Brooklyn, December 6th, 1853.

Dear Sir,—

Your note of November 29th, requesting a line from me for the Autographs for Freedom, is received.

I wish that I had something that would add to the literary value of your laudable enterprise. In so great a cause as that of human liberty, every great interest in society ought to have a voice and a decisive testimony. Art should be in sympathy with freedom and literature, and all human learning should speak with unmistakable accents for the elevation, evangelization, and liberation of the oppressed. In a future day, the historian cannot purge our political history from the shame of wanton and mercenary oppression. But there is not, I believe, a book in the literature of our country that will be alive and known a hundred years hence, in which can be found the taint of despotism. The literature of the world is on the side of liberty.

I am very truly yours,