Please receive my best thanks for the invitation to meet the Atlanta soldiers & the Putnams. I was on the point of starting when a committee requested me to remain here & introduce General Joseph R. Hawley to a political mass meeting. This was a great surprise to me, for I had supposed the man was comparatively well known. I shall remain, of course, & shall do what I can to blow the fog from around his fame. Meantime will you kindly see that the portion of your banquet which I should be allowed to consume if I were present is equitably distributed among the public charities of our several States and Territories? I would not that any partiality be shown on account of political creed or geographical position, but would beg that all the crates be of the same heft.

I am glad to add my voice to yours in welcoming the Georgians to Hartford. Personal contact & communion of Northerners & Southerners over the friendly board will do more toward obliterating sectional lines & and restoring mutual respect and esteem than any other thing that can be devised. We cannot meet thus too often; for whereas we meet as Northerners and Southerners, we grow in breadth and stature, meantime, & part as Americans. There is not any name among the world’s nationalities that can oversize that one.

Sincerely hoping that our guests will receive a welcome at our town’s hands which will cause them to forget the length of their journey & make them willing to come again,

I am