Washington City, May 9, 1860.[i]
Gentlemen: Your letter of the 5th inst. has just reached me. The limited time allowed for action induces me to comply with your request for a “prompt” answer, and I shall endeavor to make it equally ” candid.”
I sympathise fully in your apprehensions for the future of our country. It cannot be disguised that both the safety of the South and the integrity of the Union are seriously threatened. It is my honest conviction that the issue depends upon the action of the southern people at this important juncture. A firm, wise and unfaltering policy on the part of the South will give security to her own rights and peace and quiet to the Union. Any other course will be equally fatal to the preservation of the one and the maintenance of the other. Like yourselves I have looked to the National Democratic party as the only political organization in which the sound Constitutional elements of the whole country could be brought into united and cordial co-operation. With this conviction I witnessed the proceedings of the late Charleston convention with intense anxiety and deeply regretted the causes which led to its disruption.
In considering the proper course now to be pursued, we should understand distinctly the reason of the failure of that convention to agree upon a platform and candidates for the support of the Democratic party. If the differences which led to the result at Charleston are immaterial and unimportant, then there is no cause for trouble or apprehension. The public mind should promptly pronounce them to be so, and they should be dismissed from our thoughts as unworthy of further consideration. Are the people of Georgia prepared to pronounce this judgment? The answer to this inquiry involves in my opinion the future destiny of the South. There were two points of difference at Charleston which produced the disruption of the convention. 1st. The platform of the party on the subject of slavery. 2d. The nomination of a proper candidate for the Presidency.
The fifteen Southern States in common with the two Democratic States of the Pacific agreed upon a platform which recognized the equality of the Southern States—and the right of their citizens to go with their property into the common territories of the Union claiming for them and their property the same protection which the Constitution and laws of the land extend to their bretheren of the non-slaveholding States and their property—nothing more—nothing less. The seventeen States which with perfect unanimity agreed upon this platform are all of them certain Democratic States. The candidates to be nominated by the Democratic party for President and Vice-President must receive their votes to give them the slightest prospect of success. The remaining sixteen States by virtue of their superior numbers in the convention refused to recognize these principles. They did not assert by the platform they adopted antagonistic principles to those agreed upon by the southern and Democratic States. Their policy was to leave the question an open issue so far as any declaration of principles was concerned, but to give a practical construction to their platform by the nomination of a candidate whose chief claim to the nomination grew out of his known hostility to the doctrine for which the southern and Democratic States contended.
The seventeen Democratic States were prepared to unite upon any true and worthy man for the Presidency. There was on their part no disposition whatever to force upon their brethren of the other States a candidate unacceptable to them. The issue on their part was for principle and success, involving no consideration of mere personal advancement of a favorite candidate. The sixteen opposition States, on the other hand, not only refused to unite upon the platform offered to them by their brethren of the Democratic States, but struggled to force upon the party the nomination of Judge Douglas, against the stern and united voice of every certain Democratic State in the Union. I venture to assert that such a spectacle was never before presented in the history of party conventions. The States were as nearly equally divided as it was possible for them to be. On one side was every Democratic State, and on the other all the opposition States—and the latter who were not certain of giving a single vote for the candidates that might be nominated insisted on making both a platform and a candidate for the Democratic States to elect. There certainly could not be a more unjust distribution of responsibility and duty.
Such was the condition of things at Charleston. The delegation from Georgia would not consent to the consummation of this threatened policy of the numerical majority of the convention. In common with the delegates from seven other southern States they withdrew from the body. Their action should be sustained by the Democracy of the State. They were true and loyal to the trust reposed in them and deserve the cordial approval and renewed confidence of their constituents. If they had returned from Charleston, bearing to the people of Georgia the humiliating terms of surrender which the majority of the convention sought to put upon them in the platform and candidate proposed, the people would have received their report in sorrow and spurned their candidate with indignation.
