Diary of Henry Greville: Wednesday, February 20, 1861

London.—I came here yesterday for the levee to-day. I found a letter from Naples from Lady Holland written before the fall of Gaeta, giving a satisfactory account of the state of affairs there. They are beginning public works and various improvements to the town.

From Paris they write that the King of Naples excites the warmest interest there in all classes, and that the army and navy are all in his favour, and he is looked upon as ‘le digne petit fils de Henri IV.,’ and it is fervently hoped that Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi may go together to the infernal regions—so differently do people look on things on opposite sides of the Channel.

The Italian Parliament was opened by Victor Emmanuel in person on Monday. His speech was

very adroit, and in some degree reassuring to the friends of peace.

The American Secession seems to be almost accomplished, and any compromise to be more and more hopeless. A letter received from Fanny Kemble a short time ago (January 17) says:

I think the secesssion of the Southern States sooner or later inevitable, and I devoutly hope that the cowards on all sides will not be able to poultice up the festering sore which must break out again, and will only have gangrened the whole body of this nation still deeper. Matters have gone so far with South Carolina, that she has seceded-firing upon United States vessels entering Charlestown Harbour is a very pretty intimation of their animus, and it is, moreover, the avowed object of the Southern politicians to embroil some portion of the Slave States so thoroughly with the Federal Government, that all compromise shall be impossible, and that the Southern States least inclined to secede (and there are many, all the border ones, whose interest is decidedly opposed to secession), shall be compelled, as a point of honour, to throw in their lot with the seceders against the North. The election of Lincoln is really and truly a mere pretext; the match that has fired the train long ago prepared for exploding. When I first came to this country, it was convulsed with the threatened secession of South Carolina on the tariff question. Old Andrew Jackson was President then, and compelled her to adhere to her allegiance; but in a letter to a friend he wrote that the South was bent upon a separation, and sooner or later would accomplish it upon one pretext or another; he even foretold it would be on that of the slavery question.

‘The fact is, the Southern States see and feel very bitterly the immense preponderance of wealth, activity, industry, intelligence, and prosperity of the North. They neither see nor believe what is the truth, that slavery, and nothing else, is the cause of their inferiority in all these particulars, and are now acting upon the insane belief that separation from the bond (which alone preserves them in their present state of comparative safety and prosperity) of the Union will turn the scale of national importance in their favour. Meantime they are rushing into an abyss of danger and difficulty—they are on the very verge of civil war. All good men throughout the country look with grief and horror upon the mad career on which they are entering. In the North, many would give up almost everything to avert the horrors of bloodshed on the land, by the hands of Americans fighting against each other. In the South, a majority would willingly endure anything rather than such a result, but they are panic-stricken under a fierce and inexorable reign of terror by which the infatuated men bent upon dividing the country compel them to join the Southern movement. It is hideous and piteous to see the gulf of ruin dug by their own folly and wickedness under the towering fabric of that material prosperity with which, even as it were yesterday, they amazed the world! For my own part, I believe it is not only inevitable, but desirable, that the South should separate from the North. Slave-holding produces a peculiar character which has nothing in common with a Christian republic founded by Englishmen of the eighteenth century.

The Southerners are fond of calling themselves the Chivalry of the South, and verily they are as ignorant, insolent, barbarous, and brutal as any ironclad robbers of the middle ages. They are, in fact, a remnant of feudalism and barbarism, maintaining itself with infinite difficulty by the side of the talent and most powerful development of commercial civilisation. I believe the fellowship to be henceforth impossible; I hope to God it will prove so, for then the Slave States will hasten down into a state of social and political degradation, such that the whole population will abandon them; they will become a wilderness of fertile land, peopled with black savages; the northern men will then reconquer them, and for ever abolish slavery on the continent! This is my theory.'

SOURCE: Alice Countess of Stratford, Leaves from the Diary of Henry Greville: 1857-1861, p. 350-3

Diary of Henry Greville: Saturday, March 30, 1861

In a letter I received a few days ago from Fanny Kemble from New York, she says: I suppose if I had been in Boston, I should have heard something like sorrow and mortification expressed for the present disastrous state of the country, but though there is a good deal of excited curiosity here, and commencement of financial anxiety, there does not appear to me to be one particle of genuine patriotic feeling.

The fact is, the material prosperity of the nation has made the people base. They want, and God will send it to them, the salvation of adversity. Olmsted, whose books, by the bye, are the best, the only good authority about the Slave States, dined with me at Mr. Field's the other day, and said the Southern people were really nothing but a collection of children and savages. He, and indeed everybody, the Southerners themselves, consider the secession, if it produces civil war, as the inevitable ruin of the South, and a good deal of the same conviction has hitherto tempered the anger of the North at the folly of their suicidal proceedings, and though one of the oldest and wealthiest of the Boston merchants said the other day (speaking of the Cotton States), "Thank God they are gone, pray that they may never come back," and so speaking spoke the mind of the majority of Massachusetts men, nobody can doubt what one of the Southern men openly declared in the Peace Convention, that civil war would be utter ruin to them, because of their slaves.

SOURCE: Alice Countess of Stratford, Leaves from the Diary of Henry Greville: 1857-1861, p. 364-5

Julia Gardiner Tyler to Julianna MacLachlan Gardiner, April 18, 1861

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.

Your affectionate daughter,

Julia.

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!

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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

Speech of Ralph Waldo Emerson,* Saturday Evening, November 18, 1859

MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: I share the sympathy and sorrow which have brought us together. Gentlemen who have preceded me have well said that no wall of separation could here exist. This commanding event, which has brought us together—the sequel of which has brought us together, eclipses all others which have occurred for a long time in our history, and I am very glad to see that this sudden interest in the hero of Harper's Ferry has provoked an extreme curiosity in all parts of the Republic, in regard to the details of his history. Every anecdote is eagerly sought, and I do not wonder that gentlemen find traits of relation readily between him and themselves. One finds a relation in the church, another in the profession, another in the place of his birth. He was happily a representative of the American Republic. Captain John Brown is a farmer, the fifth in descent from Peter Brown, who came to Plymouth in the Mayflower, in 1620.¹ All the six have been farmers. His grandfather, of Simsbury, in Connecticut, was a captain in the Revolution.² His father, largely interested as a raiser of stock, became a contractor to supply the army with beef, in the war of 1812, and our Captain John Brown, then a boy, with his father, was present, and witnessed the surrender of General Hull.³ He cherishes a great respect for his father, as a man of strong character, and his respect is probably just. For himself, he is so transparent that all men see him through. He is a man to make friends wherever on earth courage and integrity are esteemed—(applause)—the rarest of heroes, a pure idealist, with no by-ends of his own. Many of you have seen him, and every one who has heard him speak has been impressed alike by his simple, artless goodness, joined with his sublime courage. He joins that perfect Puritan faith which brought his fifth ancestor to Plymouth Rock, with his grandfather's ardor in the Revolution. He believes in two articles—two instruments shall I say?—the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence; (applause) and he used this expression in conversation here concerning them, "Better that a whole generation of men, women, and children should pass away by a violent death, than that one word of either should be violated in this country." There is a Unionist—there is a strict constructionist for you! (Applause and laughter.) He believes in the Union of the States, and he conceives that the only obstruction to the Union is Slavery, and for that reason, as a patriot, he works for its abolition. The Governor of Virginia has pronounced his eulogy in a manner that discredits the moderation of our timid parties. His own speeches to the court have interested the nation in him. What magnanimity, and what innocent pleading, as of childhood! You remember his words “If I had interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or any of their friends, parents, wives, or children, it would all have been right. No man in this court would have thought it a crime. But I believe that to have interfered as I have done, for the despised poor, I have done no wrong, but right."

