Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Robert Jefferson Breckinridge to John J. Crittenden, May 3, 1851

LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY, May 3, 1851.
Hon. J. J. CRITTENDEN.

DEAR SIR,—I regret very much to perceive by your letter of the 21st ultimo that you considered my letter to you of the 12th April wanting in proper respect to you, and prompted by irritation on my part. I retained no copy of that letter; but, assuredly, I know very little of myself if it contained the evidences of either of those states of mind.

For the first time in my life I had condescended to solicit, from any human authority, anything, either for myself or any member of my immediate family, though many hundreds of times I have done what I could for others. It was particularly distressing to me that I had been seduced into such a position by the extreme kindness of an old personal friend (Mr. Duncan), as I explained in my first letter to you, and, by some ridiculous notion, that the present administration might consider itself any ways connected with that of General Taylor, so as to feel disposed to fulfill any expectations it may have raised.

Unless my memory deceives me, my first letter, making the application, intimated to you that I was not sure it was proper in me to write you such a letter, and asked you to excuse the impropriety, if indeed one existed. Such, I remember well, was the state of my mind, and I think I expressed it. The only notice ever taken of that letter, by you, is the allusion to it in your letter before me. What took place in the mean time may be uttered in a sentence, and need not be repeated here.

Under all the painful, and to me altogether unprecedented, circumstances of a very humiliating position, I thought it due to you to express my regret at having implicated you, in any degree, in such an affair by my letter of application to you; and I thought it due to myself to express to you, under such circumstances, my regret at allowing myself, in a moment of parental weakness, to embark in a matter which, in all its progress and its termination, was especially out of keeping with the whole tenor of my life and feelings. If my letter, to which yours of the 21st April is an answer, expresses more or less than these things, it is expressed unhappily and improperly. If, during the progress of the affair, you had judged it necessary or proper to have treated it differently, or had had it in your power to do so, I should not have been more bound to feel obliged by any other or further service than I am now bound to feel obliged, by such as your letter informs me you were good enough to render me, under circumstances which, it is now obvious, must have been embarrassing to you, and which, if I had known, I would have instantly released you from. But all this, as it appears to me, only the more painfully shows how inconsiderate my first application to you was, and how needless it was for my subsequent expression of regret for having made it to be taken in an offensive sense.

The sole object of this letter is to place the whole affair on the footing which, in my opinion, it really occupies.

Certainly I had no right to ask anything of the sort I did ask at your hands. But assuredly having been weak enough to ask it, and having, in the course of events, had full occasion to perceive that weakness, I had the right without offense to express sincere regret for what I had inconsiderately done,—to the needless annoyance of yourself and others, and to the wounding of my own self-esteem.

Permit me, in conclusion, to say that altogether the most painful part of this affair, to me, is that I should have given offense to a man who, for nearly if not quite thirty years, I have been accustomed to regard with feelings of the greatest esteem, admiration, and confidence, and for whom, at any moment during those thirty years, I would have periled everything but my honor to have served him; such a man will know how to appreciate the workings of a nature perhaps oversensitive and overproud, in the midst of unusual and oppressive circumstances. If not, it is better to forget all than lose our own self-respect.

As to Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Conrad, strange as it may seem to you, I would never, under ordinary circumstances, have asked either of them for any favor whatever. I rather considered myself asking you and Mr. Clay and Judge Underwood and Judge Breck and a few other old friends to whom I brought myself to the point—not without great difficulty—of saying what I did. This may seem very absurd to you; perhaps it is so; it is nevertheless the truth; and most certainly I did not suppose that any administration of which yourself and Mr. Clay and Judge Underwood and Judge Breck were avowed, if not confidential, supporters, would, under the entire circumstances of this case, have it in its power to refuse so paltry a boon; and after seeing the published list of successful applicants, from which alone I learned the fate of my application, I saw still less reason to comprehend such a result. As to yourself, three particulars separated your case from that of the other friends I have named: 1st. I loved you most, and relied most on you. 2d. I the most distrusted the propriety of writing to you, on account of your connection with the cabinet. 3d. From you alone I had no word of notice; and for these two last reasons, the more felt that an explanation was demanded of me as due both to you and myself.

If you have had patience to read this letter, it is needless for me to say more than that I still desire to be considered your friend.

R. J. B.

SOURCE: Ann Mary Butler Crittenden Coleman, Editor, The Life of John J. Crittenden: With Selections from His Correspondence and Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 387-9

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