AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED, 1 JUNE 1847, FROM WASHINGTON, TO J. BLUNT, CONCERNING THE NECESSITY OF INCURRING FEDERAL DEBT, "BLUNDERING IN AS WE ARE WITH THIS MEXICAN WAR.

Single leaf, in neat ink manuscript on recto and half the verso. Signed, "JJ Crittenden." Very Good plus.

Crittenden held nearly every office Kentucky could bestow upon him: State legislator, Governor, Congressman, U.S. Senator; he was also U.S. Attorney General in the Harrison, Tyler, and Fillmore Administrations. As an influential Border State man, he sought to avoid Secession and Civil War with his elaborate Crittenden Compromise, but it was doomed to failure. Crittenden stayed with the Union until his death-- but one son was a General in the Confederate Army, and the other a General in the Union Army.
His Letter:
"My Dear Sir, | The death of my excellent friend, Mr. Barrow, of the Senate, has so divided my attention as to prevent me from attending as soon as I otherwise should have done to your letter of the 26th of the last month.
"The principles & views you have expressed in your published letter, seems to me to be altogether just & sound. It is not so easy to determine what is the exigency that will justify a resort to loans. Time is always an important element in that question, & blundering in as we are with this Mexican war, I do not well see how we can now avoid the necessity of borrowing money, tho' I fully concur in your general views of the impolicy of such a course... | Very respectfully | yr's &c | J.J. Crittenden | J. Blunt Esqr."
"J. Blunt" was Joseph Blunt, son of the publisher of 'The American Practical Navigator.' A New York lawyer, Blunt was a Whig until the Kansas-Nebraska Controversy made him a Republican.