Thomas Ritchie to Howell Cobb, February 8, 1844

Richmond [va.], February 8th, 1844.

Dear Sir: Your polite but laconic note prompts me to address you. You cheer me with the history you give me, and as your information preceded our late glorious convention I am in hopes the skies are brighter than when you wrote me. I will thank you for any information you may be able to impart to me on this subject. I take a very deep interest in the success of the Republican candidate and in the defeat of Mr. Clay. I consider his election is calculated to ring the knell of most of our great Republican principles.

A reunion has taken place between the friends of Calhoun and Van Buren in Virginia. Our late State convention has happily brought it about. Am I too sanguine in hoping that the moral effects of our example will extend to Georgia? I received a letter from Governor McDonald the other day in which he says that the Republicans are about to make a great rally in that State at the convention they are about to hold in June or July. Is it not possible to rouse up the Republicans of Georgia immediately and to unite them together more firmly and energetically in the way we have done? Could not you and your colleagues address your friends there and call upon them to put forth their strength directly? I hope to see the press of Georgia and of N. Carolina and of Tennessee come out without delay trumpet-tongued.

I beg you to communicate as soon as is convenient what is going on among our friends.

Mr. Cobb,¹ first in the H. of R. and then in the U. S. Senate, and the particular friend of Mr. Crawford,² was my correspondent from Washington to the day of his death. Are you related to that estimable man and esteemed statesman?

The enclosed memorandum has been put into my hands and I must ask you to assist me in answering it. My impression is that I have seen a letter from Mr. Crawford, changing his views of the Bank of the U. States. Be so good as to drop me a line upon it and enclose me a copy of Mr. Crawford's letter if you have such a one at your disposition, or write me where I am to obtain the information.

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* Thomas Ritchie was the veteran editor of the Richmond Enquirer, and afterwards of the Washington Union.

¹ Howell Cobb, Congressman from Georgia, 1807-1812, uncle of the Howell Cobb to whom this letter was addressed.

² William H. Crawford, Senator from Georgia, 1807-1813; United States minister to France, 1813-1815; Secretary of the Treasury, 1816-1825; presidential candidate, 1824-1825.

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. 55-6