Governor Letcher's Candid Correspondence

GOVERNOR LETCHER'S CANDID CORRESPONDENCE F. N. Boney John Letcher reached die pinnacle of his political career just before the nation plunged into die holocaust of civil war. On January 1, 1860, die forty-six-year-old Democrat became die governor of Virginia. For die next four years he would lead his state in its time of greatest peril. Letcher's rise to power followed traditional patterns. By 1833 he had joined his fadier in championing Jacksonian Democracy. He ardendy supported universal white manhood suffrage and vigorously denounced die forces of privilege and monopoly. Yet he remained faithful to die time-honored Virginia principles of states' rights and strict constitutional construction. Young Letcher was a member of the small town, Soudiern middle class; he had no connection with die aristocracy and was one generation removed from the yeomanry. His bourgeois instincts exerted a strong moderating influence. Even in his earliest, most idealistic years in politics , he usually tempered his endiusiastic attacks on die Whigs widi restraint. As time passed and die Jacksonian crusade crushed its real and imaginary enemies, Letcher's ingrained conservatism broadened and deepened. A flourishing law practice taught die ambitious young politico die complexities of the local courthouse cliques and kept him in contact widi grass roots sentiments in his area. Editing die Democracy's organ in Lexington, the Valley Star, sharpened his political wits. Unfortunately , Lexington lay in the heart of die Whig citadel of Rockbridge County. Letcher led many spirited assaults, but this Whig bastion could not be carried. But Rockbridge was only a single county in die great Valley of Virginia , a Democratic stronghold. In die Valley as a whole Rockbridge's Whig heresy was diluted to insignificance, and an able Democrat could rise swifUy. Letcher soared to prominence in die Valley dirough aggressive and talented leadership in the move to smash the traditional eastern control of the Virginia political machinery. The Reform Constitutional Convention of 1850-1851 climaxed a gradual evolution of democracy 167 168C I V I L WAR H I S TO R Y in Virginia, and Delegate Letcher's sparkling performance made him a hero all over die western section of die state. Quickly exploiting his new popularity, he ran for Congress in 1851. Winning easily, he held his post for three more consecutive terms against only token opposition. Much of Letcher's political activity was centered in Washington during the disastrous decade of the 1850's. He was an unyielding rock of cautious moderation in a rising current of sectional fanaticism. Altiiough his basic loyalty remained widi Virginia and die Soudi, he vigorously resisted die radical fire-eaters' secessionism, and remained equally disdainful of diese Dixie fanatics and die "Black Republicans " who flocked into Congress from the Western and Northern states. Consistentiy and sometimes passionately defending die Soudiland from the growing Republican onslaught, he nevertheless persisted in seeking compromise. In ordinary times Lechter's struggle for an honest, frugal, and limited national government would have marked him as a better-than-average conservative, respected by friend and foe for his diligence, sincerity, and integrity. But the times were out of joint. Congressman Letcher is best remembered—and honored—as one of die leaders of the moderates , an unorganized, constantly evolving, but determined band of politicians from every section of die country who struggled to stem the drift toward catastrophe. In 1859 Letcher briefly turned away from tumultuous Washington and tried to gain die governorship of Virginia, a prize which had hidierto eluded his eager grasp. After an intensive behind-die-scenes campaign to capture convention delegates, he won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Then he plunged into a full-scale battle widi die rejuvenated Whigs, who were making their last determined bid for power in die state. A superficial flirtation widi a plan for gradual emancipation in 1847 returned to haunt him in diis campaign as die Whigs repeatedly attacked him as a Southerner "soft" on abolitionism. In the charged atmosphere of die late 1850's diis was die most serious accusation which could be leveled at a candidate. Being a slaveholder himself , Letcher convinced die majority of Virginians of his loyalty to the Soudi's peculiar institution. His popularity...