Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana MacLachlan Gardiner, February 13, 1861

BROWN'S HOTEL, WASHINGTON, February 13, 1861.

I have a moment to myself just before tea, and I may have time to write you in haste something of the doings here. Since I last wrote, I have not been allowed a moment's leisure. When within the hotel it has been an incessant stream of company, and then I have had visits to return, the Capitol to visit, etc., etc. Last night I attended, with the President, the party of Senator Douglas, and I met in the throng my old friend, Mrs. Dixon, who, by the way, looked so well that the President thought her the handsomest person in the room. She had early called, but I was out, as was the case with her when I called. She was, of course, charmed to meet me again. We are all the time surrounded, and had greetings from old, and introductions to new acquaintances without number. People turned up, and recalled themselves to me that I certainly never expected to have met again. I saw and shook hands with two Messrs. Griswold. Mr. Bancroft (the historian) claimed relationship with me through the Chandlers, who married a Miss Gardiner, of Gardiner's Island. I paraded the rooms with the handsomest man here, Governor Morehead, of Kentucky—one of the best likenesses of Papa you ever saw in appearance, voice, laugh, and manner. I suppose I may conclude that I looked quite well. No attempts at entertainments have succeeded before, I was told, this winter, and to the hopes that are placed upon the efforts of this Peace Convention is to be attributed the success of this.

People are catching at straws as a relief to their pressing anxieties, and look to the Peace Commissioners, as if they possessed some divine power to restore order and harmony. Here you can realize more than anywhere else the distracted state of the country. In the Peace Conference a committee are engaged (one from each State) in the preparation of a plan of adjustment, and when they report, which will be on Friday, the end I suppose can be foreseen. In the meantime all is suspense, from the President down. The New York and Massachusetts delegation will no doubt perform all the mischief they can; and it may be, will defeat this patriotic effort at pacification. But whether it succeeds or not, Virginia will have sustained her reputation, and in the latter event will retire with dignity from the field to join without loss of time her more Southern sisters; the rest of the slave Border States will follow her lead, and very likely she will be able to draw off, which would be glorious, a couple of Northern States. It is to be hoped that this state of suspense, which is bringing disaster to trade everywhere, will soon be removed in one way or another.

The President has hundreds of letters of the enclosed description, which I enclose you because it is from Mr. Beeckman's son-in-law.

Mr. Buchanan (the President) spent the evening in our parlor evening before last. I suppose it is the first visit he has paid since being the nation's chief. He first wrote the President a letter full of gratitude for the relief he had afforded him in probably preventing, through his influence at Charleston, the attack on Fort Sumter. Miss Lane and Miss Ellis called upon me yesterday. If the President is detained here indefinitely, I shall run home. I want to be with my children. Probably I shall go on Friday, unless I hear from home in the meantime to my satisfaction. Old Mrs. Hilliard, of Troy, called upon me this morning; she spoke of Miss Mary Gardiner, of Gardiner's Island, having been at her school. Mrs. Catron is quite sick; but I must conclude. I have so much to say of persons and events, and no time to say it in. . . . With love to all.

SOURCE: Lyon Gardiner Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume 2, p. 612-3

Congressman Charles S. Morehead to Senator John J. Crittenden, March 30, 1850

WASHINGTON, March 30, 1850.

MY DEAR SIR,—I received your letter of the 19th inst., for which I am very much obliged to you. All that is done here is so fully detailed in the daily papers that I need not attempt to give you an account of it. We are proceeding slowly with the debate on the absorbing topic growing out of our territorial acquisitions. I begin to believe that the whole question will be satisfactorily settled by admitting California as a State and making territorial governments for the residue of the country without the proviso. I regret, however, to state that we can hope for very little, if any, aid from the Whigs of the North in the House. I do not know one man that we can certainly count. There were eight or ten who promised to go with us, but I have reason to believe that the cabinet influence has drawn them off. Ewing and Meredith have evidently much feeling on the subject. Clayton, Crawford, Preston, and Johnson, I understand, will go for territorial bills. It is understood that General Taylor himself would be glad if such bills can be passed without the proviso, and would prefer such a settlement to the non-action policy. I cannot, however, speak from any personal knowledge on this subject. I have no doubt, however, as to the four members of the cabinet I have named. Indeed, it is indispensably necessary that it should be settled on this basis. There is not one single man from any slaveholding State who would agree to any other settlement, and I fear the very worst consequences from any attempt to force through the California bill without a full settlement. Fifty members, under our rules, can prevent the bill from being reported from the committee of the whole, where it now is, to the House. But I believe we have a decided majority for such a settlement as the South demands. There are twenty-nine Democrats from the North pledged to go with us. McClernand, from Illinois, has prepared a bill upon general but private consultation, embracing all the points of difference, and will offer it as a substitute, in a few days, to the California bill. If General Taylor would take open ground for a full settlement, we could get ten or twelve Whigs from the North. I believe he only wants a suitable occasion to do so. I never have in my life had so deep and abiding a conviction upon any subject as at this moment of the absolute necessity of a settlement of this whole question. I am pained to say that I fear that there are some Southern men who do not wish a settlement. We have certainly something to fear from this source, but they are so few that I think we can do without them.

