To The Hon. W. H. SEWARD,
United States Senate, Washington, D. C.
New York, January 17, 1861
My Dear Sir,—I had intended for the last few days to express to you my sincere admiration of your patriotic and statesmanlike speech in the United States Senate, on Saturday last, but have been prevented by indisposition until to-day.
The graphic and masterly manner with which you depict the blessings of the Union, and the inevitable calamities of its dissolution, will, I trust, open the eyes of the extreme men on both sides to the madness of their course. In paying to your patriotism a willing tribute of the gratitude of a political opponent, for the manly stand which you have taken, may I also be allowed to express the hope that we may look forward to your leading your party further on in the path of moderate and conciliatory measures, which alone can save us from all the horrors of dissolution and civil war.
Without wishing for a moment to defend the revolutionary proceedings of South Carolina, and some of the other cotton States, I may be allowed to express my intimate conviction, based upon information from the most conservative men in the border States, that nothing can prevent Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Kentucky, from joining the movement of the cotton States, unless compromise measures, based upon the propositions of Senator Crittenden, can be carried bv a sufficient majority through Congress, to insure their embodiment in the Constitution.
I know that many, if not most of the Republican leaders are, until now, opposed to these measures, but do they represent the real feeling of their constituents? I think not; the large masses of our Northern people are, by an overwhelming majority, devotedly attached to the Union. They are ready and anxious to bring every sacrifice for its preservation, and will, to a man, abide by your doctrine: “Republicanism is subordinate to the Union, as every thing else is, and ought to be.”
If we could get at the true sentiment of our people throughout the North, I think we might get over our present difficulties; in fact, I do not see any other means of saving the Union. I therefore approve most cordially of your suggestion for a general convention, and hope only that you could be induced to modify your recommendation, so as to make this appeal now, and not in two or three years.
If, by a tardy action, the tobacco States are allowed to cast their lot with the seceders, and thus form a powerful Southern Confederacy of fifteen States, as they will most assuredly do unless an equitable compromise on the territorial question can be obtained, I .fear that a reconstruction of our confederacy would be utterly hopeless hereafter.
Providence has assigned to you a position of great and fearful responsibility in this crisis. You can preserve this great Union, with all its untold blessings, not only to the millions of freemen who congregate under its protecting wing, but to the oppressed in every portion of the inhabited globe. The downfall of our government would be the death-knell to political and religious liberty in both hemispheres. You have the sympathies of every patriot with you in the course which you have initiated by your great speech. The manifestations, on the part of prominent men of both parties, are most unequivocal in their sincere approbation of the stand which they hope to see you take.
Your efforts will entitle you to the gratitude of the whole American people, and vou will change the proud position of the great leader of a victorious party for the more exalted and honorable one of the benefactor and savior of your country.
