SHERWOOD FOREST, Dec. 14, 1860.
MY DEAR SIR: I thank you most sincerely for your most eloquent and able speech, delivered before the good people of Newburyport, on the critical condition of public affairs. The strongest evidence of the madness of the times is to be found in the fact that an address so unanswerable, so patriotic, so every way calculated to arrest the downward tendency of the country, does not at once tell on the hearts and minds of the good people of Massachusetts. They, however, still seem to slumber on, and are so deaf as not to hear the unmistakable mutterings of the storm which is destined so soon to break forth.
I confess that I am lost in perfect amazement at the lunacy which seems to have seized on the North. What imaginable good is to come to them by compelling the Southern States into secession? I see great benefits to foreign governments, but nothing but prostration and woe to New England. Virginia looks on for the present with her arms folded, but she only bides her time. Despondency will be succeeded by action.
My own mind is greatly disturbed. I look around in every direction for a conservative principle, but I have so far looked in vain. I have thought that a consultation between the Border States, free and slaveholding, might lead to adjustment. It would embrace six on each side. They are most interested in keeping the peace, and, if they cannot come to an understanding, then the political union is gone, as is already, to a great extent, the union of fraternal feeling. When all things else have failed, this might be tried. It would be a dernier resort.
I shall be most happy at all times to hear from you, and assure you of my high esteem and warm personal friendship.
I write in haste and cannot copy.
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