It is easy to see what a favorite he will be with history, which plays such pranks with temporary reputations. Nothing can resist the sympathy which all elevated minds must feel with Brown, and through them the whole civilized world; and, if he must suffer, he must drag official gentlemen into an immortality most undesirable, and of which they have already some disagreeable forebodings. (Applause.) Indeed, it is the reductio ad absurdum of Slavery, when the Governor of Virginia is forced to hang a man whom he declares to be a man of the most integrity, truthfulness, and courage he has ever met. Is that the kind of man the gallows is built for? It were bold to affirm that there is within that broad Commonwealth, at this moment, another citizen as worthy to live, and as deserving of all public and private honor, as this poor prisoner.

But we are here to think of relief for the family of John Brown. To my eyes, that family looks very large and very needy of relief. It comprises his brave fellow-sufferers in the Charlestown jail; the fugitives still hunted in the mountains of Virginia and Pennsylvania; the sympathizers with him in all the States; and I may say, almost every man who loves the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence, like him, and who sees what a tiger's thirst threatens him in the malignity of public sentiment in the Slave States. It seems to me that a common feeling joins the people of Massachusetts with him. I said John Brown was an idealist. He believed in his ideas to that extent that he existed to put them all into action; he said "he did not believe in moral suasion; he believed in putting the thing through." (Applause.) He saw how deceptive the forms are. We fancy, in Massachusetts, that we are free; yet it seems the Government is quite unreliable. Great wealth,—great population, men of talent in the Executive, on the Bench,—all the forms right, and yet, life and freedom are not safe. Why? Because the Judges rely on the forms, and do not, like John Brown, use their eyes to see the fact behind the forms.

They assume that the United States can protect its witness or its prisoner. And, in Massachusetts, that is true, but the moment he is carried out of the bounds of Massachusetts, the United States, it is notorious, afford no protection at all; the Government, the Judges, are an envenomed party, and give such protection as they give in Utah to honest citizens, or in Kansas; such protection as they gave to their own Commodore Paulding, when he was simple enough to mistake the formal instructions of his Government for their real meaning. (Applause.) The State Judges fear collision between their two allegiances; but there are worse evils than collision; namely, the doing substantial injustice. A good man will see that the use of a Judge is to secure good government, and where the citizen's weal is imperilled by abuse of the Federal power, to use that arm which can secure it, viz., the local government. Had that been done on certain calamitous occasions, we should not have seen the honor of Massachusetts trailed in the dust, stained to all ages, once and again, by the ill-timed formalism of a venerable Bench. If Judges cannot find law enough to maintain the sovereignty of the State, and to protect the life and freedom of every inhabitant not a criminal, it is idle to compliment them as learned and venerable. What avails their learning or veneration? At a pinch, they are of no more use than idiots. After the mischance they wring their hands, but they had better never have been born. A Vermont Judge Hutchinson, who has the Declaration of Independence in his heart, a Wisconsin Judge, who knows that laws are for the protection of citizens against kidnappers, is worth a court house full of lawyers so idolatrous of forms as to let go the substance. Is any man in Massachusetts so simple as to believe that when a United States Court in Virginia, now, in its present reign of terror, sends to Connecticut, or New York, or Massachusetts, for a witness, it wants him for a witness? No; it wants him for a party; it wants him for meat to slaughter and eat. And your habeas corpus is, in any way in which it has been, or, I fear, is likely to be used, a nuisance, and not a protection; for it takes away his right reliance on himself, and the natural assistance of his friends and fellow-citizens, by offering him a form which is a piece of paper. But I am detaining the meeting on matters which others understand better. I hope, then, that in administering relief to John Brown's family, we shall remember all those whom his fate concerns, all who are in sympathy with him, and not forget to aid him in the best way, by securing freedom and independence in Massachusetts.

R. W. Emerson.

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*Delivered in Tremont Temple, on Saturday evening, November 18, at a meeting held for the relief of the family of John Brown.

¹ Blog Editor’s Note: This statement is inaccurate. Mayflower Passenger Peter Brown, had four documented children, by his first wife Martha he had two daughters, Mary and Priscilla, and by his second wife Mary he had a daughter, Rebecca, and a child of unidentified sex born before 1633 and had died by 1647. Mary married Ephraim Tinkham and by him had nine children, Priscilla married William Allen, they had no known children, and Rebecca married William Snow and had eight children. Neither the Tinkham nor Snow surnames appear in John Brown’s early New England ancestry, Therefore John Brown could not have been a descendant of Mayflower passenger Peter Brown. See Robert S. Wakefield, Editor, Mayflower Families Through Five Generations, Vol. 7: Peter Brown, Second Edition, p. 3-8 & Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, Immigrants to New England 1620-1633, Vol. 1, p.259-61.

² Blog Editor’s Note: John Brown’s paternal grandfather, John Brown, was a Captain in the Eighth Company, Eighteenth Regiment of Connecticut Militia during the Revolutionary War and died while on duty in New York. His maternal grandfather, Gideon Mills was a Minute Man at the Lexington Alarm and subsequently became a Lieutenant of the Connecticut Militia during the Revolutionary War. See Louise Pearsons Dolliver, Historian General, Lineage Book of the Charter Members of the Daughters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Vol. 22, p. 92 and Elizabeth Gadsby, Historian General, Lineage Book National Society of the Daughters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Vol. 27, p. 198-9

³ Blog Editor's Note: “In the War of 1812, Owen Brown contracted to furnish beef to Hull's army, which with his boy John he followed to or near Detroit. Though John was but twelve years old, in after years he recalled very distinctly the incidents of the long march, the camp life of the soldiers and the attitude of the subordinate officers toward their commander. From conversations that he overheard he concluded that they were not very loyal to General Hull. He remembered especially General Lewis Cass, then a captain, and General Duncan McArthur. As late as 1857 he referred to conversations between the two and among other officers that should have branded them as mutineers. How much of this has foundation in fact and how much is due to erroneous youthful impression, must of course remain a matter of conjecture.” See Fred J. Heer, Publisher, Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, Vol. 30, p. 218

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, p. 67-71;

Northern Sentiment

The following sweet morsel of her fierce defiance and blustering braggadocio appears in the Philadelphia Transcript, under the head of “Crush the Traitors.” It will be perused with more of pity than of anger toward the poor wretches whose ignorance would counsel its indorsement:

The Point has been reached where forbearance is a crime against our country. The seceding States, for five months past, have been perpetrating a continual series of outrages against the Constitution, against the common courtesy of nations and states, against all public decency and right. Whatever may have been their complaints or wrongs, they have resorted, not to any remedy of them, but to disgraceful violence, robbery, murder and treachery. They have spurned all offers of conciliation or adjustment; they have inaugurated wholesale schemes of revolution; they have made war upon the Union, simply because it attempted to victual its starving soldiers, and they have attacked and murdered volunteer troops peacefully marching to defend the capital. Virginia and Maryland are not out of the Union, and yet, instigated and applauded by the Cotton States, they commit monstrous acts of avowed treason. Baltimore has capped the climax by its cowardly assault upon unarmed men, and by its brutal murder of many of them.

