Your picture, sent to me at my request, hangs in my room.
It is the face and form of a great American statesman. One
whom our people have learned to admire and love.
Our people venerate your years, still in vigorous life and
in full possession of great faculties of mind and heart.
We look to you and other great Northern men to keep us in
our sectional and racial questions. In one way these questions
mean so little to the sections of the country not immediately
interested in them, but they mean so much to the Southern
people who have to deal with them as live, every day matters.
I left the Attorney-General's office in this State on February
28th, ult., after fourteen years service and two years yet
to run. On March 4th, inst., I became Congressman from the
new Third Congressional district.
I go to Washington as a Democrat, but with full knowledge
that my party does not contain all the right or all the wrong
in it. And I hope that in the vexing questions of the future,
that by a temperate course of thought and action, that my
influence may be worth something, however small, to my people
beyond even a party view.
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