Year: 1860

Gentlemen: Your letter of the 5th inst. has just reached me. The limited time a lowed for action induces me to comply with your request for a ''prompt" answer, and l shall endeavorto to make it equally ''candid."

 sympathise fully in your apprehensions for the future of our country. It cannot be disguised that both the safety of the South and the integrity of the Union are seriously. threatened. It is my honest conviction that the issue depends upon the action of the southern people at this important june ture. A firm, wise, and mfaltering policy on the part of the south will give security to her own rights, and peace and quiet to the Union Any other course will be equally fatal to the preservation of the one and the maintenance of the other Like yourselves, 1 have looked to the national democratic party as the only political or ganization in which the soun constitutional elements of the whole country could be brought into united, cordial cooperation. With this conviction, l witnessed the pro- ceedings of the late Charleston convention with intense anxiety, and deeply regretted the causes which led to it's disruption

 In considering the proper course now to be pursued we should understand distinctly the reason of the failure of that convention to agree upon platform and candidate for the support of the Democratic party. If the differences which led to the results at Charleston are immaterial and unimportant, then there is no cause for trouble or appre- hension. The public mind should promptly pronounce them to be so, and they should be dismissed from our thoughts as unworthy of further consideration Are the people prepared to pronounce this judgment? The answer to this inquiry involves, in my opinion, the future destiny of the south There were two points of difference at Charleston which produced the disruption of the convention-lst, the platform of the party on the subject of slavery; 2nd, the nomination of a proper candidate for the Presidency.

 The fifteen southern States, in common with the two democratic States fthe Pacific, agreed upon a platform, which recognized the equality of the southern States, and the right of their citizens to go with their pro- perty into the common territory of the Un ion-:laiming for them and their property the same protection which the constitution and laws of the land extend to their brethren of the slaveholding States and their property-nothing more--nothing less The seventeen States, which, with perfect unanimity, agreed upon this platform, are all of them certain democratic States. The candidates to be nominated by the demo- cratic party for President and Vice Presi- dent must receive their votes to give them the slightest prospect of success. The re- maining sixteen States, by virtue of their superior numbers in the convention refused to recognize these principles. They did not assert by the platform they adopted, antagoniStic principles to those agreed upon by the southern and democratic States Their policy was to leave the question an open issue, so far as any declaration of principles was concerned, but to give a practical construction to their platform by the nomination of candidate whose chief claim to the nomination grew out of his known hostility to the doctrine for which the southern and democratic States conten- ded. The seventeen democratic States were prepared to unite upon any true and worthy man for the Presidency There was on their part no disposition whatever to force upon their brethren of the other States a candidate unacceptable to them. The is- sue on their part was for principle and sue cess, involving no consideration of mere personal advancement of a favorie candi- date. The sixteen opposition States, on the other hand, not only refused to unite upon the platform offered to them by their brethren of the democratic States. but struggled to force upon the party the nom nation of Judge Douglas, against the stern and united voice of every certain democratic State in the Union.

 venture to assert that such a spectacle was never before presented in the history of party convention. The States were as nearly equally divided as it was possible for them to be; on one side was every demo- cratic State, and on the other all the oppo- stion States; and the latter, who were not certain of giving a single vote for the can- didates that might be nominated, insisted upon making both platform and candi- date for the democratic States to elect There certainly could not be more unjust distribution of responsibility and duty