TNGenWeb Project/TNGenNet, Inc., (a Tennessee nonprofit public benefit corporation). "The Howard-Smith Collection" Transcription copyright: 1998, by Mrs. F. A. Augsbury; all rights reserved. The originals are at the McClung Library in Knoxville. This file is in text format. Please use your browser's "back" button to return to the previous page. ******************************************************************************* To: Lida Howard-Smith From: John B. Brownlow, Post Office Department, Washington, D. C. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Washington, D.C. June 18th Post Office Dep't. Dear Lide: Your letter of 11th received. I was glad to get the several letters you sent. There is a very nice gentleman in this Dep't., by the name of Owens, from Ala. who is kin to people who are related to the Gaines' He is industriously at work on a book of the early settlement and the pioneers of Ala. and the Southwest and a genealogical history of the pioneers of that section. There are in the letters you sent me some sentences which he will copy and use in his book and thus, you see, those old letters will be of practical use. He will have a good deal to say of the Gaines' connection many of whom, under other names, are of social & political prominence today in Ala. I would have returned ere this all the letters you sent me except one and I will keep that as you authorize me to keep all of them except the commission signed by Gov. Blount but I have been too busy thus far to make copies of certain sentences for Mr. Owens' book. Meanwhile I have to request that you will send me all letters of Uncle Edmund you may have written prior to 1825 so that I may see whether there is anything in them which Mr. Owens will wish to copy for his book. Of course nothing will be published of a family or private nature which should not be, but only such matters as bear on the pioneer settlement of Ala. and the Southwest. I will soon return the letters & Gov. Blount's paper. Yesterday I mailed to you the Oration before Congress on the death of President Lincoln. It was delivered by the unanimous request of Congress, George Bancroft being requested to do so because he was universally conceded to be the greatest of American Historians. Mr. B. was a Democrat till 1861, he was Secretary of the Navy under President Polk and Minister to Germany under President Grant. His reputation was that of the ablest, most painstaking & thorough of Historians in his researches & the most reliable in his statements. I do not give you the little book because of what it says of President Lincoln (though it is worthy a place in your Library on that account) but I send it to you because of what I regard as a high eulogy, in a few words, of your great-great-grand-uncle, Edmund Pendleton. On page 7 you will see that Mr. Bancroft mentions Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and Edmund Pendleton as the three great Virginians & far-seeing statesmen who had the foresight in 1776 to wish to then inhibit the importation of slaves from Africa. They foresaw the unspeakable woes it would bring to their posterity. Any idiot can see the necessity of a lock for the stable door after the horse has been stolen. But Pendleton was one of the the few who foresaw the right from the beginning. Now everybody admits he was right. Senator Morgan of Ala. and Senator Butler of South Carolina, two Rebel Generals, have declared in favor of the Government expending hundreds of millions to send every negro back to the land of his fathers-Africa. Judge Pendleton was as pure and honest as he was intellectually great. I have a printed letter of Henry Clay written in 1850, a few months before he died, in which he gives his recolletions of Judge George Wythe & Judge Edmund Pendleton whom he describes as two of the purest men he ever knew & the two greatest lawyers of Va. of their generation & he says Pendleton was the greater of the two. Wythe was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and Pendleton would have been but for an accident. P. was elected to the first Continental Congress and rode horse-back to Philadelphia to its meeting with Washington his intimate friend. He was elected to the Second Congress, the one which adopted the Declaration of Independence, and just before its assemblage he was thrown from his horse and his hip was dislocated or fractured making it impossible for him to go to Philadelphia. But for this accident his name would have been affixed to the Declaration of Independence. Crippled badly as he was and on crutches he was elected to the Burgesses of Va. (Burgesses was the name of the Colonial Legislature) and made President of that body. He there introduced resolutions instructing the Va. members of the Continental Congress to proclaim independence. In 1789 he was made President of the Va. Convention which adopted the Constitution of the U.S. After the Gov't was organized he was appointed a Judge of the United States Court. He declined this preferring to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Va. which office he held till he died past 82 years. I understand a regular biography of him will soon be published. Henry Clay says in his letter there was a rivalry between Wythe & Pendleton, the two greatest lawyers of Va. and a friend of Judge Wythe said to him, you need not try to rival Pendleton as a lawyer, you can't beat him but you had better take orders in the Episcopal Church where you will have no equal or superior, but thereupon another friend said if you do that Pendleton will quit the bar and he will also take orders and beat you as a clergyman. Nearly all the