Washington, January 31, 1860.
My Dear Pike:
I am rejoiced to hear you talk so sensibly. I am for Pitt, and hope our State
will be for him in good faith, and secure his nomination. But if, after all,
this cannot be done, I am for Seward. No indiscriminate admirer of the governor,
I cannot forget how much he has done for the great cause, how brave and logical
hare been his words, nor the trials and struggles of the last eight years in
this Golgotha. May Maine be firmly and honestly for Fessenden; but let her not
be used to defeat not alone her noble son, but every genuine Republican.
I have no doubt that you are entirely right in your
apprehensions that there is a deep, widely extended, and formidable movement to
nominate Bates, or some one like him, and to this fact, in my honest opinion,
is it due that John Sherman was not elected Speaker weeks ago. The effect of
electing our first and only candidate, and a Helper signer, after all the
clamor made on that subject, was seen, and it was also surmised what would be
the argument if, driven from a straight Republican nominee, a non-Helper,
non-representative candidate should be chosen. Hence sundry diversions from
Sherman to South Americans, hinting to the Democrats to hold on and our line
would break soon. Hence the movements of at least one Bates man, who professes
strong Republicanism, of whom I may speak hereafter. Sherman permitted the
campaign to be directed in the main by these men, and was persuaded by them to
favor the diversions I have referred to, or some of them, and to make what I
regard as unfortunate speeches. There is not, that I know of, a single
correspondent here who has understood the ground we were travelling, or who, if
he understood it, has not been laboring in the interest of the “opposition”
party rather than of the Republican party.
With our “Peck” of troubles in Maine, and anybody for the
Republican nominee who is not a live and true Republican, we shall have a
campaign such as I hope not to be obliged to labor in, and which would not
promise the most happy results.
Put us on the defensive, set us to explaining and
apologizing, give us a candidate of whom we only know that he is an old line
Whig and never a Republican, and the canvass will be the hardest we ever had.
When are you coming on?
Yours truly,
I. Washburn, Jr.
J. 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. 482-3
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