B. C. Lundy to Richard Yates

B. C. Lundy -

ansd

Magnolia Ills April 8 1861

Gov. Richd Yates

Respected friend. My Yancton Soux agency is gone