Apr 16, 2019 - Sale 2505

Sale 2505 - Lot 73

Price Realized: $ 344
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(CONGRESS.) Bucher, John C. Letters of a Pennsylvania Congressman on the Nullification Crisis. 4 Autograph Letters Signed to brother-in-law William Ayres (1788-1856) of Harrisburg, PA. Folio or 4to, 8 total pages, plus 2 address panels (one with postmark and Bucher's free frank); minor wear. With complete typed transcripts. Philadelphia and Washington, 1830-33
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John Conrad Bucher (1792-1851) of Harrisburg, PA served one term in the United States House of Representatives from 1831 to 1833, but it was an eventful one, as the Nullification Crisis threatened the continued existence of the Union. The first letter is dated from before Bucher's Congressional term, but the other 3 are dated from Washington during the heart of the crisis in December 1832 and January 1833. They are full of detail and confrontational arguments; Bucher was a Jackson supporter and his brother-in-law was apparently a staunch Anti-Masonic Party member. On 18 December, a week after President Jackson's powerful rebuke to South Carolina, Bucher wrote "John C. Calhoun is elected to the Senate . . . we have arrived at a serious crisis in the affairs of our country, to preserve peace among ourselves and the preservation of those principles which a large majority of us say are fundemental. . . . Before the Tariff Bill of last session was passed, our legislature and our people gave an almost unanimous expression in favor of holding on to ultra notions of protection. . . . Now if to save our country, and to get rid of 6 million dollars per annum taxes which you Anti-Masons look on as a great bug bear, can preserve the Union . . . ought it not to be done?" On 12 January, Bucher offered a correction to panicked news in the Harrisburg newspaper: "It is not true as the editors say, that the House have agreed to the consideration of the bill to repeal the tariff. . . . It was a mere vote that the House would . . . go into committee on that bill. That is a very different thing." Finally, on 19 January, three days after Jackson announced that force would be used to collect the tariff, Bucher wrote: "The compliment you pay the Jackson Party, calling them all slaves, is a beautiful idea. There are then a vast proportion of the population that are slaves. Perhaps it may be the increasing popularity of that man that worries you so much." Provenance: the private Lincoln Library of Henry Luhrs of Shippensburg, PA.