ASHEBORO, May 17th,
1861.
I have made special inquiry into the cost question against you
and the other securities of Daniel Worth—having first taken the pains to
examine the authorities.
It is decided by the Supreme Court in the case State vs.
Saunders and others, 1 Hawkes, p. 355, that the securities to an appeal bond in
a criminal case, where the judgment from which appeal was taken is confirmed,
are liable to all the State costs in the Superior Court and the Supreme
Court, excepting the prison fee. I have seen S. G. Worth this morning and
learn from him that the State Solicitor has at length given up all claims beyond
this. At the Spring Term he was authorized to demand all the costs in both
cases, and not to receive forfeitures, but to issue execution for them, unless
the whole of the costs was paid. I instructed him to disregard this
instruction and throw the responsibility on me, and he accordingly received the
amount of the forfeiture and the cost of the proceedings and to enforce them
and with the assent of the attorneys, prosecuting for the State, he claims only
what he is bound to demand according to law, to wit, the State's costs in the
Supr. and Supreme Court in the case tried, excluding prison fees. No costs are
now claimed on the case not tried, and none of defendant's costs are
cither called for and the County has made an order directing the prison fees to
be paid out of the forfeitures. The order given by your nephew is not, I
understand, for a sum sufficient to pay the costs for which you are liable as
security for the appeal to the Supreme Court.
I am filled with horror at the condition of our country.
According to my notions of Government, there is much that is wrong on both
sides. The Abolitionists of the Free States ought not to have agitated the
slavery question at all, even conceding that their feeling is right. It only
tends to make the treatment of slaves more vigorous and to encourage bitterness
between the two sections. When it was seized upon as a party question it was
easy to see it must soon become sectional and that is purely sectional. have
always regarded the dissolution of the Union as the greatest misfortune which
could befall the whole nation and the whole human race. Hence I have abhorred
the agitation of the slavery question as tending to this result. Acting on that
conviction I have used all the efforts in my power to stay what I regarded as
the madness of both sections, and in the immediate sphere of my influence have
impressed my views upon others. My immediate constituents sustained me with
greater unanimity than did the constituents of any other representative. I was
the first public man in the State to call on the people to vote down the
Convention on the 28th Feb., on the ground that the calling of it would tend to
a dissolution of the Union. Everybody attributed to me a larger share of the
credit or discredit of defeating the call of a Convention than to any other man
in the State. I regarded the result in N. C. and Tenn. as arresting the march
of madness. Union men had gained strength up to the proclamation of Lincoln. If
he had withdrawn the garrison of Fort Sumter on the principle of a military
necessity and in obedience in what seemed to be the will of Congress in
refusing to pass the force bill, this State and Tenn. and the other slave
States which had not passed the ordinance of Secession, would have stood up for
the Union. In the feverish state of the popular mind, if he be a man of good
sense, he knew he would crush the Union men in the Slave States by the policy
he adopted. All of 118 who had stood by the Union, felt that he had abandoned
us and surrendered us to the tender mercies of Democracy & the Devil. He
must have known that he was letting loose on us a torrent to which we could
oppose no resistance. It may be said, theoretically, that this should not have
been the effect. Statesmen should have common sense. All sensible men knew it
would be the effect. We are still at a loss to determine whether he is an old
goose, as well as each of his advisers, thinking to preserve the Union by his
course, or whether he became apprehensive that the Union men were about to gain
strength enough in the South to stay Secession and he desired to drive us all
into rebellion, in order to make a crusade against slavery and desolate our
section. In the former case he is a fool:—in the latter—a devil. He could have
adopted no policy so effectual to destroy the Union. Since the issue of that
great proclamation, it is unsafe for a Union man in even N. C. to own he is for
the Union. The feeling is to resist to the death. Union men feel that just as
they had got so they could stand on their legs, Lincoln had heartlessly turned
them over to the mercy of their enemies. We feel that his co-operation with the
Secessionists left us no alternative but to take arms against our neighbors, or
to defend ourself against his aggression.
I am still a Union man, but for military resistance to
Lincoln, believing that Lincoln and his cabinet have acted on their mistaken
impression that their policy was the best for the preservation of the Union,
and that they do not intend to proclaim servile insurrection. If the latter is
the design the South can be conquered only by extermination. If his purpose be,
as le says, to respect property and discountenance rebellion or insurrection
among our servile population, and our people become satisfied of this, many of
our people will not willingly take arms.
I see no hope of any good and stable government except in
the United government we are pulling down. It can not be united by
war. If peace be immediately made, it will soon re-unite, with an anti-secession
clause.
Write me again soon. The Quakers here will not believe your
statements as to your Quakers volunteering and the floating of the Stars and
Stripes over a Quaker Church.
SOURCE: J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton,
Editor, The Correspondence of Jonathan Worth, Volume 1, p. 145-8
