294 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



I am deep in the newspapers, and deeper still in thoughts 

 and anxieties for our country. Many of my night hours 

 have been passed in sleepless anxiety, from which even 

 prayer could not always relieve me. My solicitude was 

 most intense, while a doubt remained whether Washington 

 was safe, and it was not materially relieved until the great 

 uprising of the North a,nd Northwest a moral miracle 

 proved that God had taken the matter in hand, and would, 

 in the end, vindicate the right, while slavery is committing 



suicide 



The entire movement is very wicked. A con- 

 spiracy, avowed from the first to have for its object the 

 overthrow of the most beneficent human government that 

 the world has ever seen, a government dispensing count- 

 less blessings to the people and blessings only, is wicked 

 beyond the power of language to express, and if the effort 

 were successful it would almost extinguish the hope of 

 mankind for free and equitable government 



During the progress of the war, he corresponded 

 with a young lady of Nashville, Tennessee, who was 

 a remote connection of his family, but whom he had 

 never seen. One of her letters to a friend at the North 

 had been shown him, and the loyal spirit which 

 it breathed had strongly interested his mind. An 

 accident which befell this letter led to the opening of 

 his. correspondence with her, a small portion of which 

 is given below. 



TO MISS MAGGIE LINDSLET. 



NEW HAVEN, September, 1862. 



As my own domestic circles include twenty-three 



grandchildren, of whom fourteen are females, of all ages 

 from childhood to womanhood, not to mention the matrons, 

 you may readily imagine that I am ever under a benign 

 female influence, and that my affections may, therefore, 



