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NOTE.

LETTER FROM THE HON. SAMUEL F. VINTON.

WM. SCHOULER, Esq.,

WASHINGTON CITY, April 6, 1848.

DEAR SIR: I am in receipt of your note, requesting me to state whether there was a meeting of the Whig members of the House of Representatives on the morning of the day when the war with Mexico was declared? Whether Mr. Winthrop was there, and made a speech urging the whole Whig party to vote for the war; and whether I was there, and made a speech to the same purport?

I have no recollection of having been present at that meeting — and if I ever knew that such a meeting was held, the recollection of it has wholly faded away from my memory.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

SAMUEL F. VINTON.

LETTER FROM THE HON. W. HUNT.

WASHINGTON, April 1, 1848.

DEAR SIR: I have received your letter of the 30th ult., with a copy of the Boston Atlas of 23d March.

The only answer I can make to your inquiries is to inform you that I was not in this city on the eleventh day of May, 1846. I left the Capital late in April, to visit my residence in New York, and did not return till the 12th of May, the day after the War bill passed the House.

Mr. Culver is mistaken in his impression that I was present at any meeting held on the day to which he refers.

Very respectfully yours,

Wm. Schouler, Esq., Editor of the Atlas, Boston.

W. HUNT.

EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM HON. CHARLES HUDSON.

WASHINGTON, April 1, 1848.

SIR: In relation to the meeting of the Whigs on the morning of the 11th,

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(May,) I will say to you, as I have said to Mr. Giddings in a full conversation with him on the subject, that I am satisfied that he confounds that meeting with another, which took place at another time and place, on another subject. The news of the conflict between our forces and those of Mexico came into this city on Saturday evening after the adjournment of the House. On Sunday evening some gentlemen told me that it was thought desirable that the Whigs should have a meeting in the morning before the session of the House, as it was expected that the President would send in a war message. I went to the committee-room in the morning, and found not more than half a dozen there; we waited till near the hour of the meeting of the House before we called to order. The members came in slowly, not more than twenty or twenty-five being present at last. I think Mr. Winthrop was not present. But I am perfectly confident that he did not make a speech urging the Whigs to vote for any war measure. I had strong convictions against the propriety of any such measure, and if one of my own colleagues had made such a speech as has been imputed to Mr. Winthrop, I am satisfied that I could not have forgotten it. Besides, boarding as I did with Messrs. Delano, Culver, Root, and King, all of whom voted as I did against the bill, the vote of Mr. Winthrop was a subject of very frequent and very free remark, and yet I never heard any allusion to such a speech, nor, indeed, to any speech of Mr. Winthrop made in caucus on the morning of the 11th May during that or the following session—the first intimation of such a speech coming to my knowledge since Mr. Winthrop was chosen Speaker. My impressions on this whole subject are the more distinct, because those who voted against the war were immediately assailed, and on the 14th of the same month I made a speech against the war, and in justification of my vote.

The Whig meeting on the morning of the 11th of May was in the room of the Committee on Foreign Affairs; but the meeting which I think Mr. Giddings confounds with this was held in the evening in the committee room on Public Lands, in another part of the Capitol. At the last named meeting Mr. Winthrop, Mr. Vinton, Mr. Giddings, and, I think, Mr. Hunt, spoke; but this meeting was some time in the winter, and the subject was the Oregon notice, which had been recommended by the President in his message. In conversation with Mr. Giddings this winter, we both recollected this meeting so well as to be able to point out to each other the position in the room where the speakers respectively stood when they addressed the meeting, and agreed as to the speakers, but differed in our recollections as to the subject under consideration. At this Oregon meeting there was a marked difference of opinion between Mr. Winthrop and Mr. Giddings, and some little warmth was manifested in the debate Mr. Winthrop being opposed to giving the notice, and Mr. Giddings taking the opposite view of the question, according to my recollection.

I am, respectfully, your obedient servant,

CHARLES HUDSON.

