Friday, October 19, 2018

Lucius Q. C . Lamar* to Congressman Howell Cobb, February 15, 1848

Covington, Ga., Feb. 15th, 1848.

Dear Sir: As I have no personal acquaintance with our immediate representative, Hon. Mr. Haralson, I hope you will excuse the liberty I have taken in addressing you this letter. I wish you to have sent to me some paper devoted exclusively to the reporting of the proceedings of Congress. I do not know whether the amount enclosed is sufficient or not. If it be too small, please have the paper sent on at once anyhow, and I will immediately make up the deficit — if too large I would be glad if you would purchase for me last year's Congressional Globe and Appendix. I would be gratified also to have the speeches of McLane of Maryland, Foote, Rhett and Bedinger, that is if they can be conveniently obtained. The truth is that the reports of the speeches in the Union are so provokingly meagre and defective that I never look at them. Your speech for instance (which I think sincerely is the best on your side of the session), as found in the Intelligencer, is most unmercifully mutilated in the Union. I should not trouble [you] with this very small matter had I any other means of ascertaining the name of the paper I wish — one that gives us your speeches accurately and in extenso.
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* Justice Lamar was at this time a young lawyer at Covington, Ga. His career In public life was as Congressman and Senator from Mississippi, colonel In the Confederate army. Secretary of the. Interior under President Cleveland, and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

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. 96-7

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