SHERWOOD FOREST, VA., April 18, 1861.
By my last letter
from the President the convention was sitting with closed doors. The vote was
probably taken yesterday, and it must have been for secession, as we have heard
a great cannonading all day in the direction of Richmond. Who can wish it
otherwise? I assure you, judging from the country, such is the exasperated
feeling of wrong that every able-bodied man from every family is ready to
shoulder his musket and will do so at the call. Mr. Douthat is the captain of
our volunteer troopers here. It numbers eighty well-horsed, well-armed, and
well-drilled and brave, true, high-toned gentlemen, who love the right and
scorn the wrong. Captain Douthat says he expects to be the first to fall, but
he is ready to die, if needs be, in the defense of his rights.
There is such a
determined spirit of resistance throughout the South that, with the secession
of the Border slave-States, I hope Lincoln will change his course and
acknowledge the Southern Confederacy. It rests with him to prevent or urge a
most unnatural and bloody war. The idea of any State meeting his demand! It is
disgraceful.
The sentiments you
express are so generous and becoming, and so like those of the boasted matrons
of the Revolution, that I take every occasion to repeat them, and you are
admired accordingly. I should think the citizens of New York who are opposed to
this onslaught on their Southern kinsmen would now make a demonstration and form
a party against coercion where States are concerned.
I enclose you Gov.
Pickens' despatch to the President. It will make you realize the occurrences at
Charleston. Return it at once, as I wish to preserve it. John Tyler, Jr., is a
clerk in the War Department at Montgomery. We knew nothing of it until the
President received through him those telegraphic despatches from the Secretary
of War (Mr. Walker), announcing the commencement of hostilities, which you may
have seen in some of the newspapers. Mr. Semple intends to resign the instant
the State secedes, or before if ordered upon any secret or avowedly hostile
expedition. Gen Scott was expected in Richmond yesterday, to offer, it is said,
his services to Virginia. But the papers tell you all this. I have no time for
more. The children are well. Julia is still in Richmond and quite well. My
cough, I am glad to say, has passed away. I hope Harry is well and very
studious.
Only to think who
became aids to Gen. Beauregard at Charleston,—the senators who retired from
their seats in Washington on the secession of South Carolina. Gov. Manning, and
even Senator Wigfall, of Texas, on his way home, stopped to assist. They all
exposed themselves to the fire, and Mr. Wigfall received the surrender. He is a
splendid fellow-all spirit and bravery and intellect. I met him at Washington;
and his wife is the kind of noble, high-spirited woman you would most admire.
Think of the enthusiasm of old Edmund Ruffin,1 our noted
agriculturist!
1 He fired the first gun at Charleston, and,
when the Confederacy went down, wrapped himself in the Confederate flag and
blew his brains out.
SOURCE: Lyon
Gardiner Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume 2, p.
646-7
