Friday, December 21, 2018

Henry R. Jackson* to Howell Cobb, June 21, 1848

Savannah [ga.], 21st June, 1848.

My Dear Cousin, Since the reception of your last letter I have been so constantly occupied with some vexatious law business which has kept me on the run in Savannah and taken me up into the country, that I have actually been unable to find the letter to reply to it. I have not said so much in opposition to the Calhoun clique as was my disposition, because I did not think it altogether a prudent course. With reference to those papers of the Dem. party in Georgia that had advocated the Florida and Alabama resolution, I have not sought a collision, either with the Constitutionalist or the Telegraph, because I thought the probabilities strong that both of these papers, if let alone, would eventually come out warmly for Cass, should he be the nominee of the Convention. I did not think that angry collision would operate beneficially for the party. Therefore I contented myself with simply expressing my own views fully and firmly. As events have proved, both the Constitutionalist and Telegraph are out for Cass, and are consequently thrown into opposition themselves to the Calhoun, Yancey and Charleston Mercury clique. I think it better that this should be so than that they should have been excited into animosity by a general onslaught upon them on the part of the other presses of the State.

But in the name of all that is rational, what induced the Georgia delegates in the national convention to vote for that resolution of Yancey's1 After having voted for the nomination of Cass, how could they vote for the resolution (a pack of nonsense in itself) with the interpretation put upon it by Yancey himself? Did they not perceive that it would operate prejudicially to us in Georgia? And how could they at any rate vote for such outrageous nonsense?

My views always have coincided with yours upon this subject. I am as clear as daylight in my ideas upon it. Gen. Cass is right throughout. He has suggested the only ground upon which a Southern man can stand, and I am convinced that reflection will bring all Southern Democrats (not disposed to quit the party at any rate) to his zealous support . . .
_______________

* A lawyer, editor, and Democratic politician of Savannah, Ga., judge of the superior court of Georgia (eastern circuit), 1849-1853, brigadier-general in the Confederate army.

1 Yancey had offered the following as an amendment to the report of the committee on resolutions at the Baltimore convention: “Resolved, That the doctrine of non-interference with the rights of property of any portion of this confederation, be it In the States or in the Territories, by any other than the parties interested In them. is the true republican doctrine recognized by this body.” This resolution was defeated, 246 to 38.

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. 110-1

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