3½ pp., in ink, on 4-page lettersheet folded to form an envelope, addresses on p.4. Daniel Hale, an Albany banker and merchant, and sometime Secretary of State for New York, writes to young politician Ebenezer Foote about the rising star DeWitt Clinton, who was to go on to become one of New York's greatest governors, and is credited with pushing through the Erie Canal. "...would to Heaven that there were ten thousand persons employed as I have been in attempting to do justice to the villains and each with a pen ten thousand times more severe than mine, the disorder is a desperate one... If the people will not come forward and by their voice correct the evil we must submit to Tyranny or resort to violence - dreadful alternatives - my last reply to DeWitt Clinton as the evident and notorious author of Civis, has appeared to strike deep..." Provenance: A private California collection.