Now the time has come to end all this. The slaveholding States must be taught a lesson that will never be forgotten—a lesson of fire and blood. Their threats, bluster, arrogance, and outrages must be forever terminated. They must be made to feel that they cannot and dare not arrest and assault our Union and our flag. They are as weak as they are insolent. The gigantic strength, the superior civilization, and the boundless resources of the free States are able to carry desolation from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. The whole North, from Maine to California, although usually “slow to wrath,” patient and forbearing, is at last fearlessly aroused. The descendants of the heroes of Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Brandywine, Tippecanoe, Chippawa, and Fort Meigs, are flying to arms. Presently the continent will resound under the stern and steady tramp of unprecedented myriads of the free laborers and mechanics of the North.

Let them finish their enterprise. Let them plant the stars, stripes, and eagles of an indissoluble Republic on the steeples of Richmond, Charleston and New Orleans. Let the traitor States be starved out by blockade and given to the swords and bayonets of stalwart freemen. No matter at what cost of treasure, blood and suffering, the slaveholding States must be scourged into decency, good behavior and subjection.

The cannon is now the sacred instrument of union, justice, and liberty. The Union heretofore has been a smiling angel of benignity. Now it must be an angel of death, scattering terror and destruction among its enemies. If necessary, myriads of Southern lives must be taken, Southern bodies given to the buzzards, Southern fields consigned to sterility, and Southern towns surrendered to the flames. Our flag must wave in triumph, though it float over seared and blackened expanses, over the ruins of razed cities. Our Union must be maintained, and our Constitution respected, and the supremacy of Federal law vindicated, if it requires armies of millions of men.

So let no true man shrink or flinch. All duties, all occasions must be postponed, until the cannon and the musket have restored decency to the South, and peace and order to our country.

Our only desire is that just such fellows as the valorous editor of the Transcript may be sent on the above delightful “enterprise.”

SOURCES: “Northern Sentiment,” The Memphis Daily Appeal, Memphis, Tennessee, Thursday, May 2, 1861, p. 1; "Specimens of Northern Civilization," Nashville Union and American, Nashville, Tennessee, May 22, 1861, p. 2.

Isaac Edward Holmes* to Senator Robert M. T. Hunter, June 8, 1855

CHARLESTON, [S. C.], 8th June, 1855.

MY DEAR HUNTER: Some weeks since I rec[eive]d y[ou]r letter and thank you for y[ou]r efforts in behalf of my brother. I seldom ask anything and rather opine, that my last request is made. I sincerely congratulate you on the success of the Virginia Election. I feared the result, and believe the victory truly auspicious. If the Know Nothings had succeeded, if the Frontier State of the Southern Confederacy had "given-way" our institutions would have been placed in great hazard; as it is, "They are by no means safe." Fanaticism never goes-back and for the first time in our history, abolitionism has the ascendant in Congress.

I see that Senator Wilson has declared, That henceforth no Slave owner, or pro-slavery man shall be President. As the Democratic party are a minority in the North, and as the entire South will most probably act as one man in the next Election, it is essential that we have a Southern man for our Candidate. The sooner we make up the Issue, the better. If we are to be in a hopeless minority, and the Slave States to remain "in statu quo," We must share the fate of the British West Indies. Not only will slavery be abolish[e]d in the District, but in the Territories. Not only additional Slave States be excluded, but free ones made Ad Libitum until the constitution is altered and the entire labour of the South be destroyed. This cant be termed speculation. The effect is as sure as the result of any cause can be. It is my sincere desire that the Union may be saved, but its salvation depends upon the next Presidential Canvass. Virginia must lead off. There should commence an active correspondence between the politicians of the Old Dominion and the Leaders of the Northern Democracy. Before we go into a Caucus we should have a distinct understanding upon all the leading points. Otherwise we should have only a Southern Caucus, irrespective of parties, and proceed to an ulterior organization. I hope Wise may pursue the true course, and "entrenous," I hope that his ambition may not be so stimulated by his late Triumph as to aspire to the purple. Virginia ought to give the President. Her position at this time is potential, and amongst her own people there should be entire unanimity before going into Caucus. Remember that the nominating Caucus will meet during the next Session of Congress, not a Twelve month hence. I am not a politician, but I deem the times so pregnant, that, if alive next Winter, my efforts shall be given to prepare the Southern mind for the Presidential Election. South Carolina, whilst she keeps in the rear of Virginia, must nevertheless be represented in the Caucus. She must no longer be isolated. Thank God, the Cuba question seems settled for awhile. It promised much distraction, and I employed my pen, for the first time these many years, in the endeavor to show the Southern States that the acquisition of Cuba was not to their benefit. One of my pieces or letters was transferred to the National Intelligence[r]. I am writing you from the sick Chamber of Mrs. Holmes who has for a long period been confin[e]d to her room. Alas with little prospect of a recovery. I hope that y[ou]r own family are well.

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* A Representative in Congress from South Carolina, 1839-1851.

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), p. 164-5

John Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, April 16, 1861

RICHMOND, April 16, 1861.

Well, dearest, your letter received this morning placed me much at ease relative to the dear children. I hope you will still keep an eye upon them, and not suffer them to expose themselves to the weather. Our noble boys are of high spirit, and if God spares them, I think they will reflect honor on our names.

The prospects now are that we shall have war, and a trying one. The battle at Charleston has aroused the whole North. I fear that division no longer exists in their ranks, and that they will break upon the South with an immense force. Virginia will deserve much credit for boldness, if in face of all this, in debt and without disciplined, troops, she throws herself into the melée, taking upon trust the action of the Border slave-States; but events press so rapidly on each others heels that we have, I think, no alternative. Submission or resistance is only left us. My hope is that the Border States will follow speedily our lead. If so, all will be safe. The convention is sitting with closed doors. Another day may decide our course. To-morrow night is fixed for a great torch-light procession and illumination for the battle at Charleston. If to this is added an ordinance of secession, there will be an immense outburst. I wish the boys could be here. But do not understand me as saying an ordinance will be passed. On the contrary, it will be in doubt until the vote. General Scott has resigned. It is as I always thought it would be. He comes to offer his sword to Virginia. I propose to offer suitable resolutions. We learn that the government has sent five hundred troops to the navy yard at Portsmouth.

These are dark times, dearest, and I think only of you and our little ones. But I trust in that same Providence that protected our fathers. These rascals who hold power leave us no alternative. I shall vote secession, and prefer to encounter any hazard to degrading Virginia. If the ordinance passes, it is to be submitted to the people.

Love and kisses to all.

Always your devoted,

J. TYLER.

After 8:30 P. M.—Just adjourned without taking the question.

