Washington

Aug 13 /42

My dear Sir,

Will you pardon my remissness. Your friendly letter was received some time since and ought to have been answered immediately. Within ten days after my arrival in the City I was placed in the Chair on the Great Tariff bill and there was kept day in & day out for five or six weeks. Our sittings were six, eight, ten and sometimes fourteen hours per day. You may readily conceive that in the evenings I would be so much fatigued that I was disposed to do little business and not much in the humor for writing even to a friend. Since that we have been so perplexed and confounded by our unfortunate controversy with his accedency, with whom Providence has afflicted the country, that I have had no heart to write or do anything else.

We have a deplorable state of things and how or when our difficulties will be removed God only knows. He (the President) seems determined to do nothing but thwart and defeat all the efforts to carry out their measures of those who elevated him to power. It seems we can’t legislate at all unless we do so according to his will. It is humiliating in the extreme to be placed in such circumstances. He defeated at the extra Session the bills to establish and regulate the currency, altho’ one of them was drawn exactly according to his wishes and now within a few weeks he has put his foot upon two tariff or revenue bills because they were not framed according to his dictation. This is almost beyond endurance. We will at last, I expect, have to break up without doing anything effectually and refer the matter of controversy to the people. If they will say that their Reps shall pass such laws only as will gratify his whims & caprices, instead of such as commend themselves to their own judgments & conscience, so be it.

I had heard some time since of your quitting the good old faith and embracing the doctrines and forms of the Episcopal Church. All our friends at Brownsville (who are good Episcopalians) are gratified with the accession of your talents and piety in promoting the success of the true church as you call it. The change has, no doubt, been produced by the conviction of truth in your mind and is right. I hope that your sphere of usefulness may be enlarged and that you may be the instrument of doing much good in your old age. You talk about being old, but, I suppose, are now about in the vigour of your intellect.

My poor brother James is still in delicate health altho somewhat better than he was last fall. He spent the winter at Cuba and in Louiziana and has I understand improved somewhat in health & strength. He has been compelled to quit preaching and is now out of employment. He is apprehensive that he cannot stand the confinement of teaching to which he now thinks of turning his attention for a living and I don’t know what the poor fellow is to do. He is now with his family at his father-in-law’s in Licking County, Ohio (Granville) where he will remain till a kind Providence opens some way for him.

I hear frequently from home (where I would be delighted to be today) but know of nothing there which would be worth communicating. Except the deaths and marriages that have taken place things are pretty much as when you were there. I have just recd a line from Colin Reed who informs me that his father is wearing away pretty fast. I should not be surprised if he should be gone before I got home. His disease has been of many years standing and his sufferings have been severe. We will greatly feel his loss as a citizen and neighbor. He has his faults, but he is a warm hearted man and an active and very useful citizen.

We have as our pastor at present a Scotch Clergyman. Smith is his name. He is a man of talents and thorough education, classical and theological. He writes well, but he lacks something in voice and manner to make him a very interesting preacher. Our people generally are, I believe, well pleased with him, altho’ some of the old ladies grumble a little occasionally.

We have in this City a preacher who figures largely and who became very notorious in the West. I mean the Revd Mr. Moffit of the Methodist Church who is one of the Chaplains to Congress and about the most disgusting preacher I ever heard. I went to hear him twice. The last time I was picked up as I did not know he was to preach. All that hear him are utterly disgusted with the affectation of his manner and the rhetorical airs that he assumes & flourishes that he makes. Still he attracts immense overflowing crowds. The Hall of the House is generally so crowded that it is difficult to get a seat.

Well to make up for my apparent neglect, I have written you a long letter if I have not said much. And I was about closing without saying anything about my own family. William is practicing law in partnership with me and is doing well. Bowman is concerned in a store in Brownsville and is a correct businessman. My third son graduates this fall and intends teaching some place for 2 years before he studies a profession. Our daughter has grown to be a large girl and our fourth son is a stout, hearty boy. But we still have another and that is the pet—a sweet little daughter of about 9 months of age, after an interregnum (as an old gentleman once wrote me) of about 11 years.

And now I must close by begging you to remember me kindly to Mrs. Wylie and each & every member of your family.

Yours very truly,

Th. M. T. McKennan

Revd A. Wylie D.D.