On the
16th and 17th of May, 1860, it became necessary for me in a debate, in
the Senate, to review that letter of Mr. Cass. From my remarks then
made, the following extract is taken:
"The Senator [Mr. Douglas] might have remembered, if he had
chosen to recollect so unimportant a thing, that I once had to
explain to him, ten years ago, the fact that I repudiated the
doctrine of that letter at the time it was published, and that
the Democracy of Mississippi had well-nigh crucified me for the
construction which I placed upon it. There were men mean enough
to suspect that the construction I gave to the Nicholson letter
was prompted by the confidence and affection I felt for General
Taylor. At a subsequent period, however, Mr. Cass thoroughly
reviewed it. He uttered (for him) very harsh language against
all who had doubted the true construction of his letter, and he
construed it just as I had done during the canvass of 1848. It
remains only to add that I supported Mr. Cass, not because of
the doctrine of the Nicholson letter, but in despite of it;
because I believed a Democratic President, with a Democratic
Cabinet and Democratic counselors in the two Houses of Congress,
and he as honest a man as I believed Mr. Cass to be, would be a
safer reliance than his opponent, who personally possessed my
confidence as much as any man living, but who was of, and must
draw his advisers from, a party the tenets of which I believed
to be opposed to the interests of the country, as they were to
all my political convictions.
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