New York, March 8, 1860.
Friend Pike: I
have bet you $20 on Douglas against the field. So far good. Now you say Seward
will be our man. Well, I offer you $20 on that. I name my man for Charleston
and back him against the field. You name your man for Chicago, and don't back
him against the field, as I proposed. Very good. It seems that I have more
confidence in my jud[g]ment than you have in yours; so we will stand there on
the original $20 on Douglas, which I trust you will win; only, if Douglas has
no chance, you and Harvey should “poor pussy” him, not abuse him.
F. is one of the poorest and most debauched of the drunken
sailors that floated ashore from the wreck of Know-Nothingism. He is, of
course, the very man for a printer to Congress. No honest man could get it, for
none of that stamp could lie enough. Hence Follett's failure in '56, and
Defrees's now. Both these are honest men.
But Gurley's bill to establish a Government Printing-Office
is worse even than Ford or Bowman or Wendell — worse than all three together.
It is to establish a national hospital for broken-down editors and printers,
the jackals of the Camerons, and Bankses and Brights and Gwinns of all time. It
will be more expensive and more nauseous than any thing we have yet known.
Every drunken printer and ex-editor who won't work, and can't earn a living if
he would, will be billeted on the public Treasury, and jobs will be invented to
keep up a semblance of work for them — and very little work will do them. Just
see.
I hope F. will cheat the crowd out of every dollar. If he
will do this with the impudence of a highwayman, I'll go in for giving him
another as good thing somewhere. Genius should be encouraged.
Yours,
H. G.
J. S. P.
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. 502
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