(Private.)
MARTINSBURG, VA., July 23, 1857.
MY DEAR SIR: Though
I have ceased to take interest in politics, and hang on loosely to them for a
while longer, somewhat as a matter of habit, and somewhat as a matter of
necessity, I have promised a friend that I would communicate a few facts to
you, and now proceed to redeem my promise.
While spending a few
hours in Washington, a day or two ago, and since I have been here, I have
ascertained that a good deal of maneuvering is going on in relation to the
Senatorial election in Virginia. From what I have heard, I am satisfied that
Gov[ernor] Wise is very anxious to be elected to the
Senate. His hopes in that direction were a good deal chilled by the result of
the Virginia elections last Spring, but within a few weeks past, they have been
very much revived. He thinks that if he could place you, in a position of known
antagonism to the administration, and stand forward himself as the
administration candidate he would easily beat you. Therefore his friends are
representing you as fully endorsing all that our good friends of "The
South" have said about Walker and Kansas, and are endeavouring to produce
the belief that hostility to Walker and his Kansas policy springs out of and
indicates a spirit of settled hostility to the administration.
As I came through
Washington the city was rife with rumours of your open and avowed hostility to
Buchanan and his Cabinet.
Our friend Co[lone]l
Orr of So[uth] Carolina who is a warm administration man told me that he heard
with great concern that you had made a speech in which you attacked them
fiercely. Since I came here, a friend of ours (Mr. John B. Hoge) has told me
that the scheme has been worked with effect in this region,
and is fraught with danger in the West at least.
I am clearly and
openly hostile to Walker and his Kansas policy, but I do not think that either
principle or policy requires it to be carried to the extent of opposition to
the administration. They are acting badly towards us it is true, but they ought
not to be permitted to drive us into opposition, except upon some ground which
would be patent to the public. This is my view of the matter but it is probably
badly taken. You can judge best of the course proper for you to take. I
intended merely to give you facts.
The result of the
elections in our region of the State was in this point of view, very favorable.
So Edmundson writes me it was in his. I am nearly at the end of my race
politically. I want however to see the true men in our State, prospered and
advanced, and the intriguers thwarted and I will sing the "nunc
dimittes" with full glad heart.
(P. S.) That
"mendacious vagabond" who writes to the Herald from Richmond persists
in declaring that the Parsons [?] Bill was gotten up by your friends to injure
Buchanan's prospects in Virginia for the Presidential nomination.
SOURCE: Charles Henry
Ambler, Editor, Annual Report of the American Historical Association
for the Year 1916, in Two Volumes, Vol. II, Correspondence of Robert M. T.
Hunter (1826-1876), pp. 210-1
