To the Governor of the State of Virginia:
DEAR SIR,
SHERWOOD FOREST,
January 31, 1861.
I received your communication notifying me of my appointment
by the concurrent vote of the two houses of the General Assembly, as a
commissioner to the President of the United States, with instructions
respectfully to request the President to abstain, pending the proceedings
contemplated by the action of the General Assembly, from any and all acts
calculated to produce a collision of arms between the States which have seceded
or shall secede, and the government of the United States, on the afternoon of
Monday, the 21st instant, by the mail of that day, and in disregard of a severe
state of indisposition under which I had labored for some time previous, I
resolved at all hazards to myself personally to carry out, so far as I could,
the patriotic wishes of the Legislature. By the earliest conveyance, I reached
Richmond on the evening of the succeeding day (Tuesday, 22d), and having had an
interview with your excellency and my co-commissioner, proceeded by the morning
train of cars the next day (Wednesday, 23d) for the city of Washington, which I
reached on the afternoon of the same day. I am thus particular in giving
precise dates, so that the Legislature may perceive that with all possible
promptitude and dispatch I obeyed their wishes; and also to show that I was
duly sensible of the importance of time in the whole proceeding. Immediately
after reaching Washington, I addressed a note (marked No. 1) to the President
of the United States, informing him of my arrival and asking an early hour to
be designated by him, to enable me to place him in possession of the wishes and
feelings of the Legislature of Virginia, and the instructions which, in
the form of her legislative resolves, all having direct reference to the
disturbed and painful condition of public affairs, I was desirous of laying
before him. He responded promptly by note, and left it optional with myself to
select 8 o'clock of that evening, or an early hour the next morning, for the
time of the proposed conference. My note (No. 2), for reasons therein set forth,
informed him that I would wait upon him in the morning of the ensuing day. My
note announcing my arrival, if the objects which had brought me to Washington
had any consideration in the mind of the President would, I did not doubt,
suspend any hostile movement against any seceding State in the interval of time
between its date and the hour at which I should wait upon him the next morning,
and supersede the necessity of a night visit.
On the next morning, at the hour of ten, I repaired to the
President's mansion, and met from him a warm and cordial reception. I lost no
time in handing to him your letter of appointment, attested by the seal of the
State, and legislative resolutions. He said that they were the first full
copies of the resolutions which he had seen, and after reading them he
remarked, that he considered them very important, and was good enough to add,
that being borne by myself, he should feel it his duty to make them the subject
of a special message to Congress. Either I suggested or he voluntarily
remarked, most probably the latter, that he should accompany them with a strong
recommendation to Congress, with whom, he said, rested the entire power over
the subject of war or peace, to abstain from all action of a hostile character,
until Virginia should have had a fair opportunity to exert all her efforts to
preserve the public peace and restore harmony to the Union. I said to him, that
my mission was to him; that he was commander-in-chief of the army and navy—could
regulate the movement of soldiers and ships in peace and war, and that
everything that Virginia desired was that the statu quo should be observed. I
represented to him that the people of Virginia were almost universally inclined
to peace and reconciliation. That I need not inform him of the sacrifices the
State had made for the Union in its initiation, or of her instrumentality in
the creation of the
Constitution. That her efforts to reconstruct or preserve depended for
their success on her being permitted to conduct them undisturbed by outside
collision. He replied, that he had in no measure changed his views as presented
in his annual
message; that he could give no pledges; that it was his duty to enforce the
laws, and the whole power rested with Congress. He complained that the South
had not treated him properly; that they had made unnecessary demonstration by
seizing unprotected arsenals and forts, and thus perpetrating acts of useless
bravado, which had quite as well been let alone. I suggested to him, that while
these things were, I admitted, calculated to fret and irritate the northern
mind, that he would see in them only the necessary results of popular
excitement, which, after all, worked no mischief in the end, if harmony between
the States was once more restored; that the States wherein the seizures had
been made, would account for all the public property; and that in the mean time
the agency for its preservation was only changed. He repeated his sense of the
obligations which rested upon him; could give no pledges but those contained in
his public acts, and recurred again to the proceedings of the Legislature and
his intention to send them to Congress in a special message, accompanied with a
strong recommendation to avoid the passage of any hostile legislation. I asked
if I might be permitted to see the sketch of the message, to which he
unhesitatingly replied that he would take pleasure in showing it to me next
morning. Much more occurred in the course of our interview, which lasted for an
hour and a half; all, however, relating exclusively to the above topics, and I
left him entirely satisfied with the results of my interview. The President was
frank and entirely confiding in his language and whole manner. A moment's
reflection satisfied me that if the message contained the recommendation to
Congress to abstain from hostile legislation, I was at liberty to infer a
similar determination on his part of a state of quietude.