SOURCE: Lyon Gardiner Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume 2, p. 640

Congressman Horace Mann to Samuel Downer, August 21, 1850

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21, 1850.

S. DOWNER, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR,—The only question on which the sincere friends of freedom here have any doubt is the Texas Boundary Bill. Most of us, I think, will go against this as it now is; but suppose it could be amended so as to conform its northern line to that of the Compromise Bill, and suppose also we could strike out the provision which secures the right to Texas to bring forth four slave States, what would then be your opinion about suffering it to pass, or helping to pass it? This boundary properly settled, I think we could count upon all the rest as free territory.

I see the "New-Bedford Standard," a Democratic Free-soil paper, comes out for the boundary as it is. So does the "Nantucket Inquirer." So, I am told, does the "Ploughman," a neutral paper. Doubtless the Whig papers will generally come out for it.

There is to be a competition between the old Hunkers of both parties for Southern support. On this Texan boundary question, I prophesy they will carry the country with them. On the Territorial questions, country or no country, I will never go with them. Either no Territorial governments, or governments with the Wilmot Proviso in them.

Please give me, as soon as you can, your opinion on the boundary matter, and I shall prepare myself for doing what, under all the circumstances, seems to be best for the cause.

Your last letter was very gratifying. You seem to me to take the most just, practical, as well as theoretical view of things.

In great haste, very truly yours,

HORACE MANN.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 317

Congressman Horace Mann, July 21, 1850

July 21. Four of the seven members who compose the cabinet are from the slaveholding States: so, if we consider Mr. Webster a proslavery man, they have five out of seven. But one thing is very observable, though four are from the slaveholding States, yet one is from Missouri, one from Kentucky, one from Maryland, and one from North Carolina. All these are just south of Mason and Dixon's line; and they are from the States that hold slavery in its more mitigated forms, and not one of them is an intense proslavery State. The men selected are, I suppose, moderate men, comparatively, on this subject. Therefore, though the South have no confidence in Mr. Webster as an honest man, yet his late change of position on this subject renders him less offensive to the extreme men, and more acceptable to the moderate men.

If Mr. Fillmore has taken this course to conciliate the South in the first instance, and, with his Cabinet, eventually to subserve Northern feeling on this subject of slavery, then the whole may eventuate well; but if it is a concession to the South, on the surface, to be followed by an adoption of their views as to slavery ultimately, then it deserves all reprobation. For myself, I shall not give my confidence to this Administration, on this point, until it earns it. When it does earn it, then, as a matter of justice, I shall no longer withhold it; though, in the honesty of one of the members composing it, I have not, and probably never shall have, the slightest confidence. I therefore await developments. It has proved, so far, a godsend to Mr. Webster; for I do not believe he could have withstood the opposition against him in Massachusetts. Now, instead of being defeated, he escapes from the conflict. Still I can have no confidence in his ultimate success; for no one can safely prophesy success of a dishonest man.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 308-9

Edmund W. Hubard* to Senator Robert M. T. Hunter, May 8, 1852

SARATOGA, [VA.], May 8th, 1852.

DEAR HUNTER: I received your very able and valuable report on “a change in the coinage,” and was highly delighted with this, and other evidences contained in the proceedings of the Senate of the manner, as well as distinguished talents with which you discharge the various duties of your high station. I have often said, that intellectually as well as in points of character, I thought you more resembled Mr. Madison than any other person. In some respects I think you will prove his superior. Madison in the abstract was sound, but he lacked either the elevation of character or the firmness of purpose to carry out his convictions. He gave to expediency what was due to principle. Without going beyond my candid convictions I may add, that I deem you will prove him superior in this respect. If the health of my Family will permit I wish to attend the Baltimore Convention.

For various reasons I decidedly prefer Buchanan. In our section as far as I can learn he is the choice of more than 40 to 1. In our District Convention we thought it improper to express our preference or instruct our Delegates. But we adopted a resolution approving of the two thirds rule in making our presidential nomination. As an evidence of fairness, delegates were selected without reference to their personal preferences. All that was desired was that the popular will would be reflected, let that be as it might. Thos. S. Bocock was appointed and Wm. C. Flournoy and others not agreeing with a decided majority. I might add not with one in 20 in the District Convention. We are dead against Genl. Cass. He cannot be elected. We will take any other Democrat rather than him. He cannot carry V[irginia. Many leading Democrats declare they will not vote for him if nominated. He stands in the same relation to our party that Genl. Scott does to the Whig. He has talents, but with all is deemed more of a demagogue than statesman. His strong proclivity to ride both sides of a sapling argues unsoundness or over ambition—either way he is not trust worthy. Besides he has had his day. The Democrats will settle down in favor both of one Canvass and the one term principle for the Presidency. Besides I am opposed to taking Senatorial Candidates and wish the Baltimore Convention to adopt a resolution excluding all holding office, from the field of selection. We must go to private life positions for our candidates for President and vice too. If we go to Congress for our candidates as well as for instructions as to whom to cast our votes, why Congress will soon absorb all the powers as well as all the honors of our republic. This policy unless averted will corrupt and revolutionize our government. The Executive must in inception, election, and action be distinct from Congress. Let the Congress indicate Candidates, which is tantamount to an election, the next step will be for the President to humble himself to his real master. Thus the judiciary will also fall under the influence of Congress. Then a congressional majority will decide and continue the fate of the country. I am opposed to all this. I want the President in all respects independent of both branches of Congress. The country people are daily becoming more disgusted with Congressional President making. That man will stand highest in the public estimation who keeps above all such extra official dictation. While the South held all the high honors, in truth got all the benefits of our government, they have fattened and grown strong upon the substantials, while we are starving and growing weak upon honors. Now I am for a change. Give me sound and reliable Northern or free State men, and so far as I am concerned they may enjoy all the honors. We want the real solid benefits of government and if they have the honors, it will be the most powerful motive with their aspirants on both sides to keep down the slavery agitation and also to so make the machinery of government as to rebuild the south. I look upon high honors as incompatible with sectional aggrandizement. We cannot get both at once. When the south held the Posts of honor, she had to throw all the crumbs of government to conciliate distant support. Now give the free States the honors and then they will do justice to gain our confidence and support, for without the slave state vote in Congress no Executive can honorably or properly administer the government.

I had rather see Buchanan, Marcy, or Douglas, or Dallas, or R[ichard] Rush by a great deal than Cass, under the latter [I] look upon our defeat as certain. With either of the others we may succeed. Cass is too much mixed up with all this Kossuth movement, and too strongly inclined to elevate himself not only above all our Diplomats, but above the wise policy upon foreign affairs of Washington and Jefferson to be trusted at this juncture. I look upon our Foreign relations at this time, as the most important point to guard in making our selection of candidates. Democratic measures are in the general to obtain either under a Whig or Democratic rule. But justice to the slave states, and a wise and peaceful Foreign policy is what we need. On neither of these points am I willing to confide in Cass. As for the Union and the upstart constitutional expounders from Tennessee, they had better put things in the ascendant at home, before they assume the leadership for the Union. That is either a Whig State, or else the least sound of any of the Democratic slave states. The Union is a high toned Federal organ but unlike other Federal papers, it does not seem to be aware that it is so. Now the Democratic editor from Tennessee is but. little short of our former Globe editors from Kentucky. What one did for knavery, the other is doing for folly. I am opposed to being doctrinated by such chaps from the New States. The Union was clearly for Cass from the start, and all the time. Genl. Cass on a recent occasion went out of his way to laud Genl. Jackson and especially his proclamation. He is the advocate of compulsory democracy, and dead against the voluntary system. He would establish the inquisition, if the Union would suggest it, or the alien and sedition laws. Should he be elected the country might look out for the most high handed measures, all proved by the editor of the Union to be in accordance with the doctrines of Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson. May the Lord deliver our party from the hands of the quacks of Tennessee and Michigan.

