Details
TYLER, JOHN, President. Autograph letter signed ("J. Tyler") TO HIS SON, ROBERT TYLER, Sherwood Forest, [near Richmond, Virginia], 8 March 1859. 3 pages, 4to, closely written, recipient's docket on page 4, a few tears at folds (two repaired).
"THE COUNTRY IS IN A BAD STATE...A COTTON REGION WILL HAVE SLAVES..."
A fine letter, written at a crucial moment in the intensifying controversy over the issue of slavery, in which Tyler reveals his opinion on this issue and predicts the failure of the Democrats in the l860 elections. "Healey's portrait of me is certainly admirable. He spared no pains on it, and seemed to me to be working for the immortality which a first rate picture bestows upon an artist. He writes me that it is his intention to exhibit it at the annual exhibition of paintings in New York, I think in April....Would it not remunerate an engraver[?]. I have been often mortified at the misrepresentations of me which are occasionally seen in the print shops. I have like you been struck by the silence of the Enquirer relative to my late address in Williamsburgh. I handed it over to a Committee of the Alumni [of Tyler's alma mater, the College of William & Mary] who propose publishing all the proceedings....You will be pleased with the address when you see it. I never knew anything take better....I presume that the pamphlet will see the light in a few days.
"A letter from James Sample puts me at ease relative to his accounts. He must be urged continually to vigilance. [name effaced] has been here some days....He is wholly engrossed with speculations about the future of America and seems to have mapped out for himself no chart of life. Considering his undoubted talents and information he constitutes an anomaly in the human race. I proposed to write Floyd [John B. Floyd, Secretary of War under Buchanan, a Virginian] a private letter asking employment for him in a distant territory....The future is a blank to him I fear. We shall commence rebuilding the Old College at an early day. Some $l0,000 have been subscribed....My health has been better...However it is a hard matter for one who in a year more will be a septegenarian to rally thoroughly.
TYLER, JOHN, President. Autograph letter signed ("J. Tyler") TO HIS SON, ROBERT TYLER, Sherwood Forest, [near Richmond, Virginia], 8 March 1859. 3 pages, 4to, closely written, recipient's docket on page 4, a few tears at folds (two repaired).
"THE COUNTRY IS IN A BAD STATE...A COTTON REGION WILL HAVE SLAVES..."
A fine letter, written at a crucial moment in the intensifying controversy over the issue of slavery, in which Tyler reveals his opinion on this issue and predicts the failure of the Democrats in the l860 elections. "Healey's portrait of me is certainly admirable. He spared no pains on it, and seemed to me to be working for the immortality which a first rate picture bestows upon an artist. He writes me that it is his intention to exhibit it at the annual exhibition of paintings in New York, I think in April....Would it not remunerate an engraver[?]. I have been often mortified at the misrepresentations of me which are occasionally seen in the print shops. I have like you been struck by the silence of the Enquirer relative to my late address in Williamsburgh. I handed it over to a Committee of the Alumni [of Tyler's alma mater, the College of William & Mary] who propose publishing all the proceedings....You will be pleased with the address when you see it. I never knew anything take better....I presume that the pamphlet will see the light in a few days.
"A letter from James Sample puts me at ease relative to his accounts. He must be urged continually to vigilance. [name effaced] has been here some days....He is wholly engrossed with speculations about the future of America and seems to have mapped out for himself no chart of life. Considering his undoubted talents and information he constitutes an anomaly in the human race. I proposed to write Floyd [John B. Floyd, Secretary of War under Buchanan, a Virginian] a private letter asking employment for him in a distant territory....The future is a blank to him I fear. We shall commence rebuilding the Old College at an early day. Some $l0,000 have been subscribed....My health has been better...However it is a hard matter for one who in a year more will be a septegenarian to rally thoroughly.
""The Country, I fear, is in a bad state. The dissensions existing among the Democrats [Tyler's party], augurs success to their opponents, and yet their quarrel is about a mere abstraction - as to which I think the [Stephen A. Douglas men and the northern Democrats are wrong, but it is after all a mere abstraction. A cotton region will have slaves, while a grazing country [the western territories] does not want them....."
The concept of "popular sovereignty' as advocated by Douglas and attacked by Lincoln proved more than a mere abstraction, of course, but Tyler's attitude towards the issue, as a Virginian, slave-owner and former President, is of great interest. As Tyler predicted, the divisions in the Democrats (the Southern Democrats supporting Breckinridge and the northern Democrats championing Douglas) did result in the election of Lincoln. By that time, a year and a half after the present letter, Tyler's position, like that of many Southerners, had hardened considerably. He urged Virginia to secede and served as a member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy. In November l86l the former President was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives, but died before he could take his seat. His son,
Robert Tyler (l816-77), the recipient of this highly interesting letter, had settled in Philadelphia, and was an active supporter of James Buchanan; his home was attacked by an anti-southern mob in l86l and he fled back to Virginia, and then served as register of the Treasury of the Confederacy under Judah P. Benjamin.