Col. William Schouler, Editor of the Atlas.

EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM HON. J. GRINNELL.

WASHINGTON, April 1, 1848.

I have to state that I have no recollection of any meeting of the Whigs on the morning of the 11th of May, 1846. I never heard of any until the present session of this Congress. I do not believe that Mr. Winthrop attended any such meeting, for the reason that I am under a strong impression — I may say, that I have as clear a recollection of the fact as of almost any that occurred on that memorable day—that Mr. Winthrop did not leave Mrs. Whitwell's that morning until we left together, near the hour of the meeting of the House, and that we went to the House together, and it was called to order about the time we entered. I may add, there was a very free and full discussion of our votes on this bill for some weeks after, at Mrs. Whitwell's, and that I never heard of Mr. Winthrop's attending any caucus of the Whigs on the day war was declared, or making a speech urging the Whigs to go for the war.

THE DEATH OF JOHN C. CALHOUN.

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, ON THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF MR. CALHOUN'S DEATH, APRIL 1, 1850.

I AM not unaware, Mr. Speaker, that the voice of New England has already been heard to-day, in its most authentic and most impressive tones, in the other wing of the Capitol. But it has been suggested to me, and the suggestion has met with the promptest assent from my own heart, that here, also, that voice should not be altogether mute on this occasion.

The distinguished person, whose death has been announced to us in the resolutions of the Senate, belongs not, indeed, to us. It is not ours to pronounce his eulogy. It is not ours, certainly, to appropriate his fame. But it is ours, to bear witness to his character, to do justice to his virtue, to unite in paying honor to his memory, and to offer our heartfelt sympathies, as I now do, to those who have been called to sustain so great a bereave

ment.

We have been told, Sir, by more than one adventurous navigator, that it was worth all the privations and perils of a protracted voyage beyond the line, to obtain even a passing view of the Southern Cross,- that great constellation of the Southern hemisphere. We can imagine, then, what would be the emotions of those who have always enjoyed the light of that magnificent luminary, and who have taken their daily and their nightly direction from its refulgent rays, if it were suddenly blotted out from the sky.

Such, Sir, and so deep, I can conceive to be the emotions at

this hour, of not a few of the honored friends and associates whom I see around me.

Indeed, no one who has been ever so distant an observer of the course of public affairs for a quarter of a century past, can fail to realize, that a star of the first magnitude has been struck from our political firmament. Let us hope, Sir, that it has only been transferred to a higher and purer sphere, where it may shine on with undimmed brilliancy forever!

Mr. Speaker, it is for others to enter into the details of Mr. Calhoun's life and services. It is for others to illustrate and to vindicate his peculiar opinions and principles. It is for me to speak of him only as he was known to the country at large, and to all, without distinction of party, who have represented the country, of late years, in either branch of the National Councils.

And speaking of him thus, Sir, I cannot hesitate to say, that, among what may be called the second generation of American statesmen since the adoption of the Federal Constitution, there has been no man of a more marked character, of more pronounced qualities, or of a wider and more deserved distinction. The mere length and variety of his public services, in almost every branch of the National Government, running through a continuous period of almost forty years, as a member of this House, as Secretary of War, as Vice-President of the United States, as Secretary of State, and as a Senator from his own adored and adoring South Carolina, - would alone have secured him a conspicuous and permanent place upon our public records. But he has left better titles to remembrance than any which mere office can bestow.

There was an unsullied purity in his private life; there was an inflexible integrity in his public conduct; there was an indescribable fascination in his familiar conversation; there was a condensed energy in his formal discourse; there was a quickness of perception, a vigor of deduction, a directness and a devotedness of purpose, in all that he said, or wrote, or did; there was a Roman dignity in his whole Senatorial deportment; which, together, made up a character, which cannot fail to be contemplated and admired to the latest posterity.

I have said, Sir, that New England can appropriate no part

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