LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY, May 3, 1851.
Hon. J. J. CRITTENDEN.
DEAR SIR,—I regret
very much to perceive by your letter of the 21st ultimo that you considered my letter
to you of the 12th April wanting in proper respect to you, and prompted by
irritation on my part. I retained no copy of that letter; but, assuredly, I
know very little of myself if it contained the evidences of either of those
states of mind.
For the first time
in my life I had condescended to solicit, from any human authority, anything,
either for myself or any member of my immediate family, though many hundreds of
times I have done what I could for others. It was particularly distressing to
me that I had been seduced into such a position by the extreme kindness of an
old personal friend (Mr. Duncan), as I explained in my first letter to you,
and, by some ridiculous notion, that the present administration might consider
itself any ways connected with that of General Taylor, so as to feel disposed
to fulfill any expectations it may have raised.
Unless my memory
deceives me, my first letter, making the application, intimated to you that I
was not sure it was proper in me to write you such a letter, and asked you to
excuse the impropriety, if indeed one existed. Such, I remember well, was the
state of my mind, and I think I expressed it. The only notice ever taken of
that letter, by you, is the allusion to it in your letter before me. What took
place in the mean time may be uttered in a sentence, and need not be repeated
here.
Under all the
painful, and to me altogether unprecedented, circumstances of a very
humiliating position, I thought it due to you to express my regret at having
implicated you, in any degree, in such an affair by my letter of application to
you; and I thought it due to myself to express to you, under such
circumstances, my regret at allowing myself, in a moment of parental weakness,
to embark in a matter which, in all its progress and its termination, was
especially out of keeping with the whole tenor of my life and feelings. If my
letter, to which yours of the 21st April is an answer, expresses more or less
than these things, it is expressed unhappily and improperly. If, during the
progress of the affair, you had judged it necessary or proper to have treated
it differently, or had had it in your power to do so, I should not have been
more bound to feel obliged by any other or further service than I am now bound
to feel obliged, by such as your letter informs me you were good enough to
render me, under circumstances which, it is now obvious, must have been
embarrassing to you, and which, if I had known, I would have instantly released
you from. But all this, as it appears to me, only the more painfully shows how
inconsiderate my first application to you was, and how needless it was for my
subsequent expression of regret for having made it to be taken in an offensive
sense.
The sole object of
this letter is to place the whole affair on the footing which, in my opinion,
it really occupies.
Certainly I had no
right to ask anything of the sort I did ask at your hands. But assuredly having
been weak enough to ask it, and having, in the course of events, had full
occasion to perceive that weakness, I had the right without offense to express
sincere regret for what I had inconsiderately done,—to the needless annoyance
of yourself and others, and to the wounding of my own self-esteem.
Permit me, in
conclusion, to say that altogether the most painful part of this affair, to me,
is that I should have given offense to a man who, for nearly if not quite
thirty years, I have been accustomed to regard with feelings of the greatest
esteem, admiration, and confidence, and for whom, at any moment during those
thirty years, I would have periled everything but my honor to have served him;
such a man will know how to appreciate the workings of a nature perhaps
oversensitive and overproud, in the midst of unusual and oppressive
circumstances. If not, it is better to forget all than lose our own self-respect.
As to Mr. Fillmore
and Mr. Conrad, strange as it may seem to you, I would never, under ordinary
circumstances, have asked either of them for any favor whatever. I rather
considered myself asking you and Mr. Clay and Judge Underwood and Judge Breck
and a few other old friends to whom I brought myself to the point—not without
great difficulty—of saying what I did. This may seem very absurd to you;
perhaps it is so; it is nevertheless the truth; and most certainly I did not
suppose that any administration of which yourself and Mr. Clay and Judge
Underwood and Judge Breck were avowed, if not confidential, supporters, would,
under the entire circumstances of this case, have it in its power to refuse so
paltry a boon; and after seeing the published list of successful applicants,
from which alone I learned the fate of my application, I saw still less reason
to comprehend such a result. As to yourself, three particulars separated your
case from that of the other friends I have named: 1st. I loved you most, and
relied most on you. 2d. I the most distrusted the propriety of writing to you,
on account of your connection with the cabinet. 3d. From you alone I had no
word of notice; and for these two last reasons, the more felt that an
explanation was demanded of me as due both to you and myself.
If you have had
patience to read this letter, it is needless for me to say more than that I
still desire to be considered your friend.
R. J. B.
SOURCE: Ann Mary
Butler Crittenden Coleman, Editor, The Life of John J. Crittenden: With
Selections from His Correspondence and Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 387-9