"THE COUNTRY IS IN A BAD STATE...A COTTON REGION WILL HAVE SLAVES..."
A fine letter, written at a crucial moment in the intensifying controversy over the issue of slavery, in which Tyler reveals his opinion on this issue and predicts the failure of the Democrats in the l860 elections. "Healey's portrait of me is certainly admirable. He spared no pains on it, and seemed to me to be working for the immortality which a first rate picture bestows upon an artist. He writes me that it is his intention to exhibit it at the annual exhibition of paintings in New York, I think in April....Would it not remunerate an engraver[?]. I have been often mortified at the misrepresentations of me which are occasionally seen in the print shops. I have like you been struck by the silence of the Enquirer relative to my late address in Williamsburgh. I handed it over to a Committee of the Alumni [of Tyler's alma mater, the College of William & Mary] who propose publishing all the proceedings....You will be pleased with the address when you see it. I never knew anything take better....I presume that the pamphlet will see the light in a few days.
"A letter from James Sample puts me at ease relative to his accounts. He must be urged continually to vigilance. [name effaced] has been here some days....He is wholly engrossed with speculations about the future of America and seems to have mapped out for himself no chart of life. Considering his undoubted talents and information he constitutes an anomaly in the human race. I proposed to write Floyd [John B. Floyd, Secretary of War under Buchanan, a Virginian] a private letter asking employment for him in a distant territory....The future is a blank to him I fear. We shall commence rebuilding the Old College at an early day. Some $l0,000 have been subscribed....My health has been better...However it is a hard matter for one who in a year more will be a septegenarian to rally thoroughly.
TYLER, JOHN, President. Autograph letter signed ("J. Tyler") TO HIS SON, ROBERT TYLER, Sherwood Forest, [near Richmond, Virginia], 8 March 1859. 3 pages, 4to, closely written, recipient's docket on page 4, a few tears at folds (two repaired).
"THE COUNTRY IS IN A BAD STATE...A COTTON REGION WILL HAVE SLAVES..."
A fine letter, written at a crucial moment in the intensifying controversy over the issue of slavery, in which Tyler reveals his opinion on this issue and predicts the failure of the Democrats in the l860 elections. "Healey's portrait of me is certainly admirable. He spared no pains on it, and seemed to me to be working for the immortality which a first rate picture bestows upon an artist. He writes me that it is his intention to exhibit it at the annual exhibition of paintings in New York, I think in April....Would it not remunerate an engraver[?]. I have been often mortified at the misrepresentations of me which are occasionally seen in the print shops. I have like you been struck by the silence of the Enquirer relative to my late address in Williamsburgh. I handed it over to a Committee of the Alumni [of Tyler's alma mater, the College of William & Mary] who propose publishing all the proceedings....You will be pleased with the address when you see it. I never knew anything take better....I presume that the pamphlet will see the light in a few days.
"A letter from James Sample puts me at ease relative to his accounts. He must be urged continually to vigilance. [name effaced] has been here some days....He is wholly engrossed with speculations about the future of America and seems to have mapped out for himself no chart of life. Considering his undoubted talents and information he constitutes an anomaly in the human race. I proposed to write Floyd [John B. Floyd, Secretary of War under Buchanan, a Virginian] a private letter asking employment for him in a distant territory....The future is a blank to him I fear. We shall commence rebuilding the Old College at an early day. Some $l0,000 have been subscribed....My health has been better...However it is a hard matter for one who in a year more will be a septegenarian to rally thoroughly.
""The Country, I fear, is in a bad state. The dissensions existing among the Democrats [Tyler's party], augurs success to their opponents, and yet their quarrel is about a mere abstraction - as to which I think the [Stephen A. Douglas men and the northern Democrats are wrong, but it is after all a mere abstraction. A cotton region will have slaves, while a grazing country [the western territories] does not want them....."
The concept of "popular sovereignty' as advocated by Douglas and attacked by Lincoln proved more than a mere abstraction, of course, but Tyler's attitude towards the issue, as a Virginian, slave-owner and former President, is of great interest. As Tyler predicted, the divisions in the Democrats (the Southern Democrats supporting Breckinridge and the northern Democrats championing Douglas) did result in the election of Lincoln. By that time, a year and a half after the present letter, Tyler's position, like that of many Southerners, had hardened considerably. He urged Virginia to secede and served as a member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy. In November l86l the former President was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives, but died before he could take his seat. His son,
Robert Tyler (l816-77), the recipient of this highly interesting letter, had settled in Philadelphia, and was an active supporter of James Buchanan; his home was attacked by an anti-southern mob in l86l and he fled back to Virginia, and then served as register of the Treasury of the Confederacy under Judah P. Benjamin.