To Julius Izard Pringle,
Charleston, S.C.
New York, November 26, 1860
Dear Pringle,—I note the contents of your note of the 22d inst. The present political and financial crisis will, I trust, soon pass over and every thing turn back to its regular channels.
It will then appear clearly a qui la faute of the calamities which have overtaken us, and to which you allude in your letter. My convictions on that point have never changed.
We are cursed with two sets of Abolitionists in this country, and until they are crushed out of political existence, our onward march as a great and prosperous nation must be retarded, and the foundations of the Union and Constitution undermined. They are the fanatical Abolitionists of slavery, led by Sumner and other demagogues, and the selfish and short-sighted Abolitionists of the Union, under the leadership of Yancey, Rhett, and Toombs. If the conservative spirit of our people North and South cannot silence forever the howlings of these false prophets, we are all doomed to leave an inheritance of ruin and blood to our children, who otherwise might have grown up as citizens and brethren of the freest and mightiest empire upon which God’s sun ever shed its radiant lustre.
I have embodied my views on the present crisis in a letter, which I addressed a few days ago to Mr. Forsyth, in Alabama, and of which I hand you inclosed a copy.
The hour is dark, but I do not yet despair entirely of the patriotism and good sense of the American people.