Item Description
Draft of Letter, November 1, 1860, Richard K. Call, Lake Jackson, to Mr. Hart (editor, Tallahassee Sentinel newspaper), 12 pp., explicating at length his unionist, pro-slavery views in response to ''your remarks on the speech delivered by me . . . on the 29th. . . I did not advocate resistance to the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln. . . a measure which, if adopted, must precipitate our country in to civil war. . . for which the South is . . . unprepared. . . 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 . . . from the unhappy division of the Nation in to four contending parties, of which his may chance to be the most numerous. And although I shall regard him as a usurper . . . I hold the peace and safety of the country too dear, and the preservation of our glorious union too sacred, to place it in jeopardy, by one rash and precipitate action . . . the principles of popular government, and the cause of civil and religious liberty throughout the world, all depend on the result of our deliberation, our decision and our action. . . If the conservative elements will all combine, if the three defeated factions will all unite in the holy cause of their country, if they will cease . . . to make war on each other, and unite in opposition to the Black Republican Administration it will be powerless. . . the principle of any southern man is favorable to the institution of African Slavery. . . the Black Republican party [has] perverted our Declaration of Independence, they have willfully . . . misinterpreted our Constitution. They have applied the Declaration of Independence to the African race; they have sought to make the Constitution . . . yield to their false theory. . . while the Constitution . . . recognizes our property in African slaves. . . they assert through the principles of the Declaration of Independence that our slaves are born free, that they are equals. . . Can any one doubt this design in this perversion of the Declaration of Independence, which was intended by our fathers to apply only to the white man, to our own Anglo Saxon race? . . . I am for trying every honorable expedient to save the Union. . . but in the mean time I am for making every preparation for war. War in the field if it must be, war at the Ballot Boxes. . . manifest our firm determination to maintain our Constitutional government in all its purity or perish with it. . . I would suspend all social and commercial intercourse between Florida and the North during the Administration of Mr. Lincoln. . . Let the people of Florida will it, and it can be done. And if they do not will it, let them cease to complain of the tribute they pay to the North. . . the institution of African Slavery has become the great agency of civilization . . . it is feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and administering to the wants and necessities of the whole civilized world. . . it is sending commerce and civilization to barbarous tribes and . . . carrying Christianity into heathen lands. . .''
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