RICHMOND, [VA.], September 15, 1857.
MY DEAR SIR: It is not my nature to witness unmoved, an unscrupulous and
ingeneous effort, to crush or to injure a faithful, valuable and eminent public
servant. Let this be my apology for addressing you upon a subject, which while
it concerns you especially yet interests me as well, as one who feeling a
sincere gratitude for past service, earnestly desires to retain you in the post
you have so nobly filled. I am urged too by the recollection that an expression
of mine last fall, was construed by the mischief making into a covert attack
upon yourself, and I have had no opportunity to explain the matter to you in
person, as I had hoped, if indeed it had attracted your notice at all. I have
seen alike with pain and indignation the sedulous effort upon the part of Mr.
Wise to bring about a controversy with you. I say Mr. Wise because Mr. Wise has
no friends who are not guided, governed and absolutely swayed by him. Under the
preposterous pretext that your friends are making war on him, he
sets the Enquirer upon you, and assuming that your position towards the
Executive is equivocal, it (or rather he) demands that you should speak
obviously with the double purpose of either obtaining from you an answer which
would place you in a position of hostility to the administration and so
authorizing upon his part an open and undisguised war, or of displaying his
power, in constraining an answer "though it might and no doubt would
disappoint his hopes." That you will pursue the even and dignified
tenor of your way I cannot doubt. That the same calm and manly firmness which
has endeared you to the people of Virginia, will mark your course in this
emergency I feel assured. And yet I could not forbear telling you, that one who
is connected with you by no other bonds than those of esteem, watches with the
deepest solicitude, in the present emergency, the course you may pursue and
burns with indignation at the envious attempt to supplant you. I do not know
that you feel as I do, our temperments differ so much that perhaps you may
smile at my favour. It may be too that my own impulses are tinged by a cerbity
which comes from the remembrance, that the only difference I ever had with your
friends all of whom were mine was occasioned by my refusal to unite with them
in elevating Mr. Wise to a position which would enlarge his (capacity I was
about to write, but that is impossible) sphere for mischief. I was greatly
displeased with them and except that they agree with me now in my estimate of
him I should still express my displeasure towards them for their unhappy
mistake.
I feel assured from what I have seen and heard that if the reins of the
party are given to him, we shall have another Phaeton drive to lament. He must
either rule or ruin. He cannot, no man thank God, can rule in
Virginia and I greatly fear that he will, sow the seeds of discord which will
bring disaster sooner or later upon our party. I write thus of him because he
is now supposed to be the highest power in the State because he is said to be
omnipotent in his influence with Mr. Buchanan and only because he is so do I
thus speak of him. Power alone has no charms for me. And if he was in an
eclipse I would not thus speak of him. I do not know or want to know, that you
agree with me. I write in the fullest and most unstricting confidence to you
and for your eye alone. It delights me to say, as I intended long since to have
said that, all machinations against you will fail. I have learned that the
Northwest, will be for you to a man that the tenth legion is sure, that little
Tennessee, will stand by you and indeed I do not know any man of prominence in
the Legislature who will lift his voice against you. Wise has not strengthened
himself with the Legislature. I could see that he lost ground greatly with the
last. No man can approach him and believe him fit to fill a statesman's place.
He will lose ground yet more, before the next Legislature adjourns.
I cannot close without expressing the belief that the truce between Floyd
and himself will be but short lived. In saying this, let me say at the same
time, lest my intimate acquaintance with Gov. Floyd might lead to the
supposition that I speak from information derived from him, that I have seen
him but once, since he was Sec[retar]y of War and have never spoken of Wise to
him or he to me. I reason in the abstract entirely. And from my knowledge of
the men I feel assured that there can be no continued cordial co-operation
between them. I have always deplored the estrangement between Floyd and your
friends. Be assured he is your natural ally not in its modern sense, but he is
a thorough States-rights man, he is a gentleman by education and by instinct
and whatever deflections he has exhibited from the path of strict virtue he is
still a gentleman, manly, generous, and brave. I know he did entertain a most
exalted estimate of you and though he has never spoken to me unkindly of you,
yet I believe there is some estrangement, which I should rejoice to see
removed. Let me repeat that I am writing to you of "my own heart." I
do not request a reply or want to open a correspondence and that no one knows
or shall know that I have written.
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. 227-9
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