exercise visit and search in the Gulf of Mexico, under the pretext of
checking the African slave trade. The publisher of that sketch has
already announced that it was not a report, and that for its language
I could not justly be considered responsible. To this it is needless
that I should add any thing. But I have treated it, and will treat it
in the view necessarily taken by those who construed it before such
denial was made.

During the period of greatest adversity, in the hour of gloom and
defeat, the State Rights Democracy had no cause to complain of my
fealty. We struggled together, fell together, rose together, and to
them I am indebted for whatever of consideration or position I
possess. Endeared to me by our common suffering; grateful to them for
the steadfast support with which they have honored me, accustomed to
refer with pride to my identity with them, it would have been strange
indeed, if when separated from them under circumstances which turned
any eyes, with more than ordinary anxiety towards my home, I should
then have sought an occasion to heap reproachful language upon them.

Often it has been my duty to repel the accusations of others who
sought to attribute to the State Rights Democracy opinions not their
own, and to impute to them the purpose to agitate for the destruction
of the government we inherited. As one of the State Rights party, I
deny that the language published is a picture of me or my class, and I
have as little disposition now, as at any former time, to separate
myself from the body of the party, with which I have so long acted,
which I rejoice to see in power at home, and daily more and more
respected in the other States.

I have thus defined who were not meant, and will now tell who were