Burlington, Iowa, December 16, 1860.
James Pike: I am
fructified in spirit to see “J. S. P.” again at the foot of a Washington
letter. How are you, and where have you been? I should have written to you a
long time ago, but I have been busy all the season “crying in the wilderness,”
and to some purpose, too, for we have done a large business in Iowa as well as
in the “inductive” State of Maine.
Being at a safe distance from South Carolina and Georgia, I
look on very calmly. Several gentlemen are to be killed before my turn comes.
Oh for an hour of Old Hickory or Old Zach! Are we to have turbulent times? I do
not exactly see the end, for I am ignorant what the new Administration is to
be. Let Abraham put in Corwin for Secretary of Treasury; Pennington, Secretary
of the Interior ; and Colfax, Postmaster-General, and we shall have a lovely
time. That committee, with C. for chairman, will have an illustrious labor and parturiate
a generation of mice.
Give me a letter occasionally, with a history of the
green-room rehearsals and other items.
Who is to be senator from Maine?
Very truly, your
friend,
Fitz-henry Warren.
James S. Pike,
Esq.
SOURCE: James Shepherd Pike, First Blows of the
Civil War: The Ten Years of Preliminary Conflict in the United States from 1850
to 1860, p. 526
