TO E. J. FOWLE, ESQ.*

AUBURN, August 26, 1848.

MY DEAR SIR: On my arrival here this morning, after spending two weeks in Livingston and Seneca counties, I had the pleasure of finding your letter of the 23d instant.

The contents of that communication excited my surprise. Having happened to be in Albany two weeks ago, or perhaps three, Mr. Weed showed me a letter from you, containing the agreeable information that the political discontents in your county had subsided, and that the whigs were rallying to the standard of the cause.

Your letter to me is full of a despondency that makes me hope it proceeded from only a depression of spirits, naturally enough produced by the inappropriate and unreasonable letters of our candidate for president. In the whole state there are scarcely any persons in whose correctness of judgment upon political questions I rely with more confidence than on yours, Judge -'s, or Mr. 's. I shall deem your apprehensions worthy of profound consideration, if you continue to indulge them for any period of time. But you will excuse me for saying, on my part, that I do not find reason to distrust the success of our candidates in the country, and especially in this state, in the events which are passing before us. I perceive, as you do, the mischievous effects of the letters to which you refer. But I am obliged to acknowledge that I expect the disorganization of the opposite party will, in some degree, impair our own organization. I fear also that there may be some districts where this evil may jeopard or otherwise ruin local ascendency. Yet on the other hand, there seems to me no room for doubt that the state of things so peculiar will result in giving to our candidates in *Letter on the "Albany Meeting" in opposition to General Taylor.

this state a very large majority over each of the opposing candidates while in other states the result will be the same where circumstances are similar, and quite as favorable where they are different. If you answer me that these local losses can not be borne, I reply that, in the first place, they must be prevented if possible; and in the next place, they are quite certain to be balanced by gains elsewhere.

I have the pleasure to add, on this subject, that so far as my communications extend, I find our friends engaged with zeal, and with certain confidence of success.

For more than ten years past, I have looked to the day of ripening of conscience on the subject of slavery, to which you refer, and have endeavored to do what was in my power to prepare the whig party to profit by it, not for mere personal or partisan ends, but for the benefit of the country and of humanity. You know that every concession to or for slavery by the whig party for ten years past, has been a triumph over me. But there are two things, neither of which I can ever do. The one is, to share the responsibility of any such concession; the other is, to oppose a candidate of the national whig party. All the whigs of New York (to whom I owe so much) could not oblige or induce me to do one or the other of these acts. Any other duty they may require at my hands, will be cheerfully rendered.

I have abiding faith that the whig party will be successful in the state and in the nation this fall. I have abiding faith that this success will favor the non-extension of slavery. But even if we should fail of success now, I abate not a particle of my confidence, that all that is ever to be done for freedom must originate with the whig party, and, in point of practicability, must be accomplished by it.

Very respectfully, your friend.

TO JAMES WATSON WEBB, ESQ.

ASTOR HOUSE, NEW YORK, February 1, 1849.

MY DEAR SIR: The letter which on the 27th of January you addressed to me at Philadelphia, was received by me this afternoon.

In that letter, written at Albany, you express an opinion that the whig members of the legislature will present my name as a candidate before that body for the office of senator. But you add that there are many good and true whigs, in both houses of the legislature, who have been made to believe, and that there are others who pretend to think, that if I should be elected to fill that very responsible trust, I would not give General Taylor's administration a cordial support; that I would represent the feelings and wishes of a faction only of the whig party, and that I would agitate unnecessarily on the subject of slavery; and finally, that my course would be a radical one, and injurious to General Taylor's administration, and to the harmony of the Union.

What you tell me in that respect does not surprise, and therefore does not grieve me. It is a very natural apprehension excited by those who have not always sympathized with me, in the policy which I have pursued in the discussion of subjects which have engaged public attention. But they have been only partial observers of my course. I have never expected nor sought to accomplish any beneficent measure, otherwise than through a whig administration and the whig party. My support of a whig administration does not depend, therefore, on my being in public life or in private life. The honors and wealth of a world could not seduce me from the support of an administration which the whig party have called into power, unless indeed, they themselves should first absolve me from the obligation to sustain it. The state of New York is in my estimate the model

of all republican communities. It is my pride that I am a member of it. My highest ambition has been satisfied, in having been honored with its confidence. If I go into public life, I shall be the representative of the whole of it, and of all its interests, agricultural, commercial, and political. But, inasmuch as no patriot can save his country, except through the co-operation of a party, I shall be the representative of the whig party; and not of a section or of a faction of it, but of that whole party, to which I sustain the most lasting obligations. These obligations may be increased by further confidence, but they can never be cancelled by a denial of it.

In regard to slavery, I do not know what you mean by unnecessary agitation. As a man and a citizen, I have never been its defender or its apologist; I am sure I never should be so as a magistrate or as a statesman. But those persons misapprehend me very much, who suppose that I would vainly agitate even that question in the public councils; and I am not to say now for the first time that I hold that agitation vain by a legislator which leads to no practical results, and that agitation worse than useless which, prosecuted for unattainable purposes, puts in jeopardy great existing interests. The union of these states is indispensable, in my judgment, to the accomplishment of any good even in regard to the institution of slavery, and the agency of the whig party and whig administration is the only agency by which it can be effected.

I am, therefore, I think, quite unlikely to put either into jeopardy. I am in favor, as I think every whig is, of circumscribing slavery within its present bounds. I am opposed to its encroachments, and I shall resist both in whatever situations I may be placed. I shall labor by free, and kind, and peaceful discussion, to form public opinion, and direct it to a constitutional, lawful, and peaceful removal of it. But that removal must be through the agency of those only to whom its responsibilities belong, and the constitutional barriers which protect the slave states in the exclusive right to discharge those responsibilities, will be as sacred in my regard as those which protect the free states in their rights.

As to the radicalism which is imputed to me, I have only to say now, as I have often said to you heretofore, that the tendencies of republican institutions to the melioration of laws and the

improvement of society, have been my study; I aim to allow them free operation. But I am in favor only of progress by advancement, peaceful and lawful, not by subverting in order to build anew. To this degree of radicalism I plead guilty. More than that, or different from that, I deny.

TO JAMES B. TAYLOR, ESQ.

WASHINGTON, June 26, 1852.

MY DEAR SIR: Your kind letter has been received. It would be presumptuous on my part, to suppose that any president of the United States would at any time, or under any circumstances, invite me to a seat in the executive council, and equally so to suppose that the senate of the United States would advise and consent to such a selection. Nevertheless, if there be one whig vote depending at this election on the question you have raised, I will not stand on a point of personal delicacy in the effort to save it. I assure you, therefore, with entire frankness, that under no circumstances which I have ever conceived, or can now conceive, would I ask, or even accept, any public station or preferinent whatever, at the hands of the president of the United States, whether that president were Winfield Scott, or any other man I have ever seen or known. In saying this, I am only saying to you what was well understood as a rule of my conduct, by the late and lamented President Taylor, and has been equally well known and understood by Winfield Scott, from the first hour when my preference of himself as the candidate in the present canvass was fixed.

I am, with great respect and esteem, your friend and humble

servant.