The Placer herald., 1864-03-26
HON. THOMAS H. SEYMOUR,

We present our readers this month an
admirably engraved likeness of ex Governor
Thomas II. Seymour, of Connecticut. Mr..
Seymour has been long and favorably known
in public life AS an unhinching and unswerv
ING Democrat of the States Rights school.
He was first elected to the Connecticut
Legislature in 1885, and to Congress in 943.
In l947, when the Mexican war broke out,
he Joined the Ninth, or New England Re,
giment, and was ele' ated to the post of
Major. Upon the death of Col Ransom,
who was killed at the storming Of Chepul-
tepec, he took command of the Regiment,
leading it under a severe fire over the walls
OF the fort and with bis own sword cut the
haly ards of the Mexican flag, which fell at
his feet He bore an honorable and distin-
gusbed part in all the battles from Vera
Cruz to the city of Mexico, and the services
of Colonel Seymour are alluded to by Gen.
Scott, in his reports, in highly complimentary
terms. After the war, he was three times
elected Governor of Connecticut, and in
1853, was appointed by President Pierce
Minister to Russia, where he represented the
Government with credit to himself and the
country. He returned in 1859, since which
time he has held no official position, except,
upon the urgent l'itation of friends, ac-
ceping place, in 1861, in the Connecticut
LEGISLATURE He ran for Governor in 1868,
and was defeated, as all our readers well
know, by the INSCRIPTIONS use of soldiers
votes by the present Administration. What
recommends Colonel Seymour now to the
attention of the public, however, is not his
past history so much as his present position
upon the civil war in which the country is
involved. From the very first he has been
among those who believed that it was pro,
voked and gotten up by the Aboitionsts to
overthrow, and not to save the Government,
as it was instituted by Washington and
Madison, and among the very few public
men of the day, Col. Seymour can congratu-
late himself that he has never given one
particle of aid or encouragement to this
Abolition insurrection against the Constitu-
ton. When Others hesitated, he did not.
He denounced it in the Connecticut Legis-
Iature in 1861, and his opponents vented
their impotent rage by removing his portrait
from the State Capitol! In 1862, his name
was used at a War Meeting in Hartford
He promptly declared, in apublc letter that
"it was used without his knowledge or con-
SENT" and that "lhe monstrous fallacy of the
present day, that the Union can be re-
established by destroying any part of the
South, is one that shall perish with the shells
that are thrown into its defenseless cities,
and leave the condition of the country, after
its treasures are exhausted, and its brave
men on both sides consigned to hospitals
and graves, spectacle for the reproach OF
commiseralion of the civilized world" And
has not this prediction already come truei
Again, in the same month, he wrote to g
gentleman in this city, II abhor the whole
scheme of Southern invasion, with all its
horrible consequences of rapine and plunder
You cannot help but see, sir, what thousand:
of us are beginning to see, that there can nc
Union be gotten in this way. The wal
might have been avoided, and the Unior
saved. X Those who drive the car o
war have no more idea Of saving the Unior
by their bloody sacrifices Of this sort, thar
they have of changing the course of nature.
This, it should be recolected, was writer