1971.5.18
Robert W. Tayler1 to Levi Sutliff
Youngstown, 19 September 1838
Dear Sir
I understand that some of the Van Buren2 Loco focos3 are endeavoring to induce the
abolitionists to vote for their Representatives, and assign for their reason, that if the Van party4
succeed in having a majority in the legislature, they will re-elect Morris5 (a good abolitionist as
they say) to the United States Senate. In doing so they not only overlook the more immediate
object which we ought to have in view, viz - the repeal of our odious state laws6, but they also lie
- to speak moderately - for they know very well that the party will not re-elect Morris. On the
subject of petitioning & abolition,7 he went directly against the president & the party - and for
that very reason - if, for no other, they will reject him.8
We have strong proof of this in the fact that at all of the public meetings of the party they
have toasted Allen,9 but not a word for Morris. It was so at their great convention, & it was so
but a few days since at Warren - when their candidates for Senator & Representatives all
declared themselves opposed to abolitionists as much as to good Whigs.10 Besides Toucey11
atacked Giddings12 on account of his abolition. It is said that Toucey is to be the loco focos
candidate for Congress. One of the party, who hates Toucey as much as he does a Whig, told me
today that he thought it would be so & he never speaks unless by a [ ]13 & said they would as
willingly have Toucey beaten as anyone.
I am yours truly
R. W. Tayler
Levi Sutliff
Vernon
RC: Sutliff Family Papers, Sutliff Museum, Warren, Ohio.
1
Robert Walker Tayler, Sr. (9 Nov. 1812- 25 Feb. 1878), born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and
moved to Youngstown, Ohio as a child. Stating in 1938, he served one year as deputy county
clerk of Trumbull County until he was he was elected Trumbull County prosecuting attorney in
1839. He served for four years. In 1851, he was elected mayor of Youngstown. He was elected to
represent the 23rd district in the Ohio Senate in 1855 and 1857. In 1859, he was elected as the
Ohio state auditor and took office in 1860. Tayler was appointed first comptroller of the United
States Treasury by President Abraham Lincoln and served until his death in 1878. He was also
known as the "watch-dog of the Treasury.” Joseph Patterson Smith, History of the Republican
Party in Ohio (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1988), 98; Harriet Taylor Upton, History of the Western Reserve, ed. Harry Gardner Cutler (New York: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1910), 11.
2
Martin Van Buren (5 Dec. 1782- 24 July 1862), politician, was New York governor, U.S. vice
president, and president of the United States. He successfully won the 1836 general election becoming the eighth president. After losing his bid for reelection in 1840, he ran again unsuccessfully in 1848 as the nominee of the antislavery Free Soil Party. John Niven, Martin Van Buren:
The Romantic Age of American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Edward L.
Widmer, Martin Van Buren: The American Presidents Series: The 8th President, 1837-1841
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005).
3
The Loco Focos were a faction of the Democratic Party that formed in 1835 and persisted until
the mid-1840s. The faction was originally created in New York City as a protest against the
city’s dominant Democratic organization, Tammany Hall. In the 1840 election, their Whig opponents often applied the term Loco Foco to the entire Democratic Party. As a whole, the Loco
Foco faction supported Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. They supported free trade, legal
protections for labor unions, and state banks. Fitzwilliam Byrdsall, The History of the Loco-Foco
or Equal Rights Party (New York: Clement & Packard, 1842); Carl Degler, "The Locofocos:
Urban ‘Agrarians,’" Journal of Economic History 16 (1956): 322–33.
4
This is a reference to the Loco Focos faction of the Democratic Party.
5
Thomas Morris (3 Jan. 1776- 7 Dec. 1844), Ohio politician, was born in Berks County, Penn-
sylvania and moved to western Ohio in 1795. He began practicing law in 1804. Morris identified
himself as a Democrat and served in the Ohio State House of Representatives for four years. He
served one year as justice of the Ohio State Supreme Court in 1809. He was also a member of the
Ohio State Senate for eleven years. Morris was elected to the U. S. Senate in 1833, where he
served a single term and did not seek re-election. In 1844, he was nominated as James G. Birney’s vice president on the Liberty Party ticket. Elliot Howard Gilkey, The Ohio Hundred Year
Book (Columbus, OH: Fred J. Heer, 1901), 186-192); B.F. Morris, ed., Thomas Morris: Pioneer
and Long A Legislator of Ohio (Cincinnati: Moore, Wilstach, Keys & Overend, 1856); William
A. Taylor, Ohio Statesmen and Annals of Progress, from the Year 1788 to the Year 1900 (Columbus, OH: Westbote, 1899), 50.