To change the subject, I stick closely to my planting and farming, take no part except to vote in politics. We have a son and daughter which I shall train up for a match for some of your children. You and lady are as great favorites with my wife as your humble servant, and she often says she is in favor of Mr. Hunter over all others for the presidency. Of all things we would be most happy to see you and Mrs. H. and all the under fry here. The South Side Railroad passes by me as near as Farmville twelve miles distant. In about twelve months it will be open to Farmville and a few more months to Lynchburg. Then, my dear sir, there will be no valid excuse for your not visiting this part of the state. If you will come, I will take, or go with you any where here abouts. Pray give my best respects to Judge Butler, Atchison, Douglas and Mason and believe me as ever with highest regard and consideration.

_______________

* Representative in Congress from Virginia, 1841-1847; resided at Curdsville, Buckingham County.

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), p. 140-2

Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana MacLachlan Gardiner, February 13, 1861

BROWN'S HOTEL, WASHINGTON, February 13, 1861.

I have a moment to myself just before tea, and I may have time to write you in haste something of the doings here. Since I last wrote, I have not been allowed a moment's leisure. When within the hotel it has been an incessant stream of company, and then I have had visits to return, the Capitol to visit, etc., etc. Last night I attended, with the President, the party of Senator Douglas, and I met in the throng my old friend, Mrs. Dixon, who, by the way, looked so well that the President thought her the handsomest person in the room. She had early called, but I was out, as was the case with her when I called. She was, of course, charmed to meet me again. We are all the time surrounded, and had greetings from old, and introductions to new acquaintances without number. People turned up, and recalled themselves to me that I certainly never expected to have met again. I saw and shook hands with two Messrs. Griswold. Mr. Bancroft (the historian) claimed relationship with me through the Chandlers, who married a Miss Gardiner, of Gardiner's Island. I paraded the rooms with the handsomest man here, Governor Morehead, of Kentucky—one of the best likenesses of Papa you ever saw in appearance, voice, laugh, and manner. I suppose I may conclude that I looked quite well. No attempts at entertainments have succeeded before, I was told, this winter, and to the hopes that are placed upon the efforts of this Peace Convention is to be attributed the success of this.

People are catching at straws as a relief to their pressing anxieties, and look to the Peace Commissioners, as if they possessed some divine power to restore order and harmony. Here you can realize more than anywhere else the distracted state of the country. In the Peace Conference a committee are engaged (one from each State) in the preparation of a plan of adjustment, and when they report, which will be on Friday, the end I suppose can be foreseen. In the meantime all is suspense, from the President down. The New York and Massachusetts delegation will no doubt perform all the mischief they can; and it may be, will defeat this patriotic effort at pacification. But whether it succeeds or not, Virginia will have sustained her reputation, and in the latter event will retire with dignity from the field to join without loss of time her more Southern sisters; the rest of the slave Border States will follow her lead, and very likely she will be able to draw off, which would be glorious, a couple of Northern States. It is to be hoped that this state of suspense, which is bringing disaster to trade everywhere, will soon be removed in one way or another.

The President has hundreds of letters of the enclosed description, which I enclose you because it is from Mr. Beeckman's son-in-law.

Mr. Buchanan (the President) spent the evening in our parlor evening before last. I suppose it is the first visit he has paid since being the nation's chief. He first wrote the President a letter full of gratitude for the relief he had afforded him in probably preventing, through his influence at Charleston, the attack on Fort Sumter. Miss Lane and Miss Ellis called upon me yesterday. If the President is detained here indefinitely, I shall run home. I want to be with my children. Probably I shall go on Friday, unless I hear from home in the meantime to my satisfaction. Old Mrs. Hilliard, of Troy, called upon me this morning; she spoke of Miss Mary Gardiner, of Gardiner's Island, having been at her school. Mrs. Catron is quite sick; but I must conclude. I have so much to say of persons and events, and no time to say it in. . . . With love to all.

SOURCE: Lyon Gardiner Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume 2, p. 612-3

Diary of Gideon Welles: Saturday, February 10, 1866

Was last night at a loud-heralded and large party given by Marquis Montholon, the French Minister. Am inclined to believe there was something political as well as social in the demonstration. No similar party has been given by the French Minister for five years.

The Naval Appropriation Bill has been before the House this week, when demagogues of small pattern exhibited their eminent incapacity and unfitness for legislation. It is a misfortune that such persons as Washburne and Ingersoll of Illinois and others are intrusted with important duties. Important and essential appropriations for the navy yards at Norfolk and Pensacola were stricken out, because they are in the South; in Boston because it is a wealthy community. Without knowledge, general or specific, the petty demagogues manifest their regard for the public interest and their economical views, by making no appropriations, or as few as possible for the Navy, regardless of what is essential. "We have now Navy enough to thrash England and France," said one of these small Representatives in his ignorance; therefore [they] vote no more money for navy yards, especially none in the Southern States.

Sumner made me his usual weekly visit this P.M. He is as earnest and confident as ever, probably not without reason. Says they are solidifying in Congress and will set aside the President's policy. I inquired if he really thought Massachusetts could govern Georgia better than Georgia could govern herself, for that was the kernel of the question: Can the people govern themselves? He could not otherwise than say Massachusetts could do better for them than they had done for themselves. When I said every State and people must form its own laws and government; that the whole social, industrial, political, and civil structure was to be reconstructed in the Slave States; that the elements there must work out their own condition, and that Massachusetts could not do this for them, he did not controvert farther than to say we can instruct them and ought to do it, that he had letters showing a dreadful state of things South, that the colored people were suffering beyond anything they had ever endured in the days of slavery. I told him I had little doubt of it; I had expected this as the first result of emancipation. Both whites and blacks in the Slave States were to pass through a terrible ordeal, and it was a most grievous and melancholy thing to me to witness the spirit manifested towards the whites of the South who were thus afflicted. Left to themselves, they have great suffering and hardship, without having their troubles increased by any oppressive acts from abroad.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 430-1

Congressman Horace Mann, March 13, 1850

MARCH 13, 1850.

The hallucination that seizes the South on the subject of slavery, is, indeed, enough to excite our compassion; but an excuse of their conduct to themselves on this ground, would, perhaps, enrage them more than any thing else. I would be willing to offer them any pecuniary indemnity which they might desire. Indeed, I had thought of bringing forward some such idea in my speech; but I feared they would only scout it.

