John A. Quitman to his brother, October 17, 1835

Monmouth, Oct. 17th, 1835.

To show you that I am not wasting the prime of life in ignoble ease, I may mention that I am a senator in the Legislature, President of the State Rights Association, President of the Anti-abolition Society, of the Anti-gambling Society, of the Anti-dueling Society, of the Mississippi Cotton Company, of the Railroad Company, Director of the Planters' Bank, Grand Master Mason, Captain of the Natchez Fencibles, Trustee of Jefferson College and of the Natchez Academy, besides having charge of a cotton and a sugar plantation, and 150 negroes. You may readily imagine I am not much troubled with ennui, and that time seldom lags upon my hands. I have a higher ambition to be a useful member of society than to bear a more conspicuous and sounding title.

The excitement that existed in the upper part of this state last summer, like most other excitements about negro insurrections, was more that of indignation than fear.¹ Indeed, every day's experience and observation convince me that our domestic institutions are based upon a more solid foundation than those of the nonslaveholding states. Admitting the remote chance of partial insurrectionary movements here, which the moment they are known would be suppressed, yet you are in more real danger from the gradual and sapping tendency of agrarian and fanatical doctrines which, it is evident, are rapidly making way at the North. Should we ever live to see the proud institutions of our country overthrown, you may be assured the last retreat of freedom will be in the South. I may be an enthusiast on this subject, and I will not undertake, in a letter, to advance arguments upon a topic on which I have reflected much, but I think I can demonstrate that our institution of domestic slavery is in harmony with, and almost indispensable to a constitutional republic.

You refer to the politics of Mississippi. We have in the new sections of the state a recent population whose political complexion has not yet been ascertained, but, so far as I can judge, the people of this state are one third for Van Buren, one third Nullifiers, and one third Whigs. The two latter parties will vote for Judge White for President. No man believes that Van Buren has the least chance of getting the vote of Mississippi. His party is losing ground daily. Our elections come on in a fortnight.

There is war in Texas. Were I without family, I would repair there immediately. Freemen who are struggling for their violated rights should not be left to struggle unaided.²

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¹ In allusion to what was called the Murrell excitement, growing out of the revelations of one Virgil A. Stuart, a notorious scamp. An organized band, very much like John Brown's, was said to have been formed, and a general insurrection was to occur on a certain day. In the central counties martial law was declared; committees of safety and armed patrols were established; many suspected persons were arrested and hung. Stuart was made the guest of the state, and received every where with manifestations of public gratitude. Large sums of money and costly presents were given to him. He is now known to have been an impostor. The whole story was a fabrication. Murrell was simply a thief and counterfeiter, and Stuart was his subordinate, who, having quarreled with him, devised this plan to avenge and enrich himself. The whole "plot," and its tragical consequences, may now be regarded as one of the most extraordinary and lamentable hallucinations of our times.

² See Major General Sam Houston to General John A. Quitman, February 12, 1836

SOURCE: John F. H. Claiborne, Life and Correspondence of John A. Quitman, Vol. 1, pp. 138-9

Major General Sam Houston to General John A. Quitman, February 12, 1836

Nacogdoches, Texas, Feb. 12th, 1836.

DEAR SIR,—It affords me peculiar pleasure to acknowledge the receipt of your letter by Mr. H. C. M'Neill, and the present of a Polish yager which has once been employed in the cause of liberty.

By this personal compliment I feel flattered. But the generous, liberal, and manly sentiments which you have expressed in behalf of Texas and the glorious struggle in which she is engaged, command my gratitude, and awaken in me the associations of other days connected with the land of my birth, when her sons were battling against their invaders in defense of the rights of freemen. We will peril all for freedom, and I trust that the next Convention will declare Texas “free, sovereign, and independent.”

Could your situation enable you to render to Texas and her cause an auxiliary aid so useful and important to her prosperity as your presence and the force of your character and example, I can assure you that no circumstance would be hailed with more pleasure by every patriot whose plans of government and policy have assigned to Texas the proud station of an independent people governed by a liberal Constitution and just laws.

SOURCE: John F. H. Claiborne, Life and Correspondence of John A. Quitman, Vol. 1, pp. 139-40