senator and two representatives.  With quite one third more people than we had then, we have only half the sort of offices which are sought by men of the speaking sort of talent.  This, I think, is the chief cause.  Now, as to the young men.  You must not wait to be brought forward by the older men.  For instance, do you suppose that I should ever have got into notice if I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men?  You young men get together and form a “Rough and Ready Club,” and have regular meetings and speeches.  Take in everybody you can get.  Harrison Grimsley, L. A. Enos, Lee Kimball, and C. W. Matheny will do to begin the thing; but as you go along gather up all the shrewd, wild boys about town, whether just of age, or a little under age, Chris. Logan, Reddick Ridgely, Lewis Zwizler, and hundreds such.  Let every one play the part he can play best,—­some speak, some sing, and all “holler.”  Your meetings will be of evenings; the older men, and the women, will go to hear you; so that it will not only contribute to the election of “Old Zach,” but will be an interesting pastime, and improving to the intellectual faculties of all engaged.  Don’t fail to do this.

You ask me to send you all the speeches made about “Old Zach,” the war, etc.  Now this makes me a little impatient.  I have regularly sent you the Congressional Globe and Appendix, and you cannot have examined them, or you would have discovered that they contain every speech made by every man in both houses of Congress, on every subject, during the session.  Can I send any more?  Can I send speeches that nobody has made?  Thinking it would be most natural that the newspapers would feel interested to give at least some of the speeches to their readers, I at the beginning of the session made arrangements to have one copy of the Globe and Appendix regularly sent to each Whig paper of the district.  And yet, with the exception of my own little speech, which was published in two only of the then five, now four, Whig papers, I do not remember having seen a single speech, or even extract from one, in any single one of those papers.  With equal and full means on both sides, I will venture that the State Register has thrown before its readers more of Locofoco speeches in a month than all the Whig papers of the district have done of Whig speeches during the session.

If you wish a full understanding of the war, I repeat what I believe I said to you in a letter once before, that the whole, or nearly so, is to be found in the speech of Dixon of Connecticut.  This I sent you in pamphlet as well as in the Globe.  Examine and study every sentence of that speech thoroughly, and you will understand the whole subject.  You ask how Congress came to declare that war had existed by the act of Mexico.  Is it possible you don’t understand that yet?  You have at least twenty speeches in your possession that fully explain it.  I will, however, try it once more.  The news reached