No 120 West 25^th St.
Hon. W. H. Seward.
My Esteemed Friend,
The advent of the new
Administration is nigh; and, if reports are
true, you will be the Secretary of State, provided
that your appointment shall be sanctioned
by the Senate. I heartily wish you success
in your honorable, though arduous, duties;
and I trust that you, with the guidance
and blessings of the Supreme Ruler, will
undertake all those will ^which^ would benefit
our country, that you may win the full
approbation of all Americans.
We all enjoy good health. My business
has for about three past years been quite
dull— it being attributed mainly to the
popularity of Photographing. The care
devolved on me of my large family
compels me to look for some other suitable
profession—such as may enable me to
support them, while I find all leisure
hours for courting my darling art—historical
painting.
Since the report of your selection as Lincoln's
premier, I expressed a wish to get a

situation in your own Department, but
I shrunk from asking you for it for I had
and still have a holy horror of being
taken for an office hunter. My friends
however urged me to apply to you—I still
hesitated, saying that such a thing might
lessen your esteem for me. More they pushed
me, and I jumped back again. At length
I screwed up my courage to cast the die.
So I now see this letter is in your hands,
and I await your decision.
Be assured, my Dear friend, that your
declining to employ me will increase,
instead of damaging, my respect for you,
and may prove in the end beneficial to
me.
I read your late speech with much interest,
and thought it was very conciliatory. It is
indeed a difficult task to devise and
form such compromises as would surely
bring peace to the land. Certainly both
sections of this Country need a national
compromise to preserve their unity, for the
Southern people are as determined to hold
up their peculiar notions as the Northern,
theirs. Nothing will induce them both
to change their priorities,— hence the
disastrous separation between the South

and the North appears certain, unless something
like a compromise, ingeniously formed, come
up to make them link-on (Lincoln) ^more^ afar
firmly.
Doubtless you see and appreciate the vital
importance of the border States being still in
the Union, because they—Maryland and
Virginia— encompass the Federal Capitol.
Their Secession will naturally take that
with them; and what will be the consequences?
Will the North not feel “stung to the quick,”
and so exasperated at to dash with bristling
bayonets to that city? Thus civil war
is inevitable. This Crittenden knows, and
he works hard to prevent it.
From the secession leaders, Slavery has
received a serious, if not fatal, stab; and
secession itself will ultimately coerce the
deciding States to the arms of their loving
sister States again. So I hope that no measures
like Stanton’s Force Bill, will be adopted
for frustrating that object.
In conclusion I have a full confidence
in your ability to disappoint the Yanceys ,
Reitt , and the Wendell Phillips , who are
anxious that the Republicans should pass
measures, calculated to commemorate the
dissolution of our glorious Union.

Mrs Carlin joins me in love to Mrs
Seward.
Accept our wishes of your long life
and happiness.
Yours, sincerely
Jhn Carlin