I do not think Mr. Webster can be honest in the views expressed in his speech. I would struggle against a belief in his treachery to the last minute; but this speech is in flagrant violation of all that he has ever said before.

You are in an error in supposing that the exclusion of slavery from the Territories will affect the growth of cotton or rice unfavorably. Slaves are in great demand now for the cotton and rice fields. No production of the Territories would come in competition with their great staples. It is a fear of losing the balance of power, as they call it; and no doubt, in some cases, a fear that this is only a beginning of a war upon slavery in the States themselves. On this latter point, they will not be pacified by any declarations made by the North. Then, again, on this subject they are not a reasoning people.

To recur to Mr. Webster again. He has said some things it was quite unnecessary to say, and some things not true. Look at his interpretation of the admission of Texas! The act was, as he has quoted in his speech, that four new States—no more might be formed from Texas: those south of 36° 30′ might be slave States, and those north must be free States. Now, he says we are bound to admit four slave States. But we are bound to admit only four in the whole. Why, then, admit all these four as slave States, and then others, that is, if we get the consent of Texas, as free States? No: we are to admit but four in the whole; and, as one or two of these are to be free, there must not be four slave. He therefore not only proposes to execute that ungodly bargain, but to give one or two slave States to the South as a gratuity.

So his offer to take the proceeds of the public lands to deport free blacks is of the greatest service to slavery. It is just what the South wants, to get rid of its free blacks. It would enhance the value and the security of the slave property so called. Had he proposed to give the proceeds of the lands to deport manumitted slaves, that would encourage manumission, and be of real service to humanity. Indeed, the more I think of the speech, the worse I think of it.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 295-6

Congressman Horace Mann, June 9, 1850

WASHINGTON, June 9, 1850.

Yesterday I read Prof. Stuart's pamphlet in defence of Mr. Webster. It is a most extraordinary production. He begins by proving biblically that slavery is a divine institution, permitted, recognized, regulated, by God himself; and therefore that it cannot be malum in se. The greater part of the work consists in maintaining this point both from the Old and New Testaments; but he spends a few pages at the close in showing that it is contrary to all the precepts and principles of the gospel, and is little better than all crimes concentrated in one. How it can be both of these things at the same time, we are not informed.

He says, with Mr. Webster, that we are bound to admit four slave States from Texas, although we were to admit but four in the whole; and one at least, if not two, of the four were to be free States. But he says it is to be by the consent of Texas; and Texas may give consent to only four slave States taken in succession. Now, the answer to this is so plain, that it is difficult to see why even an Old-Testament orthodox minister should not see it.

When a contract is executory, as the lawyers say (that is, to be executed in future), and it contains mutual stipulations in favor of each of the parties, then nothing can be more clear than that each of the successive steps for fulfilment must have reference to what is to be done afterwards. Neither party can claim that the contract shall be so fulfilled by the other party in any one particular as to render the fulfilment of the whole impossible. Each preceding act of execution must have reference to what, by its terms, is to be subsequently executed.

So he says the Wilmot Proviso for a Territory is in vain, because the Territory, as soon as it is transformed into a State, can establish slavery. But the Wilmot Proviso over a Territory defends it against that class of population that would establish slavery when it becomes a State. It attracts to it that class of population which will exclude slavery; and therefore such proviso is decisive of the fate of the State.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 301-2

John Tyler to Colonel David L. Gardiner, January 1, 1861

SHERWOOD FOREST, Jan. 1, 1861.

MY DEAR COLONEL: I am deeply concerned at the condition of public affairs. No ray of light yet appears to dispel the gloom which has settled upon the country. In the meantime the President pursues a wise and statesmanlike course. A blow struck would be the signal for united action with all the slave States, whereas the grain States of the border are sincerely desirous of reconciling matters and thereby preserving the Union. I have for some time thought that a conference between the Border slaveholding and notslaveholding States would result in harmony, if it could obtain. They are so deeply interested in preserving friendly relations that they would agree, if agreement be possible. I see that a movement of that sort has been originated in Washington. A day or two will disclose the result. I like also the movement of New Jersey, which seeks to ascertain through her commissioners the ultimatum of the cotton States, to be submitted to the Northern States. In a short time we shall know the doom of the Union. The low price at which the recent loan for the Government was contracted is of fearful augury. A loss of 37 per cent. on a small loan of 2,500,000 manifests a want of confidence in the stability of the Union of an alarming character. I hope, however, that the kind Providence which has so far protected us will open a way to peace and harmony.

Sincerely yours,

JOHN TYLER.

SOURCE: Lyon Gardiner Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume 2, p. 578

J. M. B to John Brown, November 24, 1859

Ilion, New York, November 24.

Dear Brother in Christ: How I would like to spend this night with you in your cell, and converse for a season on the joys that await you beyond this world of sin and sorrow. I have tried to spend this day in prayer and thanksgiving to Almighty God for the many blessings received at His hand the past year, but in spite of all my efforts in this direction, it has been a sorrowful day to my soul, as my mind has dwelt almost constantly on your death scene. I cannot be joyful; I mourn not so much for you, (for, like the hero of Tarsus, you seem ready to be offered,) but I mourn for my country. I spent the past winter in the South, spending four months in nine of the slave States; and more than once I had to press my lips and clinch my fists, to keep back the feelings of my soul. I saw Slavery in all its phases, and many a night I have wet my pillow with my tears, as I called to mind the sufferings of the poor slave. I had hard work to control my feelings, but did so, and cannot think but it was the best course. Among the slaveholders I found some of the noblest men I ever met with kind, obliging, hospitable, pious, and to all appearances without a fault; so I returned to my home to hate the sin and not the men. I made the acquaintance of Gov. Wise, and found that it was not Wise that killed Cilley; it was not Wise that fought for Slavery at the South; it was his education — for a nobler heart never filled the breast of man; and had he been favored with a birthplace on the shores of Lake Champlain, and a home among the Adirondack mountains, he might have been your general in this conflict, and lying wounded by your side to night.*  Would to God these brethren could read our hearts. O, could they see how we love them; how we desire their present and future happiness; what a change would at once take place in their feelings towards us. Did Gov. Wise know Christ as did Paul when soundly converted, there would not be power enough in all the military force of Virginia to hang John Brown. But enough of this.

I have never believed that Virginia, for her own honor, would hang you; but she may, (my heart is too full, my tears flow too fast to write,) if she does, such a funeral as the sun never saw before, will follow.

Keep up good courage; a few more rising and setting suns, and the struggle will be over; and the thrice welcome words will reach your ears, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you."

I have been a resident of Washington County for thirty-eight years; left Fort Edward, New York, May, 1858, and am sure I have met you, but cannot tell where; but if faithful to the grace already given, I am sure I shall meet you again, and I know where. Praise the Lord, on that blissful shore, where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are forever at rest. You will not be permitted, like Moses, to return after forty years to engage afresh in the struggle for freedom: but God will raise up others, in his own good time, to carry forward the work.

Farewell, till we meet in Heaven; for, when we reach the landing place,—

“In the realms of endless light,
We’ll bid this world of noise and show
Good night, good night, good night;
We’ll stem the storm,” &c.

