WASHINGTON CITY, Dec. 8, 1860.
MY DEAR SIR: A sense of duty to the State of Georgia requires me to take a step which makes it proper that I should no longer continue to be a member of your Cabinet.
In the troubles of the country consequent upon the late Presidential election, the honor and safety of my State are involved. Her people so regard it, and in their opinion I fully concur. They are engaged in a struggle where the issue is life or death. My friends ask for my views and counsel. Not to respond would be degrading to myself and unjust to them. I have accordingly prepared, and must now issue to them, an address which contains the calm and solemn convictions of my heart and judgment.
The views which I sincerely entertain, and which therefore I am bound to express differ in some respects from your own. The existence of this difference would expose me, if I should remain in my present place, to unjust suspicions, and put you in a false position. The first of these consequences I could bear well enough, but I will not subject you to the last.
My withdrawal has not been occasioned by anything you have said or done. Whilst differing from your Message upon some of its theoretical doctrines, as well as from the hope so earnestly expressed that the Union can yet be preserved, there was no practical result likely to follow which required me to retire from your Administration. That necessity is created by what I feel it my duty to do; and the responsibility of the act, therefore, rests alone upon myself.
To say that I regret — deeply regret — this necessity, but feebly expresses the feeling with which I pen this communication. For nearly four years I have been associated with you as one of your Cabinet officers, and during that period nothing has occurred to mar, even for a moment, our personal and official relations. In the policy and measures of your Administration I have cordially concurred, and shall ever feel proud of the humble place which my name may occupy in its history. If your wise counsels and patriotic warnings had been heeded by your countrymen, the fourth of March next would have found our country happy, prosperous, and united. That it will not be so, is no fault of yours.
The evil has now passed beyond control, and must be met by each and all of us under our responsibility to God and our country. If, as I believe, history will have to record yours as the last administration of our present Union, it will also place it side by side with the purest and ablest of those that preceded it.
With the kindest regards for yourself and the members of your Cabinet, with whom I have been so pleasantly associated.
I am most truly and sincerely, your friend,
HOWELL COBB.
To the PRESIDENT.
SOURCE: Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, Editor, The Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911, Volume 2: The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb, p. 517-8; “The Resignation Of Secretary Cobb. The Correspondence,” The New York Times, New York, New York, December 14, 1860.
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CLIFTON SPRINGS, December 8,1860.
You want to know about every where and what and why and wherefore of our very idle, insignificant life. We go to bed, we get up, we look about, we yawn, stretch, and yawn again. And to this I sometimes add a little coughing. As to weather, we do not have any, or it is so mixed that nobody can tell what it is. The cold I had has either not left me, or it has left me not improved.
The state of the country discomposes and untones everything. What is to be the end of it? I do not exactly like the temper of our Republicans, — The Independent, for example, and The Tribune. There is too much of a provoking uppishness that wants dignity, and can only be mischievous in its effects. My Thanksgiving sermon was on this subject, the same that I delivered on the census a year ago, with some filling added. My conviction of the want of such a view just now has induced me to send it on to Hartford, where it is setting up for the press. You will see it in due time, and I guess will not be displeased by it. If you are, why, then I will secede.
SOURCE: Mary A. Bushnell Cheney, Editor, Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell, p. 442
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Hi Professor.
Sad. I thought I was reading a current newspaper.
A 160 year difference chronologically, but today’s zeitgeist.
5.56mm