Friday, 25.—I waited on him again the following morning, and
he lost no time in reading me so much of the sketch of the proposed message as
related to the recommendation to Congress. I suggested no change or alteration,
believing it to be amply sufficient, and I became only anxious for its
presentation to Congress. He said he should have it all prepared to be submitted
to his Cabinet on that day, and would send it in the next day. On the afternoon
of the same day—Friday, 25—I was waited upon by the Secretary of State and the
Attorney General, who stated that they had called upon me at the request of the
President, to express his regret that in consequence of the adjournment over to
Monday, he would not be able to send in his message until Monday. While in
conversation with those gentlemen, which chiefly turned on the condition of
public affairs, I was startled by the receipt of a telegraphic despatch from Judge
Robertson, my co-commissioner, dated at Charleston, South Carolina, enquiring
into the foundation of a rumor which had reached that place, that the steamship
Brooklyn, with troops, had sailed for the South from Norfolk. I immediately
handed over the despatch to the gentlemen, with the suitable enquiries. The
Attorney General said, in substance: "You know, sir, that I am attached to
the law department, and not in the way of knowing anything about it." The
Secretary of State said that he had heard and believed that the Brooklyn had
sailed with some troops, but he did not know either when she sailed or to what
point she was destined. I then said, "I hope that she has not received her
orders since my arrival in Washington." On this point the gentlemen could
give me no information, but expressed no doubt but that the President would
give me the information if requested. I excused myself to them, and immediately
withdrawing to the adjoining room, I addressed to the President note No. 3,
which Mr. Staunton, the Attorney General, kindly volunteered to bear in person,
and without loss of time, to the President. In a short time afterwards, Mr.
Staunton returned, to inform me that he had carried the note to the President's
house, but for a reason not necessary here to state, he could not see the
President, but had placed it in the hands of his servant, to be delivered at
the earliest opportunity. The reply of the President, No. 2, reached me at half
after eleven o'clock that night. In the interim, I had despatched by telegraph,
to Judge Robertson, the information I had collected, and upon the opening of
the telegraph office the next morning (Saturday), the material parts of the
President's reply relating to the sailing of the Brooklyn, viz: that she had
gone on an errand "of mercy and relief," and that she was not
destined to South Carolina. The orders for the sailing of the ship, as will be
seen, were issued before I reached Washington. After receiving the letter, and
willingly adopting the most favorable construction of its expressions, I
resolved to remain in Washington until after Monday, when the message would go
to the two houses. I listened to its reading in the Senate with pleasure, and
can only refer to the newspapers for its contents, as no copies were printed
and obtainable by me, before I left Washington, on Tuesday morning, the 29th
instant. On Monday afternoon I bade my adieu to the President in the
accompanying letters, marked No. 4, to which I received his reply, marked No.
3.
The morning newspapers contained the rumor that the
proceeding had been adopted of mounting guns on the land side of Fortress
Monroe, and in my letter I deemed it no way inappropriate to call the attention
of the President to those rumors.
Thus has terminated my mission to the President under the
legislative resolutions. I trust that the result of the Brooklyn's cruise may
terminate peacably. No intimation was given me of her having sailed in either
of my interviews with the President, and all connected with her destination
remains to me a State secret. I had no right to require to be admitted into the
inner vestibule of the Cabinet, however much I might complain should the
results prove the errand of the ship from the first to have been belligerent
and warlike.
I am, dear sir,
Respectfully and truly yours,
JOHN TYLER.
Governor LETCHER.
SOURCES: Journal
of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Virginia Begun and Held at the Capitol in
the City 0f Richmond, on Monday, the Seventh Day of January, in the Year One
Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty-One—Being The Eighty-Fifth Year Of The
Commonwealth. Extra Session, Doc. No. 13, p. 5-7; Lyon Gardiner
Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume 2, p. 587-90
