Lewis E. Harvie to Lyon G. Tyler, May 15, 1885

CHULA P. O., May 15, 1885.

MY DEAR SIR: I regret that I am unable to give you the information you wish. Your honored father, my friend, and myself were on the commission to treat with Mr. Stephens, and the whole committee were unanimous, and reported in favor of uniting under one government with the other Confederate States. Who prepared the report I have forgotten. I regret that I cannot give you the information.

I esteemed your father as highly as any man I ever knew. I may say that I reverence his memory. He had the entire trust and confidence of every member of the Virginia convention, and exercised and wielded more influence and control over its deliberations and acts than any man in it. He won its confidence in a speech in reply to Mr. Summers, who made a report of the proceedings of the "Peace Congress" held in Washington, and secured the admiration and confidence of the whole convention, when he was so weak that he could speak only at intervals and the convention adjourned again and again to hear him. His influence, and, I may say, control, over the convention, during its whole term, was irresistible. It would be a labor of love to recite to you evidences of the esteem in which he was held, and the estimate placed on his patriotism and love of Virginia, by men of all parties, however conflicting and diversified and distinct their views and sentiments.

I recollect one among other occasions when he changed by the force of his eloquence and patriotism the action of the convention by a defense of General Scott and Mr. Clay, who were assailed; and how he triumphantly carried the proposition through the convention (almost by acclamation) to invite General Scott to come to the rescue of his State. It was the most masterly and triumphant appeal to which I ever listened, and left us who opposed it in a minority of sixteen, all told. General Scott and Mr. Clay were both Virginians, and, while he had differed with them both, they had reflected honor and lustre on her, their common mother, and he made an appeal to the convention of Virginia that electrified the whole body.

He was subsequently elected to the Confederate Congress, almost by acclamation, over two of the ablest and most popular men in the Richmond district, after he had been subjected to obloquy and vituperation for strangling the Bank of the United States and admitting Texas into the Union. His devotion to Virginia and her confidence in him were commensurate.

Such and so sincere was my appreciation of his character, and the estimate that I placed on his valuable and brilliant career that characterized his public conduct, that I invariably paid my respects to him as soon as he took his seat in convention.

It gives me pleasure now to recur to my past intercourse with him. I trust that his son will ascribe the prolixity of my reply to the sincerity of my esteem for one who loved and was beloved by Virginia with equal fervor.

Respectfully and truly yours,

LEWIS E. HARVIE.

Lyon G. Tyler, Esq., Richmond, Va.

SOURCE: Lyon Gardiner Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume 2, p. 668-9