"Dear Sir:--I have the honor of receiving your letter urging me to accept the invitation of the Whig central committee to address a mass meeting in Richland county, Ohio, on the second of October. I appreciate fully the importance of the canvass in which we are engaged, and I have some conception of the responsibilities of the Whigs of Ohio. I wish, therefore, that it was in my power to comply with the wishes, expressed in several quarters, by going among them to attempt to encourage them in their noble and patriotic efforts, but it is impossible. Public and professional engagements have withdrawn me from my private affairs during the past two years, and the few weeks of interval between the last and the next session of Congress are equally insufficient for the attention my business requires and for the relaxation of public labors which impaired health demands. I am, dear sir, with great respect, you friend and humble servant, "William H. Seward." The election of 1852 resulted in the overwhelming defeat of General Scott, and the practical annihilation of the Whig party. Franklin Pierce received 244 electoral votes, and General Scott but 42. The triumphant election of Mr. Pierce, on the platform stated, justified the expectation that during his term there would be no opening of the slavery controversy by the Democratic party. If that party had been content with the compromise of 1850, and had faithfully observed the pledges in its platform, there would have been no Civil War. Conservative Whigs, north and south, would have united with conservative Democrats in maintaining and enforcing existing laws. The efforts of the opponents of slavery and of aggressive pro-slavery propagandists would have been alike ineffective. The irrepressible conflict would have been indefinitely postponed. Yet, as will appear hereafter, the leaders of the 33rd Congress of both parties, and mainly on sectional lines, openly and flagrantly violated the pledges of their party, and renewed a contest that was only closed by the most destructive Civil War of modern times, and by the abolition of slavery. As this legislation brought me into public life, I wish to justify my statement by the public records, with all charity to the authors of the measures who no doubt did not anticipate the baleful events that would spring from them, nor the expanded and strengthened republic which was the final result. "Man proposes, but God disposes."