[AMELIA, VA.], September 4th, 1857.
MY DEAR HUNTER: I find your letters at home after an absence of six weeks
from the State. Just having returned of course I am not well posted in regard
to current events. I am sufficiently so however to feel very confident that
your reelection is safe. I came thro' the North West over the Baltimore and
Ohio R[ail] R[oa]d and saw Judge Camden and Oldham who told me that you would
get the whole vote of that section of the State. I heard from Alfred Barbour at
the same time, the same thing. From Jack Willis and Jack Barbour at the
same time I heard that from Alexandria thro' the red land country under the
mountain all was right. Lee alone preferring Wise and he not
daring to misrepresent what he knows to be the will of his constituents. The
Southside is all our own, I am sure. Powell's and Richardson's districts [are]
all right. Your own county I suppose is sound. Still our friends should be
alert and active, for we have fierce, unscrupulous and wiley foes. Write again
and tell me all you know, what and where are the weak points and I will help to
strengthen them. Your views and policy are all right and I and Wm. Old, Jr and
Lewis [?] have been impressing them on Pryor warmly and earnestly before I went
away. Pryor has been away from his post for a month leaving his paper in the
hands of his assistant and his paper has lost ground and is losing it I fear
daily. He had the Enquirer down and has now lost the advantage. I had urged
Mayo to write to him to return at once and I think he will when he gets my
message. In the mean time Wm. Old has sent a communication down to-day, which I
presume will appear as an Editorial placing the paper on the true ground which
is the same as that suggested in your letter. This he will follow up with
others. I have written to Mayo to place the paper on it and not to drug it. To
keep V[irgini]a in the Democratic party at the head of the South and not at the
tail of the north and to appeal to State pride and urge upon him not to abandon
her principles and natural allies for the purpose of getting broken victuals to
feed her hungry politicians. I am and have been all along out and out against
making war on Buchanan. It will be time enough when he does
something not covertly but openly that will justify it. Any attack on him now
only weakens his assailants and strengthens him. If we are to strike let us be
clearly right and put him clearly in the wrong and then we can strike hard.
Granting that we are able to pull down the pillars of the temple now cui bono.
It crushes us as well as him. No I am for giving him full and fair play,
supporting him until he drives us off, and to the end of the chapter. At the
same time I have little hope that he will permit us to do it. I for one however
will assail each in its turn every violation of principle and pledge, until
forbearance ceases to be a virtue and then I will war on their authority, but
not our Democracy, I am done with that. I wish to live and die in the
Democratic fold and faith and shall fight enemies from without or false friends
within under the broad shield and panoply of Democracy. Let us all take this
position and be brave ourselves and we will keep these hungry curs in their
proper places. I do not see any thing that you can do until the meeting of
Congress. Then you should and I suppose will take the first opportunity to
define your own position and not allow these gentry to make one for you. They
can't put you against the administration if you don't choose to be against
it, nor can they prescribe the mode and manner of your support or the extent of
your opposition. In the meantime his excellency in his zeal for old Buck
[Buchanan] or himself is as likely to run afowl of something or other in or out
of his way as one that I know and his ex-excellency may be expected to protect
the interest of Uncle Sam in other transactions as effectually as he is said to
have done in the sale of Fort Snellings and be as implicity trusted by the
people of Virginia as he is now. We have beaten these men before and can and
will do it again. Keep me advised and trust [William M.] Ambler and Wm. Old
implicitly. I name these because they are in the Legislature and should
understand every move at once.
I sat up late last night on two strong cups of coffee to keep my eyes
open in order to reply to your letters, as soon as I got them. That admirable
narcotic having the effect of exciting my brain, may have prevented me from
giving such a reply to your letter as it required and would have gotten when it
ought to have reached me. Since then no doubt great changes have taken place in
the tactics and perhaps in the views of the coalition. That they
will crush us if they can is certain. If they can't they will say that they
wouldn't if they could and perhaps one of them that he would "crawl to
Washington to make you President." "Nous verrons” We will be more
than a match for them. There is no doubt, that Wise is or has been at work.
Write and tell me all you know.
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. 220-2
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