Macon [ga.], 7th July, 1846.
Dear Cobb, I
am here, and a moment's leisure gives me the opportunity to inquire of you what
the Democratic party intend to do? Can it be possible that the unanimity of the
committee which reported on the proceedings of the Memphis Convention is an
indication of the mind of Congress on the subject? It is reported that a
majority of the democratic members of Congress from Virginia will follow that
committee in trampling down the cherished doctrines of her Jeffersons and
Madisons on the construction of the Constitution of the United States. It is by
the strict construction alone, which they practiced and enjoined, that Congress
can be kept within the bounds prescribed for it by the people who formed the instrument
which gave it being. The people never intended to give their representatives
the right to assume power by implication. The power to regulate commerce gives
no authority to create roads or canals. It is the authority to prescribe the
rules or laws which shall govern the commercial intercourse between the States.
It is to be hoped that the perilous doctrine will be at once rebuked. Mr.
Madison about twenty years ago vetoed a bill with such objects. Can you get the
Maysville veto for me? I suppose all the high protectionists will, to a man,
support a doctrine which will draw from the Treasury annually twenty millions
of dollars. That sum can be lost in the unfathomable bed of the Mississippi
every year without any improvement in its ever varying channel. Will the whole
Democracy of the West be drawn from their positions by the apparent interest of
their constituents in the stupendous expenditures to which this policy will
give rise? These men are too apt to be swerved from duty by an interested ambition.
No political death is so sweet as that in which a man falls a sacrifice to
noble principles. I have not heard from you on this subject, but I take it for
granted that you are not a convert to this new faith. Let me hear from you.
I am sorry to hear of the dissensions in the Democratic
ranks at Washington. Can they not be healed? The party have treated Mr. Polk
unkindly in not sustaining his patriotic measures in regard to our foreign
relations. They have given the Whigs a decided advantage, and the whole course
of Congress in regard to the Oregon question has shown the ignoble spirit that
would concede to power what it would maintain against a nation less able to
defend its usurpations.
Why has Mr. Polk passed by the army, which distinguished
itself in the late battles, in making his appointments?
_______________
* Governor of Georgia, 1839-1843; candidate for the
governorship in 1851 on the Southern Rights ticket, defeated by Howell Cobb.
Judge of the supreme court of Georgia, 1856-1861.
SOURCE: Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, Editor, The Annual
Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911, Volume 2: The
Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb, p.
84-5