aristocracy of Va. were Episcopalians. Judge Pendleton was strongly opposed to slavery. His sister, Isabella, was wife of Henry Gaines & mother of Capt. Jas. Gaines. Gen Gaines wrote a letter in1840 expressing his opposition to slavery and predicting that within 50 years there would not be a slave in the U.S. When he wrote it most people, even in the Northern States, thought slavery to be a permanent institution and yet it was abolished within 25 years or one half the time Gen. Gaines gave it to live. The fire-eaters & disunionists of the Southern States were all glad when your third cousin President Taylor died. They tried to force him into using all his power as President to force the institution of slavery on California which was admitted as a state in the Union while he was President. He was not an abolitionist but he loved the Union better than he did slavery though he owned 75 or 100 negroes inherited by himself & wife. He really cared nothing for the institution & did not want to force it upon California because he knew the majority of the people there did not wish it. A lot of Southern Congressmen, headed by Senator Toombs of Ga. called at the White House & threatened him that if California was not admitted as a slave state the Union would be dissolved. He replied "if anybody attempts to break up our glorious Government they will be crushed." The fiery Senator Toombs of Ga. sprang to his feet & excitedly said, "I am for dissolving the Union & I would like to know who would crush me?" When Gen. Taylor was very angry he stuttered & swore & the threat to dissolve the Union made him very angry. He rose to his feet & in reply to Toombs said: "By-by-by-God, Sir, I will crush you." and the known, undoubted courage of the man then President who had with 4500 men whipped Santa Anna at Buena Vista with 22, 500 prevented an attempt to destroy our Country in 1850. Gen. Taylor was of a reverential, religious nature & there was really no sin in his swearing under the circumstances. He did not mean to violate any ordinance of the Lord. He only meant to emphasize his declaration that the Country should not be destroyed while he was President. If a man of the courage of Zachary Taylor or Andrew Jackson had been President in 1860-61 instead of that miserable old coward Buchanan-we would not have had rebellion and war. You need not be ashamed of your father having been a Union man & of his preferring the Union to slavery unless you are ashamed of Pendleton, Taylor & Gaines. I have just received a letter from Alice Hunt asking me to get for her all the books I can find on Taylor, Pendleton, & Gaines. This reminds me to advise you to go to "O'Leary's Old Book Store" in Philadelphia & get all the books-if you can-which I name in the application I sent you for membership in the D.A.R. except Elliott's Debates & that is a standard work you can get at any time hereafter. When I went to Phila. 3 years ago to see Annie I went to "O'Leary's Old Book Store" & got several very valuable old books on very reasonable terms. I got "Swallow Barn," a Novel describing Va. life in the older time by your cousin Hon. John Pendleton Kennedy. Mr. K. was a distinguished Whig Congressman from Maryland, a member of President Fillmore's Cabinet and next to Irving & Cooper the finest novel writer of his generation. He wrote "Horse Shoe Robinson," a Historical novel with a love story in it & descriptive of our East Tenn. pioneers who won the victory over the British at King's mountain. You ought to read it & "Swallow Barn" His "Swallow Barn" was illustrated by his & your cousin David H. Strother. S. was a Gen. in the Union army, a fine writer & one of the finest artists in the country. For 20 years he wrote regularly for "Harpers Monthly Magazine" & illustrated his writings by pictures drawn by himself. Hon. Anthony Kennedy, brother of John P. was a Whig United States Senator from Maryland over 40 years ago & died only 3 years ago. John P. & Anthony Kennedy were both strong Union men. John P. was very wealthy. I got in an antiquarian book store here, for 75 cts., life of John Pendleton Kennedy, Ex-Secretary of the Navy, written by Henry T. Tuckerman, of Boston, and part of the book is an autobiography written by Mr. K. himself in which he has much that is pleasant to say about his Gaines & Taylor & Pendleton kin. You or your husband might find these books in "O'Leary's Old Book Store." You can't get them in other than an antiquarian or 2nd hand book store because they are out of print. I could write you much more of your kin which you may not know, because you may not have the books I have but I am tired of writing & I suppose you may be tired of reading. When I see you I will tell it to you. But meanwhile you would do well to buy while you can the books I have named in your application for membership in the D.A.R. (excepting Elliott's Debates) and the books named in this letter. First look on the book shelves & see if they are there & you can get them, perhaps, for less than if you particularly ask for them when you go to the store. Barbara Blount was Gen. G's first wife. A Miss Tolman of a wealthy Ala. family was the 2nd wife and the celebrated Myra Clark was the 3rd. Yours truly, J.B.B. P.S. A book was published only a few years ago "Appleton's Encyclopaedia of American Biography" in 4 vols. When you are passing a book store step in & look at it. In alphabetical order is everything & you can, in a moment, turn to Taylor, Gaines & Pendleton. Don't confound this book with the older publication entitled "Appleton's Encyclopaedia" in 15 vols. You want to see "Appleton's Encyclopaedia of American Biography."