Lincoln Letters

Lake Jackson 1st November 1860

Mr. Hart,

I have read with attention your remarks on the speech delivered by me before the Bell and Everett Club on the 29 th ult. You say “we cannot agree with General Call in some of his positions. While he did not advocate resistance to Lincoln’s inauguration, he was exceedingly severe on those who would hold office under him.”

No Sir, I did not advocate resistance to the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln. I did not, nor will I advocate a measure, which, if adopted, must precipitate our county in to civil war, with all its attendant calamities, and for which the South is at this time so entirely unprepared. And although I shall regard Mr. Lincoln, if called in to power by a sectional party as organized on revolutionary principles, a party organized beyond the boundary of the constitution, and in open violation of all the great principles of our representative govt., a usurper called in to power not by a majority of the American people but by a sectional faction subverting the Government through the constituents and powers in the make up of the election franchise.

If Mr. Lincoln should be elected, it will not be by a majority of the American people. It will be the result of fortuitous circumstances. It will be from the unhappy division of the Nation into four contending parties, of which his may chance to be the most numerous. [1]

Footnotes

[1] Call owned a plantation on Lake Jackson near Tallahassee.