Richmond Enquirer

RICHMOND. AUGUST 22, 1823.

FOR THE ENQUIRER.

FOUR LETTERS

Addressed to the People of the United States,

BY A FELLOW-CITIZEN.

LETTER II.

The enemies of Mr. Crawford have not been wanting in sagacity to discern that the public sentiment was fast settling down upon the man whose political principles conformed most to those great republican tenets resulting from the agitations of '98, and which may be said to form the second moral revolution of this government. That struggle, like the revolutionary war, is calculated to endear its associates to one another. Their cause was great, their difficulties greater, and their exertions triumphant. No wonder then that sentiments springing from so warm a contest should be marked with such force of feeling and endure so long; no wonder that the party are unwilling to part with power so honestly won, and so necessary to perpetuate the blessings of our invaluable constitution. Of all the individuals whose claims for the chief magistracy are before the nation, none are so conspicuous for the possession of the principles referred to, as Mr. Crawford. Hence the alarm which exists, and its consequent strivings to arrest the progress of the public and growing predisposition in his favor, by the charge of federalism.

In discussing this point, it is fortunate for the secretary, that we have but a solitary argument to meet. It is not contended by the worst enemy he has, or maintained by the most malevolent defamer of his character, that there is any other fact or incident of his life, to charge him with this crime, except the inference drawn from what has been repeatedly denominated the Augusta Address.

Without stopping to shew that the major part of this argument is naked assumption, that its most important features have not been proved, to wit. that at the time mentioned the distinction of parties was ascertained, that the measures separating them had transpired and were known to Mr. Crawford, all of which are contrary to the fact as has and can be satisfactorily shewn: Without contending for a construction, warranted by the subject matter and whole tenor of the address, and justified by every rule of fair and candid criticism, that the confidence expressed and pledge given, could only relate to that part of the president's administration connected with French affairs, because as nothing else was mentioned, nothing else could be meant: Without entering into a chronological detail of the principal events of Adams' administration, which every man of any reading or research can make for himself, and if he has a judgment unwarped by prejudice or untainted with malice can properly apply, I shall come more immediately to what I conceive a fair and entire refutation of this most flimsy charge.

1st. There is not a human being now living that can point to the fact or circumstance, the one under discussion excepted, which will attach the slightest suspicion of federalism to Mr. Crawford in any part of his life; there is not the human being that has ever lived, who in any of the long, eager and warm political contests in which he has been engaged, has ever dared to insinuate such a charge; and can any one believe that a fact so important, so well understood, so easily established, should have existed, and not a single contemporary of Mr. Crawford's has survived to tell the tale?

I have now an undoubted right to claim the full force of this argument and at least to place it by the side of the one urged by our opponents, which was fairly stated at the head of this article. None but republicans would dare to call the French revolution a glorious and just cause, the French nation, a sister republic, and Frenchmen by the endearing name of brothers—this the federalists denominated warm zeal and violent attachment from which no good principles could result, and would be followed by severe repentance. that it was an error of the public opinion and none of our business, we had nothing to do with it and finally it was a "long agony."—Mr. Crawford dared to call it a glorious and just cause &c. on the 2d of July '98, in the "federal town of Augusta," therefore Mr. Crawford was a republican in July '98. If inference is to convict a man of crime, surely inference precisely similar and doubly strong, because supported by the positive testimony of living witnesses who were on the spot at the very time, ought in favor of life, and in tender mercy to human frailty, to save him from punishment.