[Continued from Congressman Charles S. Morehead to SenatorJohn J. Crittenden, March 30, 1850.]
March 31st. Not finishing my letter last night, I have to add this morning the news, which you will no doubt hear long before this reaches you, of Mr. Calhoun's death. He died this morning at eight o'clock. I do not yet clearly see what effect his death is to have on political events. He was firmly and, I suppose, honestly persuaded that the Union ought to be dissolved. I understand that he has prepared a paper showing that the only salvation of the South is by disunion. It is said to be a very strong and dangerous argument, placing the whole matter upon the ground that there can be no security for our property by any other possible or attainable means, and that the South has all the elements of unbounded prosperity without the Union; while with it it is fast assuming a mere provincial character, impoverishing itself to aggrandize the North. I do not, of course, know that this rumor is true, but I believe it is. This was the purport of a conversation he held with Mr. Toombs a few days ago. He told him he would not live this session out, and that he must leave to younger men the task of carrying out his views. A pamphlet has recently been published in Virginia calculated to do much mischief. It is an argument for disunion with an array of pretended facts, which, if true, or if not shown to be unfounded, I think would produce a very great effect. Mr. Clay told me that he thought it the most dangerous pamphlet he ever read.
Our Northern friends are blind, absolutely blind, to the real dangers by which we are surrounded. They don't want to believe that there is any danger, and in general they treat the whole matter as mere bravado and as scarcely worth notice. I concur this far with them, that it is utterly impossible formally to dissolve this Union, and it never will be dissolved by any convention or by any declaration of independence. The dissolution must precede these things if it ever does take place. The fear I entertain is of the establishment of mere sectional parties, and the commencement of a system of retaliatory local or State legislation. You may have seen that this has been already recommended by the governor of Virginia. If the slave question should not be settled, there is scarcely a Southern State that will not pass laws to prevent the sale of Northern products by retail in its limits. The decision of the Supreme Court, in the case of Brown vs. Maryland, declaring the unconstitutionality of taxing the imports of another State, contains some dictum of the right of a State to tax such imports after they have become incorporated with the property of the State. The whole proceeding would doubtless be a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution. But what is it that men will not do when smarting under real or imaginary grievances? You may think that I am inclined to be gloomy, but I do most solemnly believe that disunion will ensue, and that more speedily than any man now has any idea of, if there should be a failure of an amicable settlement. You cannot be surprised, then, that my whole heart and soul are engaged in the effort to bring this about. I feel as you do about the Union, as I know that Kentucky does, and it must be preserved at the sacrifice of all past party ties. I am perfectly sure, from the most mature and calm consideration, that there is but one way of doing this. The North must give up its apparently determined purpose of making this general government assume an attitude of hostility to slavery. We cannot prevent individual agitation and fanaticism, but I think we have the undoubted right to ask that a common government shall not, in its action, become hostile to the property of a large portion of its own citizens.
Mr. Clay sent for old Mr. Ritchie, and had a long and confidential conversation with him upon this subject. The tone of the Union is evidently changed since that time. You may have noticed that he speaks much oftener in favor of union than he did. This is not generally known, and of course I do not wish it spoken of as coming from me. I have written you a long letter, which may occupy some of your dull moments at Frankfort. I wrote to your new Secretary of State some time ago, which he has never answered. I hope in the enjoyment of his new honors he has not forgotten his old friends.
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