Alexander H. Stephens to J. Henly Smith.
Crawfordville [Ga.], Nov. 21st, 1860.
Dear Smith, I got home yesterday from Milledgeville after an absence of ten days. I was expecting a letter from you and some papers but found none. I wrote to you soon after our election before I left home. I am anxious to see the tone of Northern leading papers on the present state of public affairs and prospect for the future, and also anxious to know the state of feeling among the public men at Washington, what will be the course of the President and the Administration when South Carolina declares herself out of the Union, as it is generally supposed here that she will certainly do at an early day.
My views of the state of the republic were given to the Legislature last week. You will see a tolerable report of them in the Southern Recorder, republished in other papers. The report was by no means full or clear in some particulars but the outline of the policy I advo[ca]ted will be seen in it. Let me know how it is received at Washington by all sides. I fear we are past salvation—that there is not patriotism enough in the country North or South to save it.
From Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911.
Alexander Hamilton Stephens was an American politician who served as the vice president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. After serving in both houses of the Georgia General Assembly, he won election to Congress, taking his seat in 1843. After the Civil War, he returned to Congress in 1873, serving to 1882 when he was elected as the 50th Governor of Georgia, serving there from late 1882 until his death in 1883.
J. Henley Smith was a Georgia journalist.