Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/391

 Letters and Times of the Tylers. 385

stitutional, diplomatic and practical administration. Such subjects address themselves to the highest order of our intelligent and culti- vated citizens. The work also presents a very beautiful feature of American literature in the elegant and eloquent addresses delivered by President Tyler ; and also a very interesting feature, on which our literature will ever smile and brighten, is the many very tender, yet tastefully written family letters, which attract our attention as in every respect delicately illustrating the social refinement in which a cultivated literature may v^^ell delight.

The work continues its historical and biographic account of the events occurring during the life of President Tyler, embracing his connection with the action of the State of Virginia in her effort to avoid the late war against the Federal government, " his course in the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States, to which he was unanimously elected," and his election to the permanent Congress, of which he was a member, but in which he never occupied a seat ; he died before it ever assembled. Though he had been the subject of severe party temper during his Presidential term, it is due to his- tory to say he outlived every unkind feeling ever expressed against him, and when overtaken by death, the unanimous voice of praise and affection from the press and public bodies, and distinguished men with whom he had served, united in one brilliant stream of ad- miration for nearly a lifetime of official service, and deep regret at the loss of one so capable and so spotless in the discharge of every duty. " Mr, Tyler was never a sectionalist. His views were broad and far-reaching, and the State rights that he advocated meant the equal rights of all the States. On the slavery question he occupied the old Virginia position. Slavery was a great political evil, but it was one that required time for its obliteration. When the agitation ensued in Virgmia, on Nat. Turner's rebellion, he introduced a bill in the United States Congress to abolish the slave trade in the District, and in 1857, when the immediate abolition programme of the North had driven many of the Southern people to advocating .slavery as a blessing, he wrote a public letter denouncing the attempt of the Southern Convention at Knoxville of Southern fire-eaters to re- open the slave trade."

We differ with- the author of this work in his views of some men of great distinction, to whom frequent allusion is made, as well as to the spirit of the Whig party under which they acted, and also as to the motives attributed to Henry Clay and some of his political asso ciates and allies. It is a work of ability and refined literary taste,