Lot 174E email save

POLK, James K. ALS to Samuel H. Laughlin. 1835.

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Columbia [TN]: 11 May 1835. 3 pp., folded sheet with integral address leaf (250 x 200 mm). Marked "Private & Confidential." Condition: conjugate leaf inlaid, hole from opening of wax seal. Although Andrew Jackson had declared his wish for his Vice President Martin Van Buren to succeed him in 1836, many southerners, particularly in Tennessee, were opposed to his nomination. Led by Speaker of the House John Bell, a long-time rival of James Polk, a faction of southern Democrats sought the nomination of Hugh Lawson White. This letter by Polk, written to the editor of the pro-Jackson newspaper the Nashville Union, concerns a letter by Bell, published in the Nashville Republican, denying that he opposed President Jackson. "The last Republican containing Mr. Bell's letter was received here last night. It is doubtless intimated to be the precursor of a controversy, an object of which is to force Johnson to publish the correspondence and thus make him and us the assailaints. This Mr. B. no doub thinks would give him some advantage ... The allusions which he makes ... is most disingenuous & unjust to me." The letter continues with a detailed review of the back and forth in the Nashville press over the preceding year and concludes with his asking the editor's advice on the proper response to Bell's attack. The letter concludes, "Burn this letter as soon as read."

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