6
This is a reference to Ohio’s Black Law of 1807. The Ohio state legislature passed a number of
laws in 1804 and 1807 that discouraged African American migration into Ohio. Even though
slavery was not allowed in Ohio, most African Americans were not treated as equal. The 1807
law expanded an earlier law and required African Americans to prove that they were not slaves.
The laws prohibited African Americans from marrying whites and owning a gun. In the 1840s,
the Black Laws became a political issue when members of the Free Soil Party and abolitionists
created a movement to have the laws repealed. The Free Soil Party was partially successful in
repealing them in 1849. Stephen Middleton, The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in
Early Ohio (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005), 7-22, 42-73; Stephen Middleton, The Black
Laws in the Old Northwest: A Documentary History (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993),
49-130.
7
This is a reference to the gag rule which was a measure passed by the House of Representatives
in 1836 banning the reading of petitions calling for the abolition of slavery. James Henry Hammond, a representative from South Carolina, first proposed the gag rule in December of 1835. In
the late 1830s, Congress received thousands of petitions from people across the United States
that demanded the abolition of slavery in Washington, D.C., and other federally-controlled territories. Many declared the gag rule a restriction on free speech, but it was not repealed until December 3, 1844. William Lee Miller, Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United
States Congress (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1996), 372, 480-484; David
Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 262-264.
8
In 1838, Thomas Morris’s term was ending and he was considered a lame duck in the U. S.
Senate. The Ohio Democratically-controlled legislature refused to re-elect him to a second term
in December of 1838. Benjamin Tappan replaced him. “The Supreme Court of Ohio & The Ohio
Judicial System, Thomas Morris,” accessed December 9, 2015,
http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/SCO/formerjustices/bios/morris.asp.
9
William Allen (27? Dec. 1803- 11 July 1879), Democratic politician, was born in Edenton,
North Carolina and after his parents’ death, he moved to Chillicothe, Ohio in 1819. He studied
law and was admitted to the bar in 1827. Allen served as United States Representative from Ohio
between the years 1833 and 1835, but was unsuccessful in his bid for another term. He also
served as U. S. Senator from Ohio (1837-1849). While in the Senate, Allen supported the idea
that the United States had a valid claim to the entire Oregon Territory. After leaving the Senate
in 1849, he returned to his farm and did not enter politics again until he served as Governor of
Ohio from 1874 to 1876. BDC; Architect of the Capitol, William Allen, last modified September
24, 2014, accessed December 9, 2015, http://www.aoc.gov/capitol-hill/national-statuary-hallcollection/william-allen; Daniel J. Ryan, William Allen, A History of Ohio with Biographical
Sketches of her Governors and the Ordinance of 1787 (Columbus, OH: A.H. Smythe, 1888),
190-191; Stephen E. Maizlish, The Triumph of Sectionalism: The Transformation of Ohio Politics, 1844-1856 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1983).
10
The Whig Party was established in the early 1830s as a reaction to the policies of President
Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party. The party supported a strong Congress, economic
development and strong protective tariffs to stimulate manufacturing. As the expansion of slavery became an important issue in American politics, the Whigs suffered a drastic decline in
popularity. By 1854, most northern Whigs had joined the Republican Party and the party faded
away in numbers. Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian
Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Daniel
Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984).
11
Isaac Toucey (15 Nov. 1792- 30 July 1869), Democratic politician and U.S. attorney general,
was born in Newtown, Connecticut. He was admitted to the bar in 1818 in Hartford, Connecticut,
where he practiced law for ten years. Toucey served in Congress from 1835 to 1839 and then returned to his position as prosecuting attorney in 1842. The Connecticut State Legislature appointed him governor in 1846. In 1848, President James K. Polk appointed him attorney general
of the United States where he served until 1849. Toucey was elected to the U. S. Senate serving
from 1851 to 1857. In 1857 James Buchanan appointed him secretary of the Navy, a post he held
until 1861. BDC; National Governors Association: The Collective Voice of the Nation’s Governors, Connecticut Governor Isaac Toucey, accessed December 10, 2015,
http://www.nga.org/cms/home/governors/past-governors-bios/page_connecticut/col2content/main-content-list/title_toucey_isaac.html
12
13
Joshua Reed Giddings. See biography link.
The right side of the page has a hole in it and as a result, a few words are missing from the sen-
tence.