Daily Nashville patriot. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1860-1862, 1861-09-25

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Gull from q paper which I fear is not on
your exchange list, the following extract from
the celebrated letter of Rev. DR.. r. J. Breck;
inridge, addressed some years since to Sena-
tor Sumner. It is written in his own racy
English, and is in burning contrast with his
later utterances. 1t is remarkable how far
bis predictions then have become history
now. Let Kentucky heed the words of her
day. Alas! that the writer of these patriotic
words should now be standing by the side of
Sumner, bounding on this war of subiuga-
ton against his own Southi But for the ex.
tract:
"Now, sir, this means neither more nor less
than the edge of the sword. Lay aside the
rhetoric, and the simple sense is, grape and
canister. cold steel and stricken battle. Be-
lieve me, Mr.. Sumner, when / state two facts,
one OF which / know better than you do. and
the other of which you ought to know better
perhaps than do.
''The fact which know better than you.
Is, that when the faintest Indication of the
settled purpose of the men of the North to
follow your advice becomes apparent to the
men of the fifteen slave States of this Union,
million of armed men will be ready to re-
ceive you and your followers and if you
come not speedily thereafter to execute your
threats, your coming will not be waited for;
but they will seek you on the soil where you
now vainly suppose no danger will ever come.
The fact which you ought to know better
than do, is, that after two or three hundred
thousand men are arrayed in battle, on each
side, it makes no sort of difference, as to the
probable result, whether one or the other
party has the greater reserve of physical
force left out OF the battle, because. after two
or three hundred thousand fighting men, in
the present state of the art of war. every
thing depend merely on brains. The sum
OF these two facts is very clear namely, if
the North wishes to settle the slavery ques-
ton by the edge of the sword, the North is in
| perfectly fair way to be perfectly gratiied;
and when she gets what she wants. there is
at least an exceeding great probability that
the North will see reason to change her mind
| very materially al to the wisdom of that
method OF settling that question.
Moreover, let it not escape your atten-
ton. that many circumstances aggrsvate the
conduct of the men of the North. and exae-
perate the hearts of the men of the South in
| this whole business, all of them tending TO
| strengthen US, and weaken you, at every
stage of the bloody struggle to which you
are driving the country. For, in the first
place, let slavery be all that you assert it to
be. the time is long past when it was either
honest, wise or patriotic for you to take that
ground, even in an argument having merely
ordinary political bearings, much less in one
looking to bloodshed and conquest. All that
was settled between us before the old COn-
federation was formed; it was again settled
in the common danger and common glory OF
our great Revolution; il was settled again in
the Federal Constitution. | say nothing
about the unspeakable folly of arguing as a
statesman, that slave State and free State
can not tolerate each other in one Confedera-
cy, suppOsing the question to be now for tue
first time considered. What say is, that it
is no longer possible for the men of the North
to open that qestion. without revolution and
without disloyal to every national act and
movement of our past history; and what l
mean is, they can not do this without so
weakening and disgracing themselves, and so
strengthening aud ennobling US, that God,
posterity, fortune, and the hearts of the COM
batants must feel the effects of the opposite
conduct of the parties. To which add, in
the second place, that this conduct of the men
of the North, besides being bare political
aft5rthOught, is deliberate breach of politi-
Cal faith cemented by the blood of our faith
ers, an ignoble retraction of plighted honor,
and truth, and Justice; calculated sacrifice
of those of their own race, and lineage, and
house, and blood, for those of u strange kin
dred and cline, without any new circum-
stance or additional reason for so afro
cious a perfdy against nature and
against plighted troth. Add again, in
tt third place, the atrocity of that state of
heart in which the North presses this bloody
arbitrament, under the settled belief that she
risks nothing thereby, and that we risk eve
rything aud the fervOr of that state of soul
in which the South, reused by so much in-
suit, injustice and danger, does risk all, with
sublime purpose, to the last man. to win
all. And then, in the fourth place. add the sort
of conviction with which the two parties thus
mutually range themselves in that deadly
strife; and, if you be as wise as you are elo-
quent. you may comprehend what as yet you
seem to have wholly overlooked, the settled
confidence OF the entire slave States that they
are fully able to make the men of the North
repent that they ever broke the Constitution,
and forgot ancestral ties, and outraged ma
tional obi gations, in order to ruin ten mil
lions of the most elevated race on the face
Of the earth, upon the hazard, if not the pre-
text of benefiting the third part of that num-
Der CT one of the most degraded races in the
world. You will have battIe-and that
without truce or compromise. and that when
ever you can reach us, and that until the
field is entirely won ! For my part, sir,
would gladly shun that battle; gladly give
my blood 90 arrest it if it were begun. But
there mingies with this profound dread of
shedding my brothers blood, not one appre-
pension of the results of the conflict For
whoever lives to see that battle fought, will
see oHe more example added to the multitude
which already crowd the annals OF mankind /,
that they who boast themselves when they
grid their harness on, are apt enough to wall
when they come to put it off"