This I confess a little tries one's patience. But I can assure
you in my own case, it will not either change my principles
or my conduct.
It is utterly impossible for me to support the Buffalo nomination.
I have no confidence in Mr. Van Buren, not the slightest.
I would much rather trust General Taylor than Mr. Van Buren
even on this very question of slavery, for I believe that
General Taylor is an honest man and I am sure he is not so
much committed on the wrong side, as I know Mr. Van Buren
to have been for fifteen years. I cannot concur even with
my best friends in giving the lead in a great question to
a notorious opponent to the cause. Besides; there are other
great interests of the country in which you and I hold Mr.
Van Buren to be essentially wrong, and it seems to me that
in consenting to form a party under him Whigs must consent
to bottom their party on one idea only, and also to adopt
as the representative of that idea a head chosen on a strange
emergency from among its steadiest opposers. It gives me
pain to differ from Whig friends whom I know to be as much
attached to universal liberty as I am, and they cannot be
more so.
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