Crawfordville [Ga.], Jan. 5th, 1860.
Dear Smith: . . . My being out of sorts in health I think is owing to the weather. We have no news. Times rather hard and some complaint with the people for money. Provisions are high and property of all kinds higher than I ever knew it to be. The country is waiting patiently to see what the Congress will do. But I verily believe they do not care a button what is done. There is really not the least excitement in the public mind upon public affairs. No man that I have seen for weeks or months seems to take any interest in what is going on in Washington. The message of the President has been here a week and I have not seen the first person who has read it. I have alluded to it several times when in company with our most intelligent and reading people and I have not met with one yet who has read it except myself, not even the lawyers in town—we have two, Bristow and Beaseley. How the honor of being a member of Congress and working and worrying oneself half to death there for the good of the people at home vanishes into thin air and becomes perfectly nothing in the estimation of one mingling with the people and seeing how little they care for such things. I had no idea that what was going on at the seat of gov[ernme]nt produced so little effect upon the public mind as it does. If I had known the fact, I think I should have quit long time ago. But enough of this. . . .
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From Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911.
Alexander H. Stephens would later become Vice President of the Confederated States of America