HARTFORD, KY., 21st
February, 1850.
MY DEAR SIR: Perhaps
you may almost have forgotten the individual who now addresses you, and who
retains a vivid recollection of the many meetings and pleasant greetings he had
with you when he had the honor of being an humble member of the committee of
which you were chairman in the 29th Con[gress].
At the risk however
of being entirely forgotten I have concluded to drop you a line if it be only
to ascertain the fact.
Since we separated
you have been busily engaged in the Senate of the U[nited] S[tates] aiding in
the councils of our Nation, while I have been mostly engaged in the practice of
the law riding over hills and vallies, swamps and waters as duty or necessity
might require. Last year I was elected a delegate and took a part, an humble
part, in forming a new constitution for my own native state. Except this I have
been wholly disengaged from politics. I have been looking with deep solicitude
at the course of events since I left Congress and have seen nothing to change
the opinion which I expressed to you in a conversation during the pending of
the three million bill or just before I do not now recollect which, "that
the Mexican War was gotten up by the abolition raving of the then Cabinet to
get a large scope of territory to make free States out of and to surround the
slave States entirely to get back what they were pleased to term the balance of
power which they said they had lost by giving up half of Oregon,” and advised
you if possible to put a stop to the war before the rank and file got into the
secret for if you did not the devil himself could not do it, that even Giddings
and Culver would come in if they found out what it was for. You told me that
you and your immediate friends were doing your best but were powerless, but if
I would only keep Garrett Davis from throwing in his d----d resolutions of
warning, which were calculated though not intended to bind the party together,
that you thought you could possibly do something. I have often thought of this
conversation and wondered if you had any recollection of it. Things that have
occurred since have indelibly impressed it upon my memory.
In looking about for
the causes of the Mexican war, I believed those assigned by the particular
friends of the president were some of them insufficient and some of them
unfounded and therefore I looked round for some reason to satisfy my own mind,
and could find none but that. I named it to several of my friends and
colleagues but could find none to agree with me. I formed the opinion first
from reading Morey's instructions for raising Stephensons regiment. I thought
the intention was to settle that regiment on the southern border of whatever
land we might acquire and thus form the nucleus for a settlement from the free
states immediately on our southern border and thus prevent a settlement from
the slave states, by slave holders at least, within the bounds of the newly acquired
territory. Upon due consideration of all that has happened since that time do
you not now think that I at least guessed well if I did not form a correct
opinion? In my canvass for delegate last summer I had to encounter emancipation
in all its forms and triumphed over it. The leading men in this country are
with the south but they are also for the Union and do not look to disunion as a
remedy for any evil. They will "fight for slavery but die by the
Union." As to the boys up the hollows and in the brush who form a
considerable portion of our country they are not to [be] relied on in any
contest against the Union. In a contest about the Union they would be willing
to have the motto of the first soldiers of the revolution "Liberty or
death"—but in a contest about slavery they would be a good deal like one
Barney Decker who was about to have a soldiers badge and motto made and when
the lady who made the badge asked him if he would have the same motto hesitated
and then replied "You may put ‘liberty or be crippled.’” I am afraid the
boys will say "slavery or be crippled." For God's sake try and settle
all these questions of slavery if possible and let us not dissolve the Union.
But if we have to
write like Francis the 1st to his mother, "Madam all's lost but
honor" let us do it with this and we will have the approval of our own
conscience without which a man is nothing.
* A Representative
in Congress from Kentucky, 1845-1847.
