I got your pleasant letter,2 and thank you for the attention you paid my note through Mr. Cummins.3 I feared over aggressiveness (perhaps my mulishness) on the 20 percent and other mooted questions had obliterated on your side, our friendship. I am happy in begging your pardon. & I have not seen Townsend4 since his return over the water, but I had a talk with his beautiful and intelligent wife5 in Phila & she said that not only did Townsend admire you and yours but that he had also weaned loc.01832.002_large.jpg her from a prejudice. I do not believe that man exists whom Townsend is more anxious to know intimately than lusty Walt Whitman. You will both be gratified one of these days, for it is your and his Destiny. I wonder if I will lose two "bully" friends, when you two come together?
Cummins is a whole souled, but erratic, fellow, and a good companion. He regards his friendships warmly. I'm glad you met him.
I should like to see Burrough's6 book on you,7 & will pay the price & postage if he will send it to me. However I expect to be in Washington in a couple of weeks & I can secure the loc.01832.003_large.jpg essay then. The health of self & family is better than for sometime past—thanks to the pure air of the mountains. I think I never appreciated the country before—its flowers, its trees its rocks & its brooks, to say nothing of the greenness of the grass or the perfumed air. I have looked for the name in the corner of the Lord's pockethand kerchief many times here & I dare not say I have not found it.8
Write me again before I see you.
The Ramsdell family here9send nothing short of love to Walt Whitman.
Goodbye H J Ramsdell loc.01832.004_large.jpgI do not know George Townsend's present address, but care of Tribune will reach him
Hiram loc.01832.006_large.jpgCorrespondent:
Hiram J. Ramsdell
(1839–1887) was a clerk in Washington; in a hospital notebook (Henry E.
Huntington Library, San Marino, California), Whitman called him "chief clerk." Ramsdell was the
Washington correspondent for the New York Tribune and the
Cincinnati Commercial. On May 8,
1867, Ramsdell reported the high praise that George Townsend, the
journalist (1841–1914), accorded to Whitman—"a stupendous
genius," "the song of a God." On July 17, 1867, he
asked Whitman to do whatever he could for Judge Milton Kelly, of Idaho,
against whom charges had been brought by "a very bad man," Congressman Edward
Dexter Holbrook (1836–1870), a Democrat from the Idaho Territory.
Actually, on July 12, 1867, Whitman had submitted to the Attorney General a
"Report on the Charges submitted by Hon. E. D. Holbrook, Del[egate] from Idaho Terr[itory], against
Hon. Milton Kelly, Asso[ciate] Just[ice] Supreme Court of
Idaho" (National Archives). To this forty-one page summary of the evidence, all
in Whitman's hand, there is appended a letter signed by attorney general
Henry Stanbery (1803–1881) but inscribed by Whitman, dated July 20,
1867: "The Conclusion in the preceding Report is hereby adopted by me, &
ordered to stand as the decision of this Office in the Case, so far as now
presented." On July 22, 1867, Ramsdell apologized
for his "aggressiveness." Judge Kelly wrote to Whitman on June(?) 21, 1867
(National Archives), and again on August 9, 1867.
On November 15, 1875, Ramsdell, among others, petitioned Benjamin H. Bristow
(1832–1896), Secretary of the Treasury, that Whitman "be appointed to a
position in the Treasury Department" (National Archives & Records Administration, Washington, D.C.).