Richmond, [va.], March 11th, 1840.
Dear Hunter: I
have frequently during the winter desired to write to you and to receive a
letter from you, as one watchman likes occasionally to hail and to hear from
another in a dark night. I hope that nothing has occurred or will ever occur to
interrupt for a moment that perfect and confidential familiarity which has so
long subsisted between us. From all that I learn of you through the medium (a
bad one, I confess) of the newspapers, I take it for granted that we are now as
nearly together in politics as we were when I saw you last summer. Nothing that
has happened here or at Washington, I presume, can have shaken your
steadfastness or mine in the great principles to which we have both given
evidence of our attachment. But let this be as it may, though you are (without
design on your part) the speaker of the H[ouse] of R[epresentatives] and though
I in like manner have been appointed with the executive of Virginia, you are
still Bob Hunter and I am as I always was your humble servant. We can never
forget the Friar Tuck scene of the Expunging winter here, nor should either of
us desire its oblivion. I suppose the labors of your station have allowed you
very little time for correspondence and though I shall not be more respectful
than the governor of New Jersey was to you, I venture to drop you a line, to
say that I hope we may occasionally interchange a thought and a word. Is there
any hope that parties will ever come back to the good old lines of honest
differences of opinion as to principles. For until parties do so, there is
really little or no hope that the government (in any hands) will. Are we always
to see the millions of freemen in our country, marshalled as the mere clansmen
of ambitious aspirants for the presidency? Many, I know, indulge the hope that
after November next, there will be some more definite and durable organization
of political parties. I confess, however, that I see little prospect for it.
The radical fault is with the press and that I fear is past remedy. I am,
however, on the outposts and can see but little of the chess board. You are at
the fountain head, and I have only to ask that when you have time and can
communicate any intelligence which you think would do good, that you may drop
me a line, not that I would have you write as a letter writer from
Washington, but that you may speak as one friend should speak to another about
matters of the highest public concern. We have been grasping our way onward; so
far together. I shall sink the partisan of course in my new vocation here.
Indeed I have been little of one for some years past. The grease has been
scarcely worth the candle. If you don't find time sooner, writer to me in the
dry days.
_______________
* Governor of Virginia, 1840-1841; a Whig Representative in
Congress, 1841-1843; a Democratic Representative in Congress. 1843-1844;
appointed Secretary of the Navy, Feb. 15, 1844, and served until his death on
the Princeton, Feb. 28, 1844.
