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

Gideon Welles to Senator Daniel S. Dickinson, January 28, 1850

HARTFORD, 28th January, 1850.

MY DEAR SIR—Your valuable favor of the 17th was duly received, and I am under obligations, not only for the kind manner in which my communication was received, but for the confidences and suggestions therein manifested.

The debate which took place on the 17th I read attentively, and particularly your able and well-timed remarks, when Mr. Clemens undertook to expel the whole of the democracy from the political church. It is about twenty years since Mr. Calhoun commenced his efforts to build up a sectional party, first on the tariff, and recently on another issue. There was an interval during the administration of Mr. Van Buren and the early part of John Tyler's, when he undoubtedly had expectation of rising by reinstating himself with the Democratic party, that then these sectional animosities were at rest. But the elevation of Mr. Polk extinguished his hopes, and has made him a sour and discontented man. He has no aspirations connected with the integrity of the Democratic party, and can have none. It is to be regretted that the South should embark so fully in his schemes, or lend themselves to his intrigues.

The indications are that you will have a somewhat stormy and boisterous session; but I have no doubt that the ultimate result will be for the permanent welfare of the whole country. There may be some changes of parties and men, for a time at least, but with right and principle the Constitution and the Union will triumph. You, with others who have, to a great extent, the custody of public measures, will so shape matters that the country will receive no detriment from the intrigues of the aspiring and restless, or the overheated zeal of the unreflecting and impulsive.

But I must not intrude on your time. We regret extreemly to hear of the illness of your son. Until the receipt of your letter I was not aware that he had returned. Mrs. Niles continues about the same. I presented your compliments to the Judge, who sensibly felt them, and spoke of your kind feelings, friendly relations, and your attention and devotion to your public duties.

I am in hopes to visit Washington some time during the session. Until then it will be a gratification if you can occasionally let me hear from you. With kind regards, in which Mrs. Welles unites, to yourself, and to your family when you write or see them, I am, dear sir,

Very truly yours,

GIDEON WELLES.

SOURCE: John R. Dickinson, Editor, Speeches, Correspondence, Etc., of the Late Daniel S. Dickinson of New York, Vol. 2, p. 421-2

Jefferson Davis to Martin Van Buren,* March 25, 1844

Warren County Mi.        

25th March 1844

M. Van Buren

        Ex President of the U. S.

Sir,

You will oblige me and many other democrats of this section of the country by giving your opinion on the following questions—

First, The annexation of "Texas" to the Territory of the United States

Second, The constitutional power of Congress over slavery in the District of Columbia

Third, The Tariff of 1828 and whether your vote on that bill was entirely the result of the instructions you received—

With great consideration

I am very truly yrs.

Jeffn. Davis

_______________

* Mr. Van Buren was a candidate for the presidential nomination at this time, and the Mississippi delegation to the Democratic Convention at Baltimore had been instructed for him.

SOURCE: Dunbar Rowland, Editor, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers and Speeches, Volume 1, p. 12