Friday, July 21, 2023

Senator Henry S. Foote to Messrs. Geo. Douglas, Schuyler Livingston, and others, constituting a Committee of Gentlemen, June 15, 1850

SENATE CHAMBER, June 15, 1850.

GENTLEMEN—Gladly would I have joined you on next Monday, at the social board, and united most cordially in doing special honor to that able, accomplished, incorruptible, and Roman-like statesman to whom you have tendered a public dinner at Tammany Hall, in recognition of his eminent public services and his extraordinary personal merits. But I find it impossible to be with you on that occasion, urgent official duties detaining me here.

I have known the worthy gentleman to whom you are about to do special honor most intimately for more than three years past. I have seen him tried as I have never seen any other public man tried. I have beheld him amid scenes well calculated to test his moral courage, his disinterestedness, his regard for principle, and his love of country. And never have I seen him so demean himself as not to command the respect of his adversaries, and to endear himself still more strongly to his friends and admirers. Honest, truthful, firm, sagacious, watchful, accomplished, courteous, magnanimous, he is such a man as would have adorned the pages of history in any age or country. Well does he deserve all the honors which he has earned, and all that a grateful country may hereafter bestow. His faithful and unyielding devotion to sound constitutional principles throughout the present anti-slavery agitation have commended him "to the permanent gratitude and respect of the nation," and I agree with you most heartily, that "at this time, when the efforts of every patriot are concentrated to the peaceable adjustment of all sectional controversies, we should not be unmindful of the solicitude which public men must feel for such evidences of popular approval as will tend to sustain them in their struggles against fanatical and factious agitators."

Permit me, if you please, to offer you the following sentiment:

"The union of all good men, of all parties, and of all sections, against faction and factionists."

I have the honor to be, &c., &c.,
H. S. FOOTE.

Messrs. GEO. DOUGLAS, SCHUYLER LIVINGSTON, and others, constituting a Committee of Gentlemen.

SOURCE: John R. Dickinson, Editor, Speeches, Correspondence, Etc., of the Late Daniel S. Dickinson of New York, Vol. 2, p. 439-40

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