Beschreibung:

TYLER, John, President. Autograph letter signed ("J. Tyler") TO HIS SON, ROBERT TYLER Sherwood Forest, [near Richmond, Virginia], 27 August 1860. 3 pages, 4to , half black morocco case with engraved portrait. Fine condition. TYLER ON THE ELECTION OF 1860: "THE DEFEAT OF LINCOLN [IS] THE GREAT MATTER AT ISSUE" One of the finest extant letters of Tyler. The sympathies of the ageing former President lay decidely with Southern interests in the sectional crisis brought to a head in the 1860 elections, which took place a few months later. Tyler expresses his candid view of the divisions within the Democrats, the threat of the new Republican party to the South and Lincoln's chances for election. In April, Southern Democrats had bolted the convention which later nominated Stephen A. Douglas; these dissenters, organized as the National Democrats, then nominated their own candidate, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. John Bell of Tennessee, Tyler's former Secretary of War was fielded as the candidate of the Constitutional Union Party, and in May, the Republican nominating convention had unexpectedly chosen Lincoln as its candidate. Tyler writes that Colonel Withers of Mississippi has recently visited, "...and as the condition of the times is the fruitful subject of conversation it came soon to be introduced. I expressed to him the gratification I had felt at the fusion between the [Stephen A.] Douglas and [John] Bell men in New York and expressed the hope that all conservatives would unite on the same ticket. That in my view the defeat of Lincoln was the great matter at issue, and that all others were subordinate -- and probably said that if I lived in New York, altho' I was decidedly a Breckinridge man, I would advocate the fusion ticket. This it seems, he [Withers] reported to Genl. Foote..." Tyler plainly forsees the prospect of a Lincoln victory and outlines a last-ditch plan for his defeat: "There can be no possible doubt of Lincoln's election unless some of the so called Free States is [ sic ] snatched from him. I presented also another idea to Col. Withers and that was that to defeat Lincoln was to elect Breckinridge or Lane, I cared not which, by throwing the first before the House, the last before the Senate. This has called forth the letters of my old friend Genl. Foote who is a Douglas man. I enclose it to you, so that if you should see any reference made to my opinions by Genl. Foote, or any other which may call for explanation, you may be in proper position to take it by the publication, if necessary, of my letter. I said to Col. Withers...that I regarded [William H.] Seward [an abolitionist candidate for the nomination] as the Catiline of our day and that to reach the Presidency he would quaff the blood of his fellow as did Catiline of old and expressed the hope that there would still arise a Cicero to denounce him in the Senate chambers...Do give some account of Pennsylvania [Robert Tyler lived in Philadelphia]...If I deceive not myself, Breckinridge will carry pluralities in a large majority of the Southern States so as to present Lane to the Senate, should Lincoln not be elected by the popular vote. I live in the hope that a defeat of the Negro-men [anti-slavery politicians] now will dissolve this [the Republican] party...." As Tyler so accurately forsaw, the divisions in the Democrats did result in Lincoln's election. In February 1861 Tyler was chairman of a convention of 21 states called in hopes of effecting a compromise between the Northern and Southern interests; when this failed, Tyler urged Virginia to secede. He played a minor role in the Confederate government before his death in January 1862. Robert Tyler returned to Virginia and later served as register of the Treasury of the Confederacy.