[Trail Of Tears] Eccentric Clergyman, Founder Of NYU, Writes Of Jacksonianism Demise, Pleads For Funds From President Van Buren For University

3 pp, 8 x 9 ¾, ALS, SAMUEL HANSON COX, a Presbyterian clergyman with Quaker origins, to his friend HENRY WYLLYS TAYLOR, an American lawyer, politician and jurist.  His early radical anti-slavery views got him in trouble, forcing him to moderate his views. 

Cox was known as an eccentric genius.  His letter, written from Brooklyn, No. 80 Henry St., Jan. 3, 1838, bears out that description. His strong remarks about the death of Jacksonianism reflect controversial events of the day, including, thought not mentioned specifically, the forced removal of the Cherokees, known as the Trail of Tears. That removal highlighted the conflict between the ideals of democracy and the policies of systemic mistreatment of native Americans, which challenged the concept of equality.  Martin Van Buren was president at the time. Cox was a founder of New York University. In this letter, he asks Taylor to lobby the President for badly needed funds for the University.

“...For 3 or 4 weeks, I have been a prisoner to my house, & often to my bed, under the hand of the physician, bled, blistered...to the state of invalid. I have not preached for 3 Lord’s days & expect the fourth under the same inhibition. This is a trial to me, & I fear I bear it not very remarkably exemplarily! If in this letter I should show a corresponding debility of mind, it will be what one might well anticipate as the natural result of such bodily infirmity...

“Your dear Henry is now away from you, thundering in the Capitol & wearing the shroud of Jacksonism in preparation for its funeral. He has now a grave-yard cough & the symptoms seem in articulo mortis. The President, they say, looks consumptive, as come of a diseased parent; & he must soon resign or die, in some sort. Give my respect, esteem & love to him, when you write; & tell him to improve and meliorate, as fast as he can, in all the articles of a heaven-bred philanthropy; especially according to Ps. 41: 1-2 that his Master may more & more approve of him, & enrich proportionately the crown of righteousness, he is yet to have, from his own right-hand!

“Tell him, if you please, that our University of the city of N.Y. will humbly & decidedly ask favor of the Legislature at this session; & I would that he would appear the champion of an object which learned men, & Christians & Whigs ought more than to approve. I would like to tell him much of its history, for it is of great interest. It has done more & better than any other institution of the kind, for its circumstances & time, that I can know or read of.  It owes too in all more than ¼ of a million, say nearly $300,000, worth of property, the sole fruit of private enterprize & bounty & munificence. It was incorporated I think in April 1831, opened for pupils 5 years ago last fall (1832) & has done wonders; so that its prosperity on the whole is unprecedented. It is also a Christian & a truly liberal affair, & full of purpose & promise; & yet – in debt, just-now, press’d by the incubus that crushes all the country, so that its wheels are in the mud, too deep, almost, to move. Now it is again of first magnitude, glittering in the coronet of the Empire State, & the whole body ought to have some share in polishing the lustre of the chief ornament of the head...We need just now about 45,000...& 50,000 in all decency. Then we could go on & grow on, & see our way!...Tell him all tis if you please & serve your country & the cause 

HENRY WYLLYS TAYLOR (February 2, 1796 – December 17, 1888) served in numerous public offices including in the New York State Assembly, justice of the Supreme Court of New York and Associate Justice of the New York Court of Appeals. He was a deacon of the Congregational Church in Canandaigua from 1828 until his passing.

Folds. Toning. Seal tear affects several words. A fine piece of early Americana with very fine content.

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