13 Feb., 1865.
hon. Louis T. Wigfall,
Richmond, Va.
Dear Sir:
I am here sick — laid up on the way — was taken quite unwell
night before last, but am better now and hope to be able to go on tomorrow. I
am about thirteen miles from Charlotte on the road to Columbia. I drop you a
line in fulfilment of my promise to write to you merely to say that I find
spirit and vitality enough in the mass of the people as far as I have met with
them on my way here. All that is wanting is the proper wisdom and statesmanship
to guide it. But our ultimate success, in my deliberate judgment, will never be
attained, never can be, without a speedy and thorough change of our
policy towards the masses at the North. We must show that we war against the
doctrines and principles and power of the radicals there — the fanatics,
the abolitionists and consolidationists — which we should do, and say anything
in our power in a manly way to enlist the sympathy and action of all the true
friends there of Constitutional liberty. We should show them we are
fighting their battles as well as our own. If we go down; if our liberties are
lost in these waters, theirs will be too. We must make them allies in a common
struggle. We must not be deterred from this by any such ghosts as the
goblin of reconstruction. On this point the future must be left to take care of
itself. Congress ought to pass, before it adjourns, some such resolutions as
the three first that were reported to the House by the Committee on Foreign
Affairs. Numbers 1, 2, and 3 of those Resolutions are now quite as opportune as
they were when reported. For the remaining Resolution in that series one might
be substituted embracing some of the ideas in them and appealing from
the authorities at Washington to all friends of Constitutional liberty at the
North—invoking an adjournment of the questions of strife from the arbitrament
of arms to the forum of reason—upon the great principles of self Government, on
which all American institutions are founded. On this line if our people can
endure for two years longer — all may yet be well. But my word for it, the only
peace that the sword alone will bring us in fighting the United North will be
the peace of death and subjugation.
Yours truly,
alexander H.stephens.
SOURCE: Louise Wigfall Wright, A Southern Girl in
’61, p. 224-5
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