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