Your unworthy friend and brother in the Lord,

J. M. B.

_______________

*What miserable cant! "Pious" trafficars in God's children; "pious" robbers of God's poor; "pious" brokers in the souls for whom Jesus died! "Kind, obliging, hospitable!" No doubt of it! To compel men and women to work without reward, is so kind; to barter for base gold the offspring of slave mothers, is so obliging; to rob a race of every social, civil, political, matrimonial, paternal, filial right, is so hospitable an act, that it is not surprising that the class who practise it should be “to all appearance without a fault!" And Wise, the assassin of Cilley, the representative murderer of John Brown, the laudator of the Slave Pens, the acknowledged head and champion of the vilest Commonwealth that the sun looks down on, of course, he deserves the eulogy bestowed on him, when the writer says, that a “nobler heart never filled the breast of man." There are no murderers, there are no assassins, there are no base, nor cowardly, nor wicked men, if the philosophy of the writer be correct. It was not Judas, then, but Judas's education?

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, p. 406-7

Charles Sumner to Lord Morpeth, January 8, 1850

The slavery question has become paramount here at last. The slave States threaten to dissolve the Union if slavery is prohibited by Congress in the new Territories or abolished in the District of Columbia. I trust that Congress will do its duty, regardless of threats. What the result may be it is impossible to determine. The Canadian question promises to help antislavery. The annexation of that colony to the United States would 'redress the balance' which has been turned in favor of slavery by the annexation of Texas. I do not observe, however, any disposition at present to interfere in the question between that colony and the imperial government. I am anxious that it should be left to the parties without any intervention. I shall enclose this in a note to a friend now in London,—Mr. Burlingame.¹ Though young in years, he has won a brilliant reputation as a public speaker.

_______________

¹ Anson Burlingame.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 211-2

John H. McHenry* to Senator Robert M. T. Hunter, February 21, 1850

HARTFORD, KY., 21st February, 1850.

MY DEAR SIR: Perhaps you may almost have forgotten the individual who now addresses you, and who retains a vivid recollection of the many meetings and pleasant greetings he had with you when he had the honor of being an humble member of the committee of which you were chairman in the 29th Con[gress].

At the risk however of being entirely forgotten I have concluded to drop you a line if it be only to ascertain the fact.

Since we separated you have been busily engaged in the Senate of the U[nited] S[tates] aiding in the councils of our Nation, while I have been mostly engaged in the practice of the law riding over hills and vallies, swamps and waters as duty or necessity might require. Last year I was elected a delegate and took a part, an humble part, in forming a new constitution for my own native state. Except this I have been wholly disengaged from politics. I have been looking with deep solicitude at the course of events since I left Congress and have seen nothing to change the opinion which I expressed to you in a conversation during the pending of the three million bill or just before I do not now recollect which, "that the Mexican War was gotten up by the abolition raving of the then Cabinet to get a large scope of territory to make free States out of and to surround the slave States entirely to get back what they were pleased to term the balance of power which they said they had lost by giving up half of Oregon,” and advised you if possible to put a stop to the war before the rank and file got into the secret for if you did not the devil himself could not do it, that even Giddings and Culver would come in if they found out what it was for. You told me that you and your immediate friends were doing your best but were powerless, but if I would only keep Garrett Davis from throwing in his d----d resolutions of warning, which were calculated though not intended to bind the party together, that you thought you could possibly do something. I have often thought of this conversation and wondered if you had any recollection of it. Things that have occurred since have indelibly impressed it upon my memory.

In looking about for the causes of the Mexican war, I believed those assigned by the particular friends of the president were some of them insufficient and some of them unfounded and therefore I looked round for some reason to satisfy my own mind, and could find none but that. I named it to several of my friends and colleagues but could find none to agree with me. I formed the opinion first from reading Morey's instructions for raising Stephensons regiment. I thought the intention was to settle that regiment on the southern border of whatever land we might acquire and thus form the nucleus for a settlement from the free states immediately on our southern border and thus prevent a settlement from the slave states, by slave holders at least, within the bounds of the newly acquired territory. Upon due consideration of all that has happened since that time do you not now think that I at least guessed well if I did not form a correct opinion? In my canvass for delegate last summer I had to encounter emancipation in all its forms and triumphed over it. The leading men in this country are with the south but they are also for the Union and do not look to disunion as a remedy for any evil. They will "fight for slavery but die by the Union." As to the boys up the hollows and in the brush who form a considerable portion of our country they are not to [be] relied on in any contest against the Union. In a contest about the Union they would be willing to have the motto of the first soldiers of the revolution "Liberty or death"—but in a contest about slavery they would be a good deal like one Barney Decker who was about to have a soldiers badge and motto made and when the lady who made the badge asked him if he would have the same motto hesitated and then replied "You may put ‘liberty or be crippled.’” I am afraid the boys will say "slavery or be crippled." For God's sake try and settle all these questions of slavery if possible and let us not dissolve the Union.

But if we have to write like Francis the 1st to his mother, "Madam all's lost but honor" let us do it with this and we will have the approval of our own conscience without which a man is nothing.

_______________

* A Representative in Congress from Kentucky, 1845-1847.

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), p. 104-6

William F. Gordon* to Senator Robert M. T. Hunter, July 2, 1850

ALBEMARLE, [Va.], July 2d, 1850.

MY DEAR SIR: I rec[eive]d your letter accompanied by the Prospectus of the "Southern Press" and a number of the Papers. I enclose you $10 as a subscription of the tri-weekly paper. I have no doubt it will greatly subserve the Interests of the South. I thank you for your complimentary notice of my share in the Nashville Convention, and am happy to think that it will, in your opinion, make a profound impression. Confusion must be worst confounded by the usurpation of New Mexico, and the evident interference of our Slave-holding President, and yet I can perceive no real Difference between the Case of California and New Mexico. These events must hasten the Catastrophe to the South, the admission of these territories as states and the rejection of 36 30 Degrees as a Dividing line fills our Cup of humiliation to the brim. In the "argument not yet exhausted? when shall we stand to our Army?" Will neither legislative or Executive De[s]potism arouse us? Will not both combined? I cannot look on these events, in any aspect, but a designed insult and indignity to the whole Slave holding States. For one I am not willing to bear it. I am ready for resistance whenever the insult is consumated by Congress. So I hope will the whole South. The Nashville Convention is to reassemble in six weeks after the adjournment of Congress.

If anything is done by Congress, inconsistent with the rights and honor of the south, would it not be well for the Southern Senators and representatives to address their states and constituents on the occasion? It would have a powerful effect on the states and on the Convention. Unanimity is not to be expected, the pure and bold public men must lead, and I doubt not any course recommended by them, or a majority of them would be our guide. The more decided the better for me, for I think this protracted insult of Congress and the Executive, on refusing our clear constitutional rights, provocation enough to justify the strongest measures; and unless they are acknowledged during the Session I hope decisive resistance may be made. I have been contemplating in my solitude, how to work out the problem. I should follow our revolutionary example, that of Virginia. I would take our present Federal Constitution for the Southern States and put it into operation, as soon as a sufficient number of States would secede, this would simplyfy matters, would pervent confusion, as the officers of our Southern Republic, would at once understand their duties, our Sub Treasures, are all ready, we should only shake off the northern states, as we did the King of England, (for they have oppressed us far more than our Old Mother England ever did) and have our government in full and immediate Vigor without the Delay of Forming a New Constitution, which, however we might do at our leisure. This mode recommends itself, by the example of the illustrious ancestor of your Colleague, who formed our Virginia Constitution. Present to him my best respects.¹

_______________

* An early advocate of secession; represented Virginia in Congress, 1830-1835.

