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2 Autograph Letters Signed.

To his brother, Wait Talcott, Horseheads, New York.
Talcott writes to his brother as their family was about to move, by covered wagon, from New York to the “frontier” state of Illinois. Critical of Andrew Jackson’s first “hot-headed” response to South Carolina’s demands in the Nullification controversy, which he felt “bids the Southern States go on in their madness - without fear”, Talcott, was later perturbed when an anti-slavery convention in Utica was disrupted by the “outrageous” and “disgraceful” mob-action of “orderly and peaceable citizens”, forcing the meeting to move to the mansion of businessman Gerrit Smith. “The people are Mad,” Talcott wrote his brother, “else they would see that every such effort will tend to bind together in a common bond of iron the hearts of all that love the Cause of Liberty more than gold, or honors”, who would now “stand shoulder to shoulder and arm in arm till the oppressed are delivered or the guilt of the oppressor is Crimsoned with their hearts blood. This the struggle commencing… to overthrow the last vestige of Tyranny and oppression…” Inspired by militant Abolitionism, Talcott declared, “…tis the height on which I’ll plant my feet…” Wait Talcott shared William’s fervor. Once established as a community leader (and Underground Railroad “conductor”) in Rockford, Illinois, he would denounce slavery as a cruel evil which disgraced America. Elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1854, he would befriend fellow Senator Abraham Lincoln, who while “careful“ not to publicly endorse Talcott’s calls for the immediate emancipation of the slaves, would confide to his friend that the anti-slavery passion of the Talcott brothers "produced a much stronger impression on my mind than you may think".