Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Andrew Jackson
| My dear Sir, | Boston Nov. 27. 1837. |
My brother, Mr Trist, has suggested to me that you might possibly read with pleasure a little work on the Abolition Question by a lady of this State—a copy of which I had lately sent to him. It is, we think, worthy of praise for it’s mild and christian spirit, it’s correct statement of facts, and as embodying the real sentiments of the greater part of our community. I am gratified to have it in my power to present this little offering, both because I deem it worthy of your acceptance and as it affords me an excuse for addressing you. I am thus enabled, at once, to express my great admiration of your public character and my unfeigned gratitude for your personal kindness to my family. Accept then, my dear Sir, with this assurance of my sentiments towards yourself, my heartfelt thanks for the friendship you have uniformly shewn my friends, and especially for that share of it which you bestowed on those among them whose voices, in this world, can be no longer raised to thank you for themselves.
The little work was Catherine Esther Beecher’s An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism, with reference to the Duty of American Females (1837), a copy of which Coolidge sent to Virginia J. Randolph Trist in Havana three months earlier (Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Virginia J. Randolph Trist, 22 Aug. 1837 [NcU: Southern Historical Collection, Nicholas Philip Trist Papers]).