Howell Cobb to James Buchanan.[i]
Washington City, Dec. 8, 1860.
My Dear Sir: A sense of duty to the State of Georgia requires me to take a step which makes it proper that I should no longer continue to be a member of your Cabinet.
In the troubles of the country consequent upon the late Presidential election, the honor and safety of my State are involved. Her people so regard it, and in their opinion I fully concur. They are engaged in a struggle where the issue is life or death. My friends ask for my views and counsel. Not to respond would be degrading to myself and unjust to them. I have accordingly prepared, and must now issue to them, an address which contains the calm and solemn convictions of my heart and judgment.
The views which I sincerely entertain, and which therefore I am bound to express differ in some respects from your own. The existence of this difference would expose me, if I should remain in my present place, to unjust suspicions, and put you in a false position. The first of these consequences I could bear well enough, but I will not subject you to the last.
My withdrawal has not been occasioned by anything you have said or done. Whilst differing from your Message upon some of its theoretical doctrines, as well as from the hope so earnestly expressed that the Union can yet be preserved, there was no practical result likely to follow which required me to retire from your Administration. That necessity is created by what I feel it my duty to do and the responsibility of the act, therefore, rests alone upon myself.
To say that I regret—deeply regret—this necessity, but feebly expresses the feeling with which I pen this communication. For nearly four years I have been associated with you as one of your Cabinet officers, and during that period nothing has occurred to mar, even for a moment, our personal and official relations. In the policy and measures of your Administration I have cordially concurred, and shall ever feel proud of the humble place which my name may occupy in its history. If your wise counsels and patriotic warnings had been heeded by your countrymen, the fourth of March next would have found our country happy, prosperous, and united. That it will not be so, is no fault of yours.
The evil has now passed beyond control, and must be met by each and all of us under our responsibility to God and our country. If, as I believe, history will have to record yours as the last administration of our present Union, it will also place it side by side with the purest and ablest of those that preceded it.
With the kindest regards for yourself and the members of your Cabinet, with whom I have been so pleasantly associated.
[i] From the Constitution, Washington, D. C, Dec. 12, 1860.
From Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911.
Howell Cobb was an American political figure. A southern Democrat, Cobb was a five-term member of the United States House of Representatives and Speaker of the House from 1849 to 1851. He also served as the 40th Governor of Georgia and as a Secretary of the Treasury under President James Buchanan. Cobb is, however, probably best known as one of the founders of the Confederacy, having served as the President of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States.