Friday, October 6, 2017

Senator Salmon P. Chase to Charles Sumner, November 18, 1850

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. ChaseAnnual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1902, Vol. 2, p. 223

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