Extract from Joseph Coolidge to Cornelia J. Randolph

thank dear Va for her letter to me, and for that a/c of the scoundrelism of the Secy of War; which I can well believe. when I saw him about Sidney’s commission, and handed him a letter in which S. was spoken of as having your Grandfather’s blood in his veins, he (Cameron) broke in with the remark that it was a damned bad blood. If it would not have endangered my getting the Commission for Sidney, I could and would have made him an answer which he would have remembered.

RC (NcU: NPT); partial date conjectural based on internal evidence; above dateline in Randolph’s hand: “Jan. 6. 1862.”
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January 6, 1862
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