Yours ever,
John Slidell.
[HON. RICHARD RUSH TO MR. BUCHANAN.]
Sydenham, near Philadelphia, October 7, 1846.
My Dear Sir:—
I am half ashamed to be again sending you little bits of my correspondence from abroad; but you, who have so much to do with heads of governments and nations, will know how to appreciate even general expressions from those who live in daily intercourse with sovereigns, and are constantly hearing them talk—yet whose discretion and training guard them against mentioning names. The enclosed letter, received by the last steamer, is from Lady Lyttleton, and I naturally am disposed to infer that the words I have pencilled, mean Queen Victoria; or that they include her—at the least. This Lady L. is the widow of the late Lord Lyttleton, and daughter of Earl Spencer, and holds the post of chief governess to the queen’s children; for which she was selected from among England’s highest women for virtues and accomplishments, to aid in forming their principles and conduct. Her home is chiefly Windsor Castle, but she dates now from “Osborne House,” the queen’s marine residence at the Isle of Wight, where she was at the time of writing, with the queen and children. The queen is understood to hold her in the greatest esteem and confidence: and the little pencilled words, dropping from such a quarter in this private letter, do seem to me to import that this little successor to Queen Elizabeth personally likes your treaty, full as much as when Lord Aberdeen writes officially that it is approved; and so may be taken as a veritable addition to all the other evidences you have on that head; and this must be my excuse for sending the letter to you—which can be returned at your perfect convenience. I need not stop to explain the little allusions it has to my family or self, as they are the mere common courtesies of an amiable lady. The “niece” in question, is the wife of Colonel Bucknall Estcourt, known to you as lately in our country under a commission from the British government.
This good lady’s letter done with, I am tempted to go on and remark, as somewhat growing out of it, that if those who could doubt the President’s consistency in agreeing to the Oregon treaty, or yours in supporting him in it, be not convinced by the articles now in course of publication in the Pennsylvanian (following up the powerful discussions in the Union on the same point), that there was perfect consistency, we may say of them what Hume says of the sturdy Scotch Jacobites who declared for the innocence of Mary of Scots; viz, that they are beyond the reach of reason and argument, and must be left to their prejudices......
I have just been reading my last Union. The Santa Fe army of the West appears to have done, and to be doing, nobly; but war, war, war all over Mexico, by land and sea, say I for one. All else is leather and prunella just now, and would be inhumanity to ourselves in the end. If a blow can be struck at Vera Cruz, so much the better. That would tell through the world; which, otherwise, will say, in spite of the different circumstances, that the French took the castle, whilst we, with all our naval resources so much nearer, could not. A thousand of our seamen would do the business. Let them land by night, armed to the teeth, during, or at the close of, a furious bombardment, we having bomb vessels and heavier ships perhaps than now, and they will go right into the works—nothing can stop them—carrying all before them as surely as Decatur succeeded at Tripoli, when, in the face of all their soldiers, batteries, gun-boats, and the guns of the frigate, odds twenty to one more against him than there would be against our squadron in the gulf, he and his mere handful of gallant men, so signally triumphed. There are Decaturs somewhere in our squadron now, or those who have their mantle. Nothing more certain. They would put the gulf in a blaze of glory for us, if you let them try it.
I have been writing a good deal for my little paper; ever a sort of privilege to irresponsibility, joined, if not to entire ignorance, at least to want of full knowledge. But I console myself with the reflection that it must be ever a sort of relief to a high official man with his hands full of engagements, on getting quite through a letter to him, to find at last, as you do with this, that it makes no complaints, taxes him with no business, nor even demands any answer.
And now I will conclude with begging you to accept the assurances of esteem and friendship with which I desire, my dear sir, to subscribe myself,