RICHMOND, [VA.], September 22, 1857.
DEAR HUNTER: The skies are bright and brightening. I think I am informed
of the sentiment of the whole state. You will be reelected triumphantly and
there will be no opposition to your election. Wise is [a] dead beat and the
tone of his friends (he has very few) and of his paper shows that he knows it.
Pryor says there is not a shadow of doubt about it. He has triumphed over the
Enquirer, which is doomed and the South hereafter is to be the Democratic organ
in Virginia. Intra nos, Hughes has told Pryor that there can
be no difficulty between them and that your election is certain. Watch Floyd
and meet any advances or indications. He has a good deal of sense and no great
love for his excellency. Pryor will publish on tomorrow, all the Editorials
favorable to your election throughout the State. He fears that you may think
that he has been lukewarm in defending you from assaults &c and wishes you
to know that it has been from a conviction that it was the best policy for you.
This was my opinion and Seddon's and all of your friends hereabouts and he
acted as we thought best. We did not wish you involved in the quarrel of the
South with the Enquirer and told him to keep you out of it. I know that he is
as true to you as steel and that he has the materials if it was prudent to put
you in the contest to sustain you triumphantly. You stand now in the
ascendent and if no mistake is made you are invincible. Those that have not
heretofore been for you are now claiming to be for you against all comers. No
man ever yet made war upon the State Rights party in V[irgini]a without being
cast down, and several people who did not know it are now discovering it. I am
writing in a great hurry and write of course without detail. You may rely
however upon what I say. By the way I heard today that Beale is involved in
some personal difficulty with one of the Brockenbroughs and that possibly a
challenge may grow out of it. See Newton and stop it, if it be so. First
because I think Beale a very valuable and worthy gentleman and secondly because
he is your friend and ought to be in the next Legislature.
SOURCE: Charles Henry Ambler, Editor, Annual Report of the
American Historical Association for the Year 1916, in Two Volumes, Vol. II,
Correspondence of Robert M. T. Hunter (1826-1876), pp. 231-2
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