Washington March 12 1820
My dear friend,
I have been under the necessity of remaining at home
to day to write letters, and I have appropriated part of the time
to write to you- the last letters which I have received from home
were dated on the 22d of February, but I am in daily expectation
of receiving some as I cannot belive you would let more than
one week pass without writing, unless Gibb should fail. My health
continues good so that I have lost no time this winter in attend-
ing to the business of the house- As I have concluded that possi-
bly Samuel may have returned to Burlington, I have directed
my papers to you and hope you will be careful to preserve
them- We have been voted down on the question of admitting
Slavery into the new state of Missouri- We had considerable warmth
in congress for two or three weeks on that, much gas-
conade, many threats &c- from the Southern representatives- and
they succeeded in scareing [scaring] some of our northern folks so that they
were afraid to vote- but that subject is now laid to rest and
we are engaged in making some attempts to lessen the expenses
of government, which of later, like the expenses of many private
folks, considerably exceed its income-
Henry W. Edwards, a son of Pierpont Edwards, is one of the mem-
bers from Connecticutt, he told me the other day that he remem-
bered you very well, altho' he was quite young when you left
New haven. He is a decent good looking man- he made one
speech in Congress, but displays no very brilliant tallent [talent]-
the delegation from Connecticutt in this Congress, altho' decent
respect-
able men, and all repulican, I do not conceive, in point of talents,
to be equal to those who were here during the last congress, par-
ticularly to Mr. Pitkin and one other Mr. Sherwood-I expect
you have lately had rather cold weather in Vermont, it has
for about a week been quite cold here and freezes very hard-
yet there is no snow on the ground, nor has there been any
for some time, but ground is frozen hard and very rough-
I want to hear how you get along, particularly with the [stock]
whether they have got over the disorder, or are dead-
And I wish you would tell Conant that, if there shall be
water enough to save before I come home, I wish he would
save for no person on any other condition, than to take
his pay in boards- We shall want a good many next
season and if we get more than we want for our own
use, they can always be sold- I wrote something in
my last about Garfield's taking the favor this year which
I hope you will receive before this reaches you-
I wish you to give my love to Mary, and tell her
to write me-and accept the assurance of
my constant love and esteem
S C Crafts
Mrs. E Crafts