It is due to the Democracy of the sixteen States, which I have designated as opposition States, to say that I use the term “opposition States ” in no spirit of disrespect, but simply intend to designate them as States in which, unfortunately for the country, the Democratic party is in a minority. In many of their delegations at Charleston there were large minorities who condemned the course and policy of their colleagues as wrong in principle and unjust to their brethren of the South. This was particularly the case in Pennsylvania and other States to whose votes, in connection with the certain Democratic States, we look with the greatest confidence for the election of our candidates.
The truth is, that the sound Democracy of the North are determined to stand by the South in this hour of trial, if the South will only be true and faithful to herself. The unwise declaration of a few southern men in favor of the nomination of Mr. Douglas as a matter of policy and expediency has contributed in no small degree to the present unhappy state of things. These exceptional cases have unfortunately been mistaken in some quarters for public opinion, and will account for the otherwise unaccountable persistence with which the friends of Mr. Douglas press his nomination against the earnest protest of a united South.
I have thus briefly alluded to the difficulties in the Charleston convention and the causes which produced them as proper matter for consideration in determining upon the course of action which the Democracy of Georgia ought now to pursue. As the time is short before the re-assembling of the convention at Baltimore, I would suggest the propriety of an immediate call by the State Executive Committee for the March convention to reassemble. It affords the best opportunity at our command for ascertaining the Democratic sentiment of the State as to our future policy. When assembled, I would urge upon that convention to give the action of our delegates at Charleston their cordial approval and authorise them in co-operation with the delegates of those States with whom they acted at Charleston to renew at Baltimore their efforts for a settlement of the difficulties which led to the disruption at Charleston.
The course of the delegation has been so true that they are entitled to the unqualified confidence of their constituents, and can be safely trusted without embarrassing their action with specific instructions. The endorsement of their past action will be the best instruction for their future conduct. The same delegation should be authorised to represent the State in the convention to be held in Richmond,and if practicable the time for the meeting of the latter convention should be postponed to a day subsequent to the convention at Baltimore. It would thus afford every opportunity for healing the dissensions in our party and bringing the different portions once more into united and cordial co-operation upon a sound platform and in the support of a sound candidate. I believe it can be accomplished, and it only requires firmness and decision on the part of the southern Democracy to bring it about. You may rest assured that your true friends at the North—the men who have never deserted you to save themselves—will not force upon you terms of humiliation, and the rest, will not venture to press them unless you first indicate by your action that you are prepared to surrender at discretion.
The Democracy of Georgia must now choose between the two wings of the party at the North. The one has been true and faithful in the past and offers you every assurance of their aid and support in the future. The other abandoned you in the hour of danger and trial and invite the renewal of our confidence with notice in advance that you may expect in the future no better faith or greater security than you have received in the past. With the first you will certainly maintain your honor and have a fair prospect of preserving your rights. If an alliance with the latter promises any greater advantage, I confess my inability to discover it.
[i] From the Augusta, Ga., Constitutionalist, May 17, 1860. Copy obtained through the kindness of Miss Julia A. Flisch, of Augusta, Ga. Robert Collins and others, constituting a committee of the citizens of Macon, Ga., had addressed the following inquiry to numerous leading public men of the State
“Macon, Ga., May 5th, 1860.
“Sir: We are alarmed by the state of things developed in the Democratic convention at Charleston. The discord and disorganising spirit which prevailed there threaten the integrity and overthrow of the Democratic party. We are filled with painful forebodings at the prospect of the Democratic party being slaughtered in the house of its friends a catastrophe which will put in equal peril the Union of the States and the safety of the South. Clinging to the fate and fortunes of both, we invoke your counsels in this crisis. We believe the Democracy of Georgia should be represented in the adjourned National convention at Baltimore. Will you please give us your views candidly and promptly for publication?”
The letter of Toombs in reply to this inquiry follows herein. That of Stephens is published in Johnston and Browne, ” Life of Stephens,” pp. 357-364 ; Cleveland, A. H. Stephens, 661-667 ; and in Stephens, War between the States, II, 677-684
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.