American author and Unitarian clergyman (1822–1909) remembered for his short story 'The Man Without a Country.' Four letters from Edward Everett Hale, each signed “Edw. E. Hale,” consisting of two ALSs, an LS, and a TLS, eight total pages, each approximately 5.25 x 8, dating from 1879 to 1897. Two letters are addressed to Kansas ‘free-state’ militiaman and author Brinton W. Woodward, and two letters are to Woodward’s wife. Highlighted samples include: “Thank you very much for your book…all the more for connecting it with old Kansas days. I was pleased to see that a competent writer the other day spoke of Eli Thayer as the man who abolished American slavery”; and “I look back to the visit which my daughter and I made in Lawrence in 1879 with very great pleasure. And while perhaps nobody knows better than I do what were the sufferings of the beginning, I cannot help feeling that the martyrs of that day must have a large compensation in seeing the cheerfulness and prosperity of the Lawrence of to-day.” In overall fine condition, with some signature blotting to the later letter, and light rippling to the earliest one. Accompanied by two original mailing envelopes, one hand-addressed by Hale, who adds his signature to the lower left, “E. E. Hale.”
Brinton W. Woodward (1834-1900) arrived in Lawrence, Kansas Territory, in 1855. He was secretary of the first territorial convention held by the Free-State party. During the Wakarusa war, he was a member of the ‘Kansas Guards’ under General James H. Lane and took an active part in the defense of Lawrence. When Confederate guerilla William Quantrill and his men raided Lawrence in 1863, Woodward’s pharmaceutical store was destroyed and he narrowly escaped death. Post war he became a wealthy businessman, author, and co-founder of the Kansas Historical Society. Eli Thayer was a pre-war U.S. Congressman who, in 1857, founded Credo, an antislavery colony in Virginia (now West Virginia).
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