Monday, May 22, 2023

Littleton Waller Tazewell* to Senator Robert M. T. Hunter, August 18, 1850

NORFOLK, [VA.], August 18th, 1850.

MY DEAR SIR: Upon receipt of your kind letter of the 10th Inst[ant], I immediately commenced such a reply to it as I thought you wished to have and I myself best approved. I soon discovered, however, that my inclination had imposed upon me a task surpassing my physical ability to perform; and I was so constrained to desist. The attempt has been renewed several times since, with no better success. Age has so dimed my sight and stiffened my fingers, that I now write with much difficulty and generally with some pain.

Hence, nothing but absolute necessity induces me ever to touch a pen. But in the pleasing hope, that by complying with your request I might give you some proof of my continued respect, esteem and confidence, and feebly disburthen my own mind of the sad forebodings that sometimes oppress it, I forgot the infirmities of age and commenced such a letter as I have described. I wrote con amore, but I had not proceeded far, when I was obliged to acknowledge to myself, that altho’ the spirit was still willing the flesh was no longer able to aid it; and with some mortification, I reluctantly abandoned a subject, which, in my mode of treating it, threatened to expand into a volume.

I was a little consoled under this compulsory abandonment of my first design, by reading in our newspapers, that while I had been writing most of the subjects I was discussing were no longer open questions (as the lawyers say) but had passed into res judicatae, so far at least as the body of which you are a member is concerned. Mr. Clay's Compromise Bill had been rejected as a whole, altho' many of the parts of which this whole was compounded had been approved by the Senate. The votes by which these results had been brought about, show so clearly the motive power that had produced them, as to leave no doubt upon the mind of any, I suppose, that what remains will meet with like approbation. Therefore, to continue the discussion of questions already decided, and so decided too, would be a labour painful to myself and quite profitless to you. I will not deny myself the pleasure of saying to you, however, that I concur with you entirely in every opinion you have expressed and in every vote you have given in regard to any and all of the several subjects involved in the so called Compromise Bill, so far as these votes and opinions are known to me. In saying this, I believe I express the sentiments of a very great majority of the Citizens of Virginia. But, my friend, while you and your Colleague may both rest assured that the course you have pursued meets the cordial approbation of a very large proportion of the people of Virginia at present, neither of you should flatter yourselves with the hope that these opinions will be permanent here.

Throughout the U[nited] S[tates] patent causes have been silently operating for some time past to produce a radical change in their Government; and the future action of these causes must be greatly aided and facilitated by the measures recently adopted by the Senate. It was my purpose, at first, to enumerate these causes, to trace them to their sources and to show to what results they must inevitably lead, even if not designed to produce such effects. But, as I have said, I am no longer able to perform such a task. I can give you only a birds-eye view of the principles the Senate has asserted, in some of their votes, of the practices they have established to serve as precedents for themselves and their successors hereafter, of the influence these precedents must have upon the destiny of the U[nited] S[tates] both abroad and at home, and of the cause that has effected all this mischief. I am not able to complete the picture, but must leave it to you to fill up the outline.

By the admission of California into the Union, under the circumstances existing when she presented herself, the Senate have decided that the unknown dwellers and sojourners in a territory recently conquered, while they are still subject to the strict discipline of a military rule, may, without even asking the permission of their Conquerors, put off this rule, erect themselves into a sovereign state, appropriate to their own use such part of the conquered territory as they please, and govern it thereafter as they think proper. That for such acts of mutinous insurrection and open rebellion against the legitimate authority of their conquerors, instead of meeting the censure and punishment which existing laws denounce, they shall be rewarded. Provided they will take care to insert as a condition in their Organic law, that none of the slaves belonging to the citizens of one half of the states of the Union shall ever be introduced within the limits they have chosen.

By the purchase of a large portion of the territory admitted to belong to Texas, which purchase the Senate have authorized to be made, they have asserted the doctrine that it is competent to the Federal Government to buy up the whole or any part it may wish to acquire of one of the Confederated States of the Union.

By the proposed annexation of the territory to be bought from Texas to a portion of the conquered country of New Mexico, the narrow limits of the latter will be expanded into a territory of a respectable size, many of the free citizens of Texas will be degraded into territorial subjects of the Government of the U[nited] S[tates]; and when to escape from this state of vassalage, they shall hereafter ask to be admitted into the union like California, you may rely upon it, that this boon will be refused, unless like California they will exclude all Southern Slaves from their limits, by their Organic law.

The Statesman must be deficient in political sagacity, I think, who does not foresee that all the nations holding territories adjacent to the U[nited] S[tates] must feel anxiety for the safety of their dominions, when such principles if not openly avowed are acted upon systematically by the Government of the U[nited] S[tates]; and that the portion of the great family of civilized nations can regard with indifference the effects of these new doctrines interpolated into the public law.

Of their effects upon the slave holding states of the Union, I have neither space enough left to express more than a brief remark. These states have long accustomed themselves to regard the Senate of the U[nited] S[tates] as the only body upon which any reliance could be placed for the conservation of their political rights and interests. They will now see, I suppose, that this was mere delusion; that these rights and interests have been wantonly sacrificed by members of that body in whom they had good reason to repose confidence; and like the dying Caesar, struck down at the foot of Pompey's statute by the daggers of pretended friends, they may well cry out et tu quoque Brute. It is neither necessary or proper for me to say any thing now as to the course which, I think, they ought and will adopt under present circumstances. The measures which the Senate have recommended and sanctioned by their votes have not yet received the assent of the other Departments of the Government; and altho' to indulge the anticipation of any different result in these quarters may be hoping against hope, yet while a single chance remains, however remote it may be, prudence would seem to indicate that the slave holding States should abstain from any hypothetical declaration of their purpose. Whatever that purpose may be, I am sure it will not be influenced by any craven fears, and so far as Virginia is concerned, I hope it will be worthy of her character. For my own part, whatever that purpose may be I will abide by it. I have often invoked my God to witness the solemn pledge I willingly gave to be "faithful and true" to her; and when I forget the sacred obligation of this vow of allegiance, may that God forget me.

Accept this long letter, (which I have written with difficulty) as a testimonial of the high consideration in which I hold you, I commit it to your discretion, to be used as you please, provided always that it shall not reach the newspapers. Altho' I have no care to conceal any thing that I have ever thought said or done in my whole life, yet I have ever felt a morbid horror at becoming a subject of notoriety.

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* One of the early followers of John C. Calhoun; representative in Congress from Virginia, 1800-1801; Senator in Congress from Virginia, 1824-1832; governor of Virginia, 1834-1836.

SOURCE: Charles Henry Ambler, Editor, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1916, in Two Volumes, Vol. II, Correspondence of Robert M. T. Hunter (1826-1876), p. 115-8

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