Auction details
10:00 AM PT - Dec 10th, 2008
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TYLER, John. Autograph letter signed to Colonel John S. Cunningham, concerning his lecture titled "The Dead of the Cabinet" and on the nomination of James Buchanan at the 1856 Democratic National Convention. Sherwood Forest [VA]: "June 1856" [postmarked 18 June 1856]. 3 pp., folded sheet with integral address leaf (253 x 198 mm). Franking signature on the address leaf. Written on blue paper. Condition: usual folds, a few spots. In April 1856, Tyler delivered a lecture at Petersburg in which he memorialized the members of his cabinet who had since passed away, including John C. Calhoun. In this letter to his friend Cunningham, Tyler informs him that he intends to repeat the lecture "for the benefit of the Mt. Vernon association" and seeks advice on whether he should publish the lecture and in what format (eventually doing so in the Southern Literary Messenger). "My only object," he writes in this letter, "is to put in proper and enduring form a merited eulogy on those who assisted me so well in conducting public affairs at a time of much danger to myself. Is not this better accomplished through a literary than a political journal"? The letter continues with a discussion of the 1856 Democratic National Convention in Cincinnati, in which James Buchanan was nominated over Franklin Pierce and others. Tyler writes, "The doings of the Convention at Cincinnati prove acceptable to most of the people hereabouts altho very many were the advocates of Genl. Pierce. No man certainly, could have more strongly manifested his devotion to the constitutional rights of the South, and his failure to receive its entire vote arrives more from what appears to be a settled determination to limit the Presidential term to four years than to any thing else..." Referring to Buchanan and his running mate James Breckenridge, as well as his own 1840 election campaign, the letter continues, "Many of the Old Line Whigs will vote for Buck and Breck, that is the new Tip and Ti firm."ImagesClick on thumbnails to see larger images: 
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