Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/274

 268 Southern Eistorical Society Papers.

features of personal liberty, for deference paid to State authority, and for respect shown for constitutional restraint.

" With the best wishes for your continued good health, I am, dear, sir, your sincere friend,

"Nat. Tyler."

It is apparent that this so-called " historical statement " had been seen by Republican Senators, and that they were not ignorant of its real character when the Hawley resolution was under discussion in the Senate. Those Senators then knew that General Sherman had, in his letter of January 6, 1885, to the Secretary of War, changed the issue between us from one of veracity to a rambling, shuffling dis cussion of a "conspiracy " and of " conspirators " in the winter of i860- '61, and that which at the Frank Blair Post may have been "a white lie," not intended for publication, came before the Senate as an " historical statem.ent," bolstered with other falsehoods equally with- out foundation or support in anything written or uttered by me. It now survives as an " Ex. Doc." of picturesque prevarication.

I know nothing of any "conspiracy" or of any "conspirators." There was no secrecy about any of the political affairs which led to the secession of the States in i86o-'i. There was no possibility of any concealment. The people were advised by the press, they acted knowingly, and the results, through all their various phases, were necessarily known 10 the people, by whom they were ratified and confirmed. To talk* now of conspiracy and conspirators is shallow nonsense, and notwithstanding Sherman says that he " was ap- proached by a number of the Knights of the Golden Circle," that accusation will be dismissed as the coinage of political demagogues. If Sherman was approached by "conspirators" they knew their man; they may have heard of his conversation at Vicksburg, his expressions of approval of Southern action, his talk of the " d — d Yankees " to Governor Roper, and such expressions, and may have regarded him as a fit conspirator with themselves. No man ever insulted me by approaching me with suggestions of conspiracy.

As 10 the action taken at the conference of some of the Southern Senators in January, i86i, and which is introduced in this " historical statement " as evidence of a "conspiracy," it is only necessary to say to those Senators who, in the debate on the Hawley resolution, referred to the letter of D. L. Yulee to Joseph Finnegan, and the resohitions attached thereto, that the resolutions were forwarded to the conventions of the States then in session, and that they were the