not have been guilty of the meanness of suppressing that fact, and
allowing misrepresentation to do its work in my absence.

For the wretch who is doomed to go through the world bearing a
personal jealousy or a personal malignity, which renders him incapable
of doing justice, and studious of misrepresentation, I can only feel
pity, and were it possible to feel revengeful, could consign him to no
worse punishment than that of his own tormentors, the vipers nursed in
his own breast.

But long have I delayed what is my chief purpose, to speak to my
friends, the men whose good opinion is to me of importance only second
to the approval of my own conscience. So far as they have
misunderstood me, it is a pleasure to set forth the true meaning of
both my words and my deeds. To my traducers I have no explanations to
offer and no apologies for any one. If State Rights men in the excess
of their zeal have censured me, I have no reproaches for them, but
cheerfully bear the burden which may be imposed upon me by zeal in the
cause to which my political life has been devoted, and in imitation of
Job, would bless the State Rights Democracy of Mississippi, even if
the object of its vengeance: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in
him."

If I had been asked what interpretation might possibly be put upon the
published sketch of the remarks made by me at sea on the Fourth of
July last, speculation would have been exhausted before it would have
occurred to me that my State Rights friends would consider themselves
described under the head of "trifling politicians," who could not
believe that the country would remain united to repel insult to our
flag as it had recently been on the occasion of the attempt to