ALS signed “Jeffer. Davis,” three pages on two adjoining sheets, 7.75 x 9.75, April 13, 1850. Letter to F. H. Elmore concerning the upcoming Nashville Convention, which would pave the way for the Compromise of 1850. In full: "Since the receipt of your letter we have had some consultation in relation to the proposition you submitted in relation to the Nashville Convention. The prevailing opinion is to leave the matter entirely in the hands of the people. My own view is and has been that the convention should meet for preventive purposes. That it is necessary to begin an organization of the South the want of which has left us a divided people, when union and cointelligence was necessary for our safety. The charge which was been made of a design to server the Southern states from the Confederacy but increases the propriety of meeting. If we had no other purpose than to redress past wrongs it would be proper to wait until the measure of our grievances was full; but to check aggression, to preserve the Union, peaceably to secure our rights requires prompt action. We should no doubt have greater unanimity higher resolve if called upon to avenge the blow, than if only required to paralyze the arm upraised to strike. Then it would be the energy of revolution, now it is the preservation of the Constitution.
A postponement is in my opinion equivalent to abandonment of the Southern convention and to being hereafter branded as disunionists who were arrested in their purpose. It is needless to add that I cannot aid in the object of postponement. Long since I resolved that if the measure was abandoned it should be by no agency of mine, and have believed that the toryism we now see was only to be put down by the action of the faithful. If a few meet, man will rue the day when they opposed us, and our strength will increase thereaforward. I write freely to you whose aim and feelings I know to be such as I cherish. If a different course be adopted from that which I approve, my cordial wish is that my opinions may prove to have been those of an excited mind." Includes the original mailing envelope, free franked by Davis, "Jeffer. Davis, U.S.S." In fine condition. Accompanied by a handsome custom-made quarter leather presentation folder. Davis, one of the prominent pro-secession delegates to attend the convention, opposed the Compromise of 1850; upon the Union's breakup in 1861, he would become president of the Confederacy.
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