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408 West 20th Street, Washington City 12th December 1867

The Hon Charles A Eldridge House of Representatives

Sir: Permit me to thank you for your effort, on the 10th Instant, to uphold & maintain, as our common heritage and the last hope of Humanity, the beneficent & once cherished & revered Principles of Government, underlying the Social & Political structures of the United States in their original. These principles were derived to us through our Father, as our inalienable birthright. Sequentially, from the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the Pandects of Justinian, the old English bowman [?] Law, the Magna Carta, the Petition of Right & the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of American Independence & the Federal Constitution, and prior to their disruption by a Party of Lunatics, Mongrels & Demireps they constituted the Spirit of Free-Republican Institutions & Laws, as well as the source of prosperity of the Country of the happiness of the people.

Suffer me, more particularly, to express my fratitude for your manly sympathy in behalf of those of our Race in my Native State-- in common with others in the further South-- who, under all circumstances, have never failed to illustrate by their record the American Name; --whether, through her Journals, compelling the recognition of American Freedom & Independence, defeating again the British arms, or chastising Mexico; -- or whether, through her Statesman, framing the Declaration of Independence, constructing the Federal Constitution, establishing the Union, or conducting American Society & Government in accordance with the Wisdom gleaned & garnered from all Precedent ages; -- or whether, more recently, in the deadly & desperate struggle she waged without quailing against the encroachments of the Madmen, the Mongrels, the Demireps, upon those Divine principles of Free Government & Human happiness that the venerated as Sacred, & that you have, in your speech, so ably defended & educated in their desecration.

These essential principles cannot be wholly lost to mankind while they continue to command such advocates as yourself, but, I fear, my dear sir, that your voice, at this time, is but as the voice of one crying in the Wilderness, and that the Saviour is still afar off from the Country. The American government was not framed ideally for men, like those who framed it, sublime in Patriotic devotion, profound in the lore of Wisdom and inmovable in Virtue, but not for the sway of a Mongrel herd with no [distisictly?] defined, or fixed conceptions, and without a common conscience, or a restraining moral sense. Another agony of blood & tears inevitably awaits the "Nation" which has thus been born through the Revolution into which people have been plunged by the Black-Republican Party, composed as it is and led by ribald Jesters, in their wild departure from the only safeguards of Morality & Relegion, Society & Government.

This Revolution has already, such has been its ravages on Freedom & its disruption of common Rights, left me, and thousands like me, without a State, or a Status-- without a Country, without a Home, without a Family, without Friends, and without Fortune-- even without the privilege of a Profession; Nevertheless, as a Citizen of the world & a member at large of the Human Family, you have my very sincere & profound thanks, gratefully accorded from the heart, and I remain, with the highest sentiments of respect, Your obliged & obt. sert: John Tyler, Jr

To the Hon Charles A Eldridge House of Representatives Dec 12, 1867 In regard to his speech in the House of the 10th Dec Complimentary