Duff Green letter to John Calhoun, 6 April 1847

Washington 6th April 1847

MY DEAR SIR Yours of the 29th [28] is before me. It is, under the peculiar circumstances, most gratifying to me to be thus assured of your confidence and regard. If I know my own heart, its first wish, connected with public affairs is to see you in the position for which your superior qualifications, your eminent public services, and public and private virtues give you claims greater than any other person. I need not say to you, that no one has a higher respect for your character, and that no one places a higher estimate on your friendship. Knowing that I have at all times suffered persecution, because your political adversaries feared that my influence would be exerted for your advancement, the suggestion that those who are recognised as your friends wanted confidence in me, was calculated to wound me, in proportion to the claims which my fidelity, my services and my sacrifices gave me upon them. No one else could so well urge those claims because no one else so well knows on what they rest, as you do. You know that I have never permitted my own private interests or personal preferences to control my sense of public duty. In the case to which you refer in 1840 you know that when I found that Blair and Rives had induced both Lewis and Pickens to become candidates for Speaker, with an understanding that your friends were to vote for them as printers I told you that I would not ask you to aid my Election as printer. I saw then and told you that your young friends in Congress were making a position for themselves in the dominant party at your expense and at the expense of your principles. I have since seen the selfishness of others, and I am frank to say that one of the inducements with me to publish a paper is to counteract that tendency on the part of those who have acted with you, towards being absorbed by the majority. I would now, while your influence is active create an interest which will control for good the future elements of party:

I have always known that you acted then (1840) as you have on all other occasions from a high sense of your duty to the country. I appreciate the influence which the bias of your political associates had upon your own 'judgment, and altho I regretted then and have ever since, your reconciliation with Van Buren, I have abated nothing of my attachment confidence or respect for you, personally and politically.

After writing to you I saw Gen Gadsden, and conversed with him on the subject of the paper, and he suggested that my best plan was to issue a prospectus and call upon the south to aid me. He said that the objection had been made in Charleston that all was quiet until you came, and that their movement had not been responded to in any other place. I wrote by him to Mr Holmes and have not heard from either of them. I confess that it does appear to me that the South are a doomed people, and I am compelled to ask myself, why should I who have so little in common with them take upon myself the advocacy of their interests? I confess to you further that I cannot close my eyes to the fact that this lethargy in the South indicates a state of indifference which, with the fixed opposition to you in influential quarters, greatly discourages me. I can see that to avail ourselves of Gen'l Taylor's position and popularity we may by uniting your friends and his give a direction to the next Presidential Election greatly to strengthen the position of the South, but I am unwilling to take on myself the responsibility of such a-movement. Taylor is a slave holder, and should the V a Election go against them the Whigs will nominate him. This will probably be followed by the nomination of an abolition Candidate. It is our interest to commit the Whigs against Abolition and we should hold a position which will prompt all parties to look to us as controlling the future.

It has been suggested that the people should in primary assemblies nominate you and Taylor. If your friends were to do this, the Whigs might nominate Taylor and thus complicate our position. My own view is that as yet we should hold the nomination in reserve, put the questions in issue fully and forcibly before the people, and select our candidate for the South, when public sentiment is more fully developed.

I have closed a satisfactory arrangement for the sale of a part of my mountain property. The parties reside in Phil" and are highly respectable and wealthy. They go to see the property this week and make the pay fc upon the report of their Geologist, which cannot be otherwise than satisfactory. I will then be in funds and can publish a paper on my own account but, before I act in the matter wish to hear from you relative to Gen'l. Taylor's position.

Yours truly DUFF GREEN