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Description
McIlvaine unhappy about son's working conditions. Don't let him know I write. Rebel clergyman in Canada writes that "men will hold me more guilty than any other man for all the blood and cruelty of the war."
ISBN
KMcI 640314b
Date
3-14-1864
Keywords
letter, McIlvaine, Chase, son, clergy
Recommended Citation
McIlvaine, Charles Pettit, "Letter to Salmon P. Chase" (1864). Charles Pettit McIlvaine Letters. 79.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/mcilvaine_letters/79
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Transcript
Cinc. March 14/64
My dear Mr. Chase
I am greatly concerned about my son’s health. He writes that he ascribes his present state in a great degree to the discomforts of his room in the Treasury, the floor without carpet, the chimney obstructed by work going on above (I suppose). dust + smoke. He is so feeble, + from the spinal curvature which contracts his chest, is so easily affected by want of good air that I feel quite anxious about him. Most unwillingly do I ask you to pull down your thoughts for a moment from the great cares of your office; but if you would cause some enquiry to be made into his room without his knowing that I have send [sic] anything about it, I would be very much obliged.
I had a pleasant piece of information the other day from a Rebel of a Clergyman who writes me from Canada (a nephew of Bp. Johns) that “never will hold me more greatly than any other man of all the blood + cruelty of this war”
I did not know before, that I was this ahead of Mr. Lincoln or even Jefferson Davis.
I expect to be in Washn. in the last of April, for I must decide whether to advise my son on account of his health _ the great difficulty of getting such boarding accommodation as he needs (Mrs. Williams where has always lived being about to break up her establishment) to resign his office _ come to us.
Your affectionate friend
Chas.P.McIlvaine