Washington, D. C, Mar. 16th, 1860.
Dear Stephens, . . . We are getting on badly. The Black Reps, are now strong enough to do mischief in the Senate and are using their power. The Nicaragua Treaty was beaten yesterday and injunction of secrecy taken off by us to expose them. It is nothing to us and I don’t care a fig for it, but they are such fools as not to understand their own interest. They will also defeat the Mexican treaty when action is had on it. You will see Ohio refuse to give up old Brown’s son and another of the refugees from Harper’s Ferry. So we go. New Hampshire has increased her Republican majority and we shall lose every Northern State in the Union except California and perhaps Oregon. The strife here runs “fast and furious ” between the friends of the different candidates. It looks to me very much like the officers of ships being engaged in cheating one another at “three up” in the forecastle while the vessel is labouring among the breakers. Douglas I think cannot weather the storm. Penn. and N. York are against him and he is weak in New England, but the great element of his weakness in the North is the hostility of the South to him. I fear he is not patriot enough [to] struggle for the country with the banner in any other hand than his own. Hunter’s prospects have greatly improved within the last week but he by no means shows strength to command the nomination. Penn. wants a tariff man and of course expects the Dem. party now to swallow its past history to secure her support, doubtful at least. Seward has the ascendant with the Blacks and I think will be nominated but it is not certain. Neither New England nor Penn. politicians want him but I think their people do, and that may finally settle it in his favour. The Democratic wing of the Blacks are rampant for the candidate but as they are a majority I suppose they will be whipped in. Buchanan is at his old game of breaking down in succession all democratic aspirants in order to get it himself, and is laughed at by his own menials and dependants.
I went to see Holt about N. I did not find him in and wrote him a note. I have not yet heard from him. We hear there was trouble in the Geo. convention.[i] Our accounts tho’ are only up to 12 o’clock the first day of the session. It will be bad to have a split in Geo. and worse still to send two delegations. God knows one is as much as any people ought to stand in such a crowd. Crawford is well, and the House is getting on badly. Julia has thrown away her stick and improves slowly.
[i] A second Georgia Democratic convention met at Milledgeville, Mar. 14, 1860. After much wrangling between the Cobb and anti-Cobb factions the latter withdrew temporarily and nominated a ticket of delegates to the Charleston convention. The convention then reassembled and elected a delegation to Charleston of twice the usual size comprising an equal number of Cobb and anti-Cobb men, but instructed the whole delegation to vote as a unit. This convention rejected the resolutions which the December convention had adopted.
From Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911.
Robert Augustus Toombs was an American lawyer, planter, and politician from Georgia who became one of the organizers of the Confederacy and served as its first Secretary of State. He served in the Georgia House of Representatives, the US House of Representatives, and the US Senate. In the Confederacy, he served in Jefferson Davis’ cabinet as well as in the Confederate States Army, but later became one of Davis’ critics.