ALBEMARLE, [Va.], July 2d, 1850.
MY DEAR SIR: I rec[eive]d your letter accompanied by the Prospectus of the "Southern Press" and a number of the Papers. I enclose you $10 as a subscription of the tri-weekly paper. I have no doubt it will greatly subserve the Interests of the South. I thank you for your complimentary notice of my share in the Nashville Convention, and am happy to think that it will, in your opinion, make a profound impression. Confusion must be worst confounded by the usurpation of New Mexico, and the evident interference of our Slave-holding President, and yet I can perceive no real Difference between the Case of California and New Mexico. These events must hasten the Catastrophe to the South, the admission of these territories as states and the rejection of 36 30 Degrees as a Dividing line fills our Cup of humiliation to the brim. In the "argument not yet exhausted? when shall we stand to our Army?" Will neither legislative or Executive De[s]potism arouse us? Will not both combined? I cannot look on these events, in any aspect, but a designed insult and indignity to the whole Slave holding States. For one I am not willing to bear it. I am ready for resistance whenever the insult is consumated by Congress. So I hope will the whole South. The Nashville Convention is to reassemble in six weeks after the adjournment of Congress.
If anything is done by Congress, inconsistent with the rights and honor of the south, would it not be well for the Southern Senators and representatives to address their states and constituents on the occasion? It would have a powerful effect on the states and on the Convention. Unanimity is not to be expected, the pure and bold public men must lead, and I doubt not any course recommended by them, or a majority of them would be our guide. The more decided the better for me, for I think this protracted insult of Congress and the Executive, on refusing our clear constitutional rights, provocation enough to justify the strongest measures; and unless they are acknowledged during the Session I hope decisive resistance may be made. I have been contemplating in my solitude, how to work out the problem. I should follow our revolutionary example, that of Virginia. I would take our present Federal Constitution for the Southern States and put it into operation, as soon as a sufficient number of States would secede, this would simplyfy matters, would pervent confusion, as the officers of our Southern Republic, would at once understand their duties, our Sub Treasures, are all ready, we should only shake off the northern states, as we did the King of England, (for they have oppressed us far more than our Old Mother England ever did) and have our government in full and immediate Vigor without the Delay of Forming a New Constitution, which, however we might do at our leisure. This mode recommends itself, by the example of the illustrious ancestor of your Colleague, who formed our Virginia Constitution. Present to him my best respects.1
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* An early advocate
of secession; represented Virginia in Congress, 1830-1835.
1 This reference is doubtless to Senator J. M.
Mason of Virginia and to George Mason, author of Virginia's Bill of Rights.
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. 113-4
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