TYRONE, Friday
Night, Jan. 4, 1861.
DEAR COLONEL: Your
Christmas letter came duly to hand, and I beg to make you my acknowledgements
for it, although it added fuel to the flame of the sad thoughts and feelings
with which I am now constantly oppressed.
First of all, I
thought of your little circle at Lancaster and felt provoked that instead of
being absorbed in the enjoyment of their society you should have no better
occupation on that day than in writing to me.
Then the already
almost realized certainty that we shall lose you, for I feel as confident as I
possibly can of any event not yet transpired, than an ordinance of secession
will be rushed through the convention with breathless haste. The tone of the
Louisiana Democrat ever since the presidential election has
satisfied me of that — its last issue confirms it. Less than four weeks ago I
proclaimed from the steps of the post-office, to an unusually large crowd
awaiting the opening of the mail, that “I stood by the Union, that secession
was treason, and no man in the crowd opened his mouth affirmatively or
negatively, although I saw men there — lifelong Democrats, too — who, I knew,
felt and thought as I did about it. A few days afterward a man who was in that
crowd, and whose breath smells of whatever Governor Moore chews, told me that
he was opposed to sending men of extreme views either way to the convention on
Dec. 26. The same man said in my presence in Alexandria that he would not vote
for any man for the convention who would not pledge himself beforehand to put
the state out of the Union before the 4th of March.
And what men are we
to vote for to that convention! So far as the talent and ability requisite for
the occasion are concerned I look upon both tickets as sphinxs, having a common
head. I shall vote for the courthouse sphinx, because that was made publicly in
open day, by the people, where everybody had a chance to take a part whilst the
dark lantern sphinx was made nobody knows by whom, nobody knows where, but
popped on to the Democratic stage by Locofoco jugglery.
The course you have
marked out for yourself I had anticipated. There is none other left for you. In
the event of the convention passing an ordinance of abrupt secession, I do not
see that there will be the slightest obligation on (you), or propriety in your
allowing time for a successor. Where is he to come from at this time except
temporarily out of the present Academic Board? Some of our friends will be apt
to think that they have accomplished more than they ever contemplated, and may
come, possibly, to the conclusion that there are more things between heaven and
earth than were ever dreamt of in their philosophy.
Having no papers or
letters by yesterday's mail, I am very much in a mist in regard to Bob
Anderson's situation (in Fort Sumter). I have heard that Mr. Floyd has resigned
because he was not allowed to reinforce him. Am looking with intense anxiety
for the mail of to-morrow night. I really think that Mr. Van Buren would have
made longer strides after Gen. Jackson than poor old Buck.
I have been greatly
engrossed during the Holy Days (?). The overseer for "Forked-Deer"1
has only now arrived, having been to Mississippi for his wife, and I have no
overseer at Tyrone yet, though almost hourly pestered with applications — so
that I have the cares and troubles of both plantations on my hands, for it will
take several days yet to get rid of "Forked-deer.” Onze Heurs, et mes yeux beaucoup fatigues.
To-morrow I must
work to get all the votes I can for the courthouse sphinx. . .
_______________
1 One of General Graham's plantations. – ED
SOURCE: Walter
L. Fleming, General W.T. Sherman as College President, p. 326-8
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