Washington [ga.], Jany. 24th,
1845.
Dear Stephens, . . . I can hear nothing of local politics.
There is a dead calm. The report of the Finance Committee is doing us much
good. It has struck the Locos dumb. Crawford's administration has certainly
been eminently successfull and has made him very popular. If we can get him to
run again we can carry the State and retrieve our fortunes in Georgia. The
course of the Democracy in Congress on Texas and the tariff is doing them mischief
in this State, and if our local press would handle those questions now in the
present calm of the public mind much could be made out of them; but very few of
our papers are worth a straw. As soon as I get able I shall open upon them in
several of the papers. Now is the proper time to affect the public mind. I did
not see how you voted on that Rail Road iron question. That duty ought to be
repealed or greatly reduced. It should be a low revenue duty only. 1st.
Because it is greatly to the interest of the country to encourage internal
improvements and thereby cheapen internal transportation which benefits all
classes and especially the agricultural classes. 2ondly. R. R. iron not being
an article of general consumption, competition is not likely to become sufficient
within a reasonable time to cheapen the article and compensate for the duty.
Hence the duty will continue to be a bounty to the manufacturer, and under that
state of facts no article ought to be protected. I am able only to
suggest my objections and not enforce them. The most foolish thing Mr. Clay did
during the campaign was to write that foolish letter to Pennsylvania pledging
his opposition to any modification of the tariff of 1842. It is a good law but
it is not perfect; nor did human ingenuity ever make a perfect revenue law. It
never will. His letter to Bronson and his N. Carolina speech contained the true
doctrine on the tariff. I am unwilling to go an inch further. I care not a fig
for the clamors of that American Beotia (Pennsylvania). If the whole duty on R.
R. iron was repealed her agonies would give me no pain. Annexation by Congress
gives me considerable trouble. I am in great doubt about it. The words of the
Constitution ex vi termini are sufficient to embrace the case, and I am
clear from the action of the Convention that the Convention did not intend to
limit the power to the admission of States from the then territory of the
United States. I think the Convention were then looking to the acquisition of
Louisiana. It was absolutely necessary to our western States. I am therefore
clear in the opinion, nothwithstanding Mr. Jefferson's opinion to the contrary,
that the acquisition of Louisiana by treaty and then its admission was
perfectly constitutional; but I am not clear that it would have been
constitutional without such previous acquisition by treaty. But from the best
reflection I can give it, it being a question of doubt, I would decide it in
favour of the popular will and, I therefore honestly believe, the public safety
and the safety of the Union, and go for Foster's plan. Benton's division of the
territory will not answer. I would yield nothing upon [the] slavery question
below 36½ degrees latitude — and I don't like that. Congress has no right to
interfere with the social relations of the inhabitants of any State. And
the Missouri Compromise was all wrong and could only be defended because it practically
yielded nothing.
SOURCE: Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, Editor, The Annual Report of
the American Historical Association for the Year 1911, Volume 2: The
Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb, p.
60-2
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