JS, Letter, , Hancock Co., IL, to , Fort Hill, Pickens Co., SC, 2 Jan. 1844; handwriting of ; docket in handwriting of ; four pages; JS Collection, CHL.
an armed force to suppress the rebellion of South Carolina!
To close, I would admonish you, before you let your “Candorcompel” you again to write upon a subject, great as the Salvation of Man, consequential as the life of the Savior, broad as the principles of eternal Truth, and valuable as the Jewels of Eternity, to read in the 8th. Section and 1st. Article of the Constitution of the , the first, fourteenth and seventeenth “Specific” and not very “limited powers” of the Federal Government, What can be done to protect the lives, property and rights, of a virtuous people, when the administrators of the laws, and law makers, are unbought by bribes, uncorrupted by patronage, untempted by Gold, unawed by fear and uncontaminated with tangling alliances.— even like Caesar’s Wife, not onlyunspottedbut unsuspected! and God, who cooled the heat of a Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace, or shut the Mouths of Lions for the honor of a Daniel will raise your mind above the narrow notion, that the General Government has no power,— to the sublime idea that Congress, with the president as executor, is as Almighty in its sphere as Jehovah is in his.
With great consideration I have the honor to be Your obedt. servt.