Mr. Atwood was
cautioned against saying or writing a word that might be repugnant to his
feelings or his principles; but, voluntarily, and at his own suggestion,
he now wrote for publication a second letter, in which he retracted every
objectionable feature of his former one, and took decided ground in favor
of The Compromise, including all its individual measures. Had he adhered
to this latter position, he might have come out of the affair, if not
with the credit of consistency, yet, at least, as a successful candidate
in the impending election. But his evil fate, or, rather, the natural
infirmity of his character, was not so to be thrown off. The very next
day, unhappily, he fell into the hands of some of his antislavery
friends, to whom he avowed a constant adherence to the principles of his
first letter, describing the second as having been drawn from him by
importunity, in an excited state of his mind, and without a full
realization of its purport.
It would be needlessly cruel to Mr. Atwood to trace with minuteness the
further details of this affair. It is impossible to withhold from him a
certain sympathy, or to avoid feeling that a very worthy man, as the
world goes, had entangled himself in an inextricable knot of duplicity
and tergiversation, by an ill-advised effort to be two opposite things at
once.
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