Cincinnati, Nov. 18, I850.
My Dear Sumner: Thanks
for your note, and your excellent speech. The intelligence from Massachusetts
is glorious. God grant that the friends of freedom may act wisely,
harmoniously, and successfully, this winter, in Massachusetts and in Ohio! If
they do our Free Democratic Representation in the Senate will be doubled. How
it will rejoice my heart to welcome a Sumner or an Adams or a Phillips to the
Senate from Massachusetts — especially a Sumner. And how glad would the Senator
from Massachusetts be to meet a Giddings, a Tilden,1 or one of like
spirits and political connexions from the Empire State of the Ordinances.
Nothing will [prevent] but such mismanagement as may throw the Hunkers of the
two old Parties into alliance. In Massachusetts, perhaps, they are better
prepared for that than in Ohio. I regretted to see the name of Caleb Gushing among
the returned to the Legislature. I, with you, fear mischief from him. He has
forgotten his zeal of 1841 in favor of the Northern Institution of Freedom.
The Union meeting
here was a miserable failure. No men of high character and general influence
partook in it. The People are against the [illegible] Measures of
Congress. The fugitives defend themselves. One a few days ago, some forty miles
from this, shot his pursuer dead. Another would have dealt a like fate to his
but for the interposition of handcuffs or some hard material in the pocket.
There is no peace except in the denationalization of slavery.
Ever yours,
[SALMON P. CHASE.]
* * * [A postscript
of one line torn in the MS.]
_______________
1 D. R. Tilden, of Ohio.
SOURCE: Diary
and correspondence of Salmon P. Chase, Annual Report of the
American Historical Association for the Year 1902, Vol. 2, p.
223
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