¹ This reference is doubtless to Senator J. M. Mason of Virginia and to George Mason, author of Virginia's Bill of Rights.

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), p. 113-4

Littleton Waller Tazewell* to Senator Robert M. T. Hunter, August 18, 1850

NORFOLK, [VA.], August 18th, 1850.

MY DEAR SIR: Upon receipt of your kind letter of the 10th Inst[ant], I immediately commenced such a reply to it as I thought you wished to have and I myself best approved. I soon discovered, however, that my inclination had imposed upon me a task surpassing my physical ability to perform; and I was so constrained to desist. The attempt has been renewed several times since, with no better success. Age has so dimed my sight and stiffened my fingers, that I now write with much difficulty and generally with some pain.

Hence, nothing but absolute necessity induces me ever to touch a pen. But in the pleasing hope, that by complying with your request I might give you some proof of my continued respect, esteem and confidence, and feebly disburthen my own mind of the sad forebodings that sometimes oppress it, I forgot the infirmities of age and commenced such a letter as I have described. I wrote con amore, but I had not proceeded far, when I was obliged to acknowledge to myself, that altho’ the spirit was still willing the flesh was no longer able to aid it; and with some mortification, I reluctantly abandoned a subject, which, in my mode of treating it, threatened to expand into a volume.

I was a little consoled under this compulsory abandonment of my first design, by reading in our newspapers, that while I had been writing most of the subjects I was discussing were no longer open questions (as the lawyers say) but had passed into res judicatae, so far at least as the body of which you are a member is concerned. Mr. Clay's Compromise Bill had been rejected as a whole, altho' many of the parts of which this whole was compounded had been approved by the Senate. The votes by which these results had been brought about, show so clearly the motive power that had produced them, as to leave no doubt upon the mind of any, I suppose, that what remains will meet with like approbation. Therefore, to continue the discussion of questions already decided, and so decided too, would be a labour painful to myself and quite profitless to you. I will not deny myself the pleasure of saying to you, however, that I concur with you entirely in every opinion you have expressed and in every vote you have given in regard to any and all of the several subjects involved in the so called Compromise Bill, so far as these votes and opinions are known to me. In saying this, I believe I express the sentiments of a very great majority of the Citizens of Virginia. But, my friend, while you and your Colleague may both rest assured that the course you have pursued meets the cordial approbation of a very large proportion of the people of Virginia at present, neither of you should flatter yourselves with the hope that these opinions will be permanent here.

Throughout the U[nited] S[tates] patent causes have been silently operating for some time past to produce a radical change in their Government; and the future action of these causes must be greatly aided and facilitated by the measures recently adopted by the Senate. It was my purpose, at first, to enumerate these causes, to trace them to their sources and to show to what results they must inevitably lead, even if not designed to produce such effects. But, as I have said, I am no longer able to perform such a task. I can give you only a birds-eye view of the principles the Senate has asserted, in some of their votes, of the practices they have established to serve as precedents for themselves and their successors hereafter, of the influence these precedents must have upon the destiny of the U[nited] S[tates] both abroad and at home, and of the cause that has effected all this mischief. I am not able to complete the picture, but must leave it to you to fill up the outline.

By the admission of California into the Union, under the circumstances existing when she presented herself, the Senate have decided that the unknown dwellers and sojourners in a territory recently conquered, while they are still subject to the strict discipline of a military rule, may, without even asking the permission of their Conquerors, put off this rule, erect themselves into a sovereign state, appropriate to their own use such part of the conquered territory as they please, and govern it thereafter as they think proper. That for such acts of mutinous insurrection and open rebellion against the legitimate authority of their conquerors, instead of meeting the censure and punishment which existing laws denounce, they shall be rewarded. Provided they will take care to insert as a condition in their Organic law, that none of the slaves belonging to the citizens of one half of the states of the Union shall ever be introduced within the limits they have chosen.

By the purchase of a large portion of the territory admitted to belong to Texas, which purchase the Senate have authorized to be made, they have asserted the doctrine that it is competent to the Federal Government to buy up the whole or any part it may wish to acquire of one of the Confederated States of the Union.

By the proposed annexation of the territory to be bought from Texas to a portion of the conquered country of New Mexico, the narrow limits of the latter will be expanded into a territory of a respectable size, many of the free citizens of Texas will be degraded into territorial subjects of the Government of the U[nited] S[tates]; and when to escape from this state of vassalage, they shall hereafter ask to be admitted into the union like California, you may rely upon it, that this boon will be refused, unless like California they will exclude all Southern Slaves from their limits, by their Organic law.

The Statesman must be deficient in political sagacity, I think, who does not foresee that all the nations holding territories adjacent to the U[nited] S[tates] must feel anxiety for the safety of their dominions, when such principles if not openly avowed are acted upon systematically by the Government of the U[nited] S[tates]; and that the portion of the great family of civilized nations can regard with indifference the effects of these new doctrines interpolated into the public law.

Of their effects upon the slave holding states of the Union, I have neither space enough left to express more than a brief remark. These states have long accustomed themselves to regard the Senate of the U[nited] S[tates] as the only body upon which any reliance could be placed for the conservation of their political rights and interests. They will now see, I suppose, that this was mere delusion; that these rights and interests have been wantonly sacrificed by members of that body in whom they had good reason to repose confidence; and like the dying Caesar, struck down at the foot of Pompey's statute by the daggers of pretended friends, they may well cry out et tu quoque Brute. It is neither necessary or proper for me to say any thing now as to the course which, I think, they ought and will adopt under present circumstances. The measures which the Senate have recommended and sanctioned by their votes have not yet received the assent of the other Departments of the Government; and altho' to indulge the anticipation of any different result in these quarters may be hoping against hope, yet while a single chance remains, however remote it may be, prudence would seem to indicate that the slave holding States should abstain from any hypothetical declaration of their purpose. Whatever that purpose may be, I am sure it will not be influenced by any craven fears, and so far as Virginia is concerned, I hope it will be worthy of her character. For my own part, whatever that purpose may be I will abide by it. I have often invoked my God to witness the solemn pledge I willingly gave to be "faithful and true" to her; and when I forget the sacred obligation of this vow of allegiance, may that God forget me.

Accept this long letter, (which I have written with difficulty) as a testimonial of the high consideration in which I hold you, I commit it to your discretion, to be used as you please, provided always that it shall not reach the newspapers. Altho' I have no care to conceal any thing that I have ever thought said or done in my whole life, yet I have ever felt a morbid horror at becoming a subject of notoriety.

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* One of the early followers of John C. Calhoun; representative in Congress from Virginia, 1800-1801; Senator in Congress from Virginia, 1824-1832; governor of Virginia, 1834-1836.

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), p. 115-8