Your letter of 3rd &+ instant has reached me. I am extremely obliged to you for the very lucid, satisfactory & business-like instructions in regard to Lucerne, &c. I shall lay them up and probably use them one of these years.

I have been to Hartford & bought my tools, oxen, dog ( a noble Newfoundland), and engaged a nice young wife (with her husband) to keep house for me. I have already begun carting manure (and it’s quite a luxury of manure, this clean green rock-weed.) I have got a lighter building, and am going to New York to buy a life-boat.

John, poor fellow, is in Hartford on account of his eyes again. He has probably written you before this. He is under Dr. Beresford’s care and takes blisters & stingers & counter-irritants & calomel

They have had the jolliest, funniest, time in Hartford discussing the “High School Question,” in great crowded meetings at the City-Hall The Governor & the Terrys—Taintor,Allyn & some scurvy fellows—opposed to it, and Bushnell, Burgess, Clark, Baptist, Unitarian, Robinson, James Bunce, Chapman, & almost every body else in its favor. There was the most exciting debates, personal attacks, sharp cross firing, &c. for two or three nights I ever heard. Bushnell vs. the Governor, as to who was the most Democratic, &c. You would have enjoyed it. Twas finally carried by a tremendous triumph of the clergy and sans-culottes. A most glorious and happy union. I was with them heart & soul. Down with the Aristocrats! Up with the rags and hearts!

I can only deny that I ever did call—or think—you “sanctified”—or any of those things (except as a manifest joke.) Nor did I ever apply the term Pharisaical (or such) to you directly or impliedly. My letters must get infernally shook up to have the words come together as you read them now-a-days.

I am glad to hear you had such a grand time in Boston. It must have been a great pleasure and benefit to you. I tell you what, Charley, I believe would do you more good than—something else—a vast deal—to spend a year or a season in some well conducted though rough business or mercantile establishment. The fact that it would be so repugnant to your tastes is evidence of the benefit it would be—the discipline would be to you. Think of it, Charley. How ridiculous? Well, sir, every time you laugh ’tis at the expense of some most respectable and tasteful men. Isn’t it? Pshaw!

I must make a short letter of this, for I have but little time left.

“We are certain of some things—let us act on them,” you say. Very good, so I do & will. At least I intend to. “The various opinions great minds have held ought not to deter us, &c.” Well I think they had. Now, the very fact that J. C. Calhoun thinks so of Slavery is evidence to me that Slavery is not the greatest sin in the world-that a Slaveholder may be a conscientious Christian. And it is just exactly such reasoning as this would prevent my joining a church that forced me to profess to believe Slaveholding to be either a unforgiveable sin or a “beneficial Institution sanctioned by God”—a church that refused either Slaveholders or Abolitionists its communion.

I doubt if God has left us with so little light on whatever it is you call “Important Points” that men equally good, equally discriminating, equally judicious, equally unprejudiced, &c. ( both of them too far superior to us in those qualitites) must be at sword’s points, ever fighting—fighting—anathematizing & excommunicating each other, yet pity full & charitable, and [292]equally anxious for the Glory of their professed Head, equally good, kind, benevolent, Christian, in their relations to their neighbor.

I can’t believe the whole duty of man is on either side alone. Now, I believe J. C. Calhoun is wrong. And I would (if I thought ’twould do otherwise than make him stronger in his prejudices) tell him so & my reasons. But he may be right. God knows—I honestly believe he may be right. My belief is only strong enough to make me act to a certain extent.

Now I say the Omniscient Judge may pronounce him a Christian or Heretic. I have no right—it is not my business to unchristianize him—to decide at all. I am not called upon to act. I won’t act upon it, nor will I make it my business at the option of ever so many small minds to ever act upon it. Nor any more than I can help will I make it their business to act upon me.

The Congregationalists insist to take it upon them to decide whether or no I am a Christian (small minds, too). The Episcopalians do not. Therefore, though I am a Congregationalist, I have and shall communicate with the Church Catholic under Episcopal government.