Crawfordville [Ga.], Feb. 4th, 1860.
Dear Smith, I have just got back from Augusta where I have been all the past week attending court, and now have your letter of the 30th ulto. before me. The news of the organization of the House reached Augusta while I was there and I saw no man there or anywhere else since that was not gratified at it. I think our friends made some good points by the course they have taken and ought to feel that the triumph was theirs. They broke the line of the Republicans. They rebuked the endorsers of Helper (I believe Pennington was not on the list of these). They broke the Seward line—he is I believe not the favorite of Pennington—though I have never looked upon Seward as formidable at all, but others have so considered him. I have never thought that he stood any chance for a nomination, and if he were nominated I think he is the weakest man they could run.
Still the moral effect of breaking the prestige of the ultra wing of the party is a great point gained. I look upon Pennington as a sort of moderate anti-slavery man with a good deal of national feeling, who is in his present position more by accident than by choice. This is the idea I have of him. What a mistake Sherman committed in giving or allowing the use of his name to the friends of Helper as he did, and what greater mistake he made in not coming out in a manly way and saying that he did not approve the sentiments of his book as he has since seen the work! This was just such weakness as a large class of men [have] who have not the nerve to meet questions at the right time in the right way. Such men can never be leaders. They are by nature only third or fourth rate, and can never rise except by accident to high position. I take it for granted that Sherman does not in fact approve Helper’s doctrines. I always regarded him as more decided in his anti-slavery opinions than Pennington, but as by no means amongst the rabid and ultra men on his side of the House. I think that so far as the duties of the chair are concerned he would have made a better speaker than Pennington. The latter I fear will make an inefficient officer. Sherman would not have come up to the grade of any of his late predecessors ; Pennington I apprehend will fall far below them. Banks made one of the ablest if not the ablest Speakers I ever saw in the chair. He was without doubt the most impartial Speaker I ever saw in the House of Representatives. In some things I think Cobb was his superior. It is a matter of vast importance to have an able, quick and prompt presiding officer over any deliberative body and especially in our Ho[use] of Representatives where there is so much excitement and animosity. Impartiality too is the crowning gem of a Speaker’s character. I fear this will be wanting in Pennington. Still I hope all will go along smoothly. I was much pleased with Mr. Toombs’s speech. It is exactly on the right line. It is in better tone, temper, and shows more real statemanship with less impulse of [bare?] passion than any speech I have ever seen from him. If the South would but see the deep truths it teaches, the profound philosophy it inculcates, the true national patriotism it breathes throughout, and would to a man stand unitedly upon the policy it marks out, we should not only carry the next elections, but the country would be [safe?] just so long as they would maintain sternly that line. Their destiny is truly in their own hands. But if they can not see these things, these truths, and can not be got to adopt so plain, so safe and so wise a policy, what can be expected of them in any other emergency or alternative that their folly may drive them into? That is a question that oppresses me in looking after a solution of it. How can I be sanguine in hope as to what a people will do on a new line when they make so fatal a blunder on one so plain and clear? But let the worst come that may, we must all meet, act according to the necessities of the occasion. It is immaterial by what blunder, foolishness or wickedness the necessity is brought about. We can only hope for the best, while we should at all times be prepared for the worst.
[P. S., written on a separate slip of paper].—You may show this to Mr. Toombs if you think proper.
Life of Alexander H. Stephens,Richard Malcolm Johnston, William Hand Browne
J.B. Lippincott, 1878
Alexander H. Stephens would later become Vice President of the Confederated States of America.