Civil War-dated ALS, four pages on two adjoining sheets, 4.75 x 7.75, February 3, 1861. Written from Hillsboro, a letter to state printer James M. Campbell of Manchester, New Hampshire, in part: "I infer with the proceedings of the Legislation last week that the friends of Union…upon the Constitution are acting with courage as well as wisdom. A speech like that of Bingham, in these times, was really refreshing. All the party to be sustained by the press, which they support or are they to be deserted by it in this critical hour. I find in 'the weekly Union' of yesterday much that might well become the American at Manchester or the Statesman at Concord, but not one word of encouragement or commendation of the faithful patriotic men, who are fighting a gallant battle for the right in the Legislature. Has our press bowed before this storm of courtlessness and despotism, inaugurated by the Administration at Washington? Is there no voice of reproach—for the invasion of States still in the Union, by federal troops called into service without a shadow of legal authority for the massacre of unoffending citizens in the streets of St. Louis by a brutal soldiery armed & embroiled without law and acting in sincere defiance of all responsibility—no burning word of denunciation, for the daring denial to citizens of the sacred security of the habeas corpus, for the shameless violation of the competence of telegraphic dispatches—for the iniquities, which serve literally to swarm around the purlieus of present executive power & for the unheard of extravagance and persistent peculation in our own state? In my judgment the tone of not a few of the so called Democratic papers in New England really encourages the Henry Ward Beecher abolition madness which is hurrying us all to destruction together. Vastly better that we had no press at all than to have one muzzled or terror-stricken. I hope my friend that you will resume the editorial chair of the Union or cease to be one of its proprietors." In fine condition.
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