The cabinet, as you might well imagine from the present state of things, receives no support from any quarter. John Tyler had a corporal's guard who defended him manfully, but the cabinet has not one man that I can now name. Each member of the cabinet has a few friends, but I do not know one man who can be called the friend of the cabinet. I apprehend that they are not even friendly to each other. You may have noticed in the Union, if you ever read it, a charge against Ewing for having allowed a very large claim in which Crawford was interested personally to the extent of one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars. It turned out that Mr. Ewing had nothing to do with it; that Whittlesey reported that there was nothing due, and Meredith, in accordance with the opinion of the Attorney-General, allowed it. Now, Ewing, if I am not mistaken (but conjecture on my part, I acknowledge), through his friends is attacking Crawford for having a claim acted on in which he was interested while a member of the cabinet. Upon the whole, I am clearly of opinion that there is but one safe course for General Taylor to pursue, and that is to reconstruct his whole cabinet. I am perfectly satisfied that he cannot carry on the government with his present ministers. Your name and that of Winthrop and of Webster have been spoken of as Secretary of State in the event of a change; but if I had to make a full cabinet I could not do it satisfactorily to myself. I am inclined to think that Mr. Webster would like to be Secretary of State, not from anything I ever heard him say but from occasional remote intimations from his friends. Just at this time his appointment would be exceedingly popular in the South. I wish most sincerely that you were here. We are altogether in a sad, sad condition. There is no good feeling between Mr. Clay and General Taylor, and I am afraid that meddling and busybodies are daily widening the breach. keep entirely aloof, taking especial and particular pains to participate in no manner whatever in the feeling on the one side or the other. I hear all, at least on one side, and try always to reconcile rather than widen the breach. I have sometimes, however, thought that a want of confidence in me resulted from the fact of my being his immediate representative. I may be mistaken—probably am; it may arise altogether from a less flattering consideration. At all events, I have never been able to converse one minute with the President upon politics without his changing the subject, so that when I see him now I never, in the remotest manner, allude to political matters.

[Continued on the next day.]

SOURCE: Ann Mary Butler Crittenden Coleman, Editor, The Life of John J. Crittenden: With Selections from His Correspondence and Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 361-3

Congressman Charles S. Morehead to Senator John J. Crittenden, March 31, 1850

[Continued from Congressman Charles S. Morehead to SenatorJohn J. Crittenden, March 30, 1850.]

March 31st. Not finishing my letter last night, I have to add this morning the news, which you will no doubt hear long before this reaches you, of Mr. Calhoun's death. He died this morning at eight o'clock. I do not yet clearly see what effect his death is to have on political events. He was firmly and, I suppose, honestly persuaded that the Union ought to be dissolved. I understand that he has prepared a paper showing that the only salvation of the South is by disunion. It is said to be a very strong and dangerous argument, placing the whole matter upon the ground that there can be no security for our property by any other possible or attainable means, and that the South has all the elements of unbounded prosperity without the Union; while with it it is fast assuming a mere provincial character, impoverishing itself to aggrandize the North. I do not, of course, know that this rumor is true, but I believe it is. This was the purport of a conversation he held with Mr. Toombs a few days ago. He told him he would not live this session out, and that he must leave to younger men the task of carrying out his views. A pamphlet has recently been published in Virginia calculated to do much mischief. It is an argument for disunion with an array of pretended facts, which, if true, or if not shown to be unfounded, I think would produce a very great effect. Mr. Clay told me that he thought it the most dangerous pamphlet he ever read.

Our Northern friends are blind, absolutely blind, to the real dangers by which we are surrounded. They don't want to believe that there is any danger, and in general they treat the whole matter as mere bravado and as scarcely worth notice. I concur this far with them, that it is utterly impossible formally to dissolve this Union, and it never will be dissolved by any convention or by any declaration of independence. The dissolution must precede these things if it ever does take place. The fear I entertain is of the establishment of mere sectional parties, and the commencement of a system of retaliatory local or State legislation. You may have seen that this has been already recommended by the governor of Virginia. If the slave question should not be settled, there is scarcely a Southern State that will not pass laws to prevent the sale of Northern products by retail in its limits. The decision of the Supreme Court, in the case of Brown vs. Maryland, declaring the unconstitutionality of taxing the imports of another State, contains some dictum of the right of a State to tax such imports after they have become incorporated with the property of the State. The whole proceeding would doubtless be a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution. But what is it that men will not do when smarting under real or imaginary grievances? You may think that I am inclined to be gloomy, but I do most solemnly believe that disunion will ensue, and that more speedily than any man now has any idea of, if there should be a failure of an amicable settlement. You cannot be surprised, then, that my whole heart and soul are engaged in the effort to bring this about. I feel as you do about the Union, as I know that Kentucky does, and it must be preserved at the sacrifice of all past party ties. I am perfectly sure, from the most mature and calm consideration, that there is but one way of doing this. The North must give up its apparently determined purpose of making this general government assume an attitude of hostility to slavery. We cannot prevent individual agitation and fanaticism, but I think we have the undoubted right to ask that a common government shall not, in its action, become hostile to the property of a large portion of its own citizens.

Mr. Clay sent for old Mr. Ritchie, and had a long and confidential conversation with him upon this subject. The tone of the Union is evidently changed since that time. You may have noticed that he speaks much oftener in favor of union than he did. This is not generally known, and of course I do not wish it spoken of as coming from me. I have written you a long letter, which may occupy some of your dull moments at Frankfort. I wrote to your new Secretary of State some time ago, which he has never answered. I hope in the enjoyment of his new honors he has not forgotten his old friends.

I remain very truly and sincerely your friend,

C. S. MOREHEAD.

SOURCE: Ann Mary Butler Crittenden Coleman, Editor, The Life of John J. Crittenden: With Selections from His Correspondence and Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 363-4