E. B. Hart to Howell Cobb.
(Private.)
Custom House, New York,
Surveyor’s Office, 27 and 29 Pine St.,
March 7, 1861.
My Dear Govr., I have desired greatly to write you for some time; but in the bustle of matters financial and political I have not been able to get a quiet moment until now. To you who I think know I am not of a changeable disposition in everything that relates to yourself as ever and if there be anything I can be of service to you in here you have only to mention it and it will be attended to. For political news and intimations of what we may expect we have to wait and watch our political opponents. The Democratic party is neither dead or sleeping. My judgment, based upon careful study of the elements from the beginning of the present unhappy complications of public affairs, is that in common with all really conservative influences it will in case of hostile action on Lincoln’s part take an immediate and decided position as a peace party. The governing sentiment of the Republican party on the contrary is clearly warlike. The ultras of that party are fiercely belligerent. The irrepressible conflict is lively in their ranks everywhere. How it works may be seen from the action of the Republican Club here night before last. Raymond (Daily Times newspaper) C. S. Spencer, ex-member of Assembly, and other Repubn. guns of all calibres fired away for hours. Spencer and others desiring to pass a resolution instructing Mr. Lincoln to let slip the dogs of war at once ; and Raymond and the quietists urging a mere vote of confidence in the Administration. Finally the Club passed both. If straws shew which way the wind blows these would seem to shew that whilst the temperate Repubns. may get their milder wishes put into words and used as preambles, the intemperate ones will be too likely to shape the action of their party. All we can do here is to be ready to take advantage of the inevitable revulsion of the popular mind and turn it to peace, reconstruction and justice to the South. We mean to do it.
From Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911.
Emanuel Bernard Hart (October 27, 1809 – August 29, 1897) was a U.S. Representative from New York, elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-second Congress (March 4, 1851 – March 3, 1853). He was appointed by President Buchanan surveyor of the port of New York and served from 1857 to 1861.
Howell Cobb was an American political figure. A southern Democrat, Cobb was a five-term member of the United States House of Representatives and Speaker of the House from 1849 to 1851. He also served as the 40th Governor of Georgia and as a Secretary of the Treasury under President James Buchanan. Cobb is, however, probably best known as one of the founders of the Confederacy, having served as the President of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States.