Richmond Daily Times

A CARD.

To the Editors of the Times:

Gentlemen—Your notice of my explanation of your strictures on my votes against three of the resolutions reported by the Committee of the House of Delegates, published in the Richmond Enquirer of the 29th ultimo, did not meet my eye until after I arrived at home on the 3d inst. I find it in the Alexandria Gazette of the 2d inst. When that paper reached me, I was, as I yet am, quite unwell, which has prevented me from penning and forwarding to you this card sooner.

I thought you went further in your strictures on my votes than any knowledge yourself or any other person possessed, justified. I made no remark publicly, being debarred by the previous question, when they were adopted by the House, and I delayed correcting the error of the reporter until I could have an opportunity to communicate my views respecting the resolutions, which I designed embracing the first opportunity to do, and your strictures appeared before I had that opportunity. Now I do not think my explanation subject to all the remarks in your notice of it. You state: "It seems his whole course of complaint rests on our attributing to him the declaration that he gloried in standing solitary and alone." If you will refer to your strictures and construe them liberally, I promise myself you will agree with me, that, though you might not have designed it, you do hold me up to ridicule and derision, which is what I felt and intended to condemn. I was aware, with the other Editors, you had been misled by the reporter—(I embrace this opportunity here to state that I do not purpose charging the reporter with the intention to misrepresent me; he got the idea of his report from others, not me)—in stating, "I gloried in standing solitary and alone." But nothing I ever said myself, or any person whatever, could have said for me justified you to say I was a downright disunionist. In your further comments you ask: "but why was he unwilling to say with his fellow-members, that Virginia does not wish to dissolve the Union in consequence of the Compromise Measures?" In my judgment a reply to this query is found in my explanation referred to, and that the resolutions require much more from those who adopt them. I should have had no difficulty in voting for them, if they had only required me to say "I do not believe Virginia wishes to dissolve the Union in consequence of the Compromise Measures." However, I cannot doubt but that you will agree with me, that they can't be whittled down to this isolated expression; if you do not, the difference in our conceptions is so great, that it will be useless for us to attempt to argue. My impression was, and is, that after the several attempts that had previously failed, it would have been best to take no further notice of the subject, but as it was again agitated and resolutions reported by a committee, the resolutions adopted should have been so shaped as to commit Virginia to nothing inconsistent with her previous resolutions, or that would bind her to the acts of Congress, passed against the voice of her Senators, and a majority of her delegates.

B. E. HARRISON.

La Grange, Prince William Co., Virginia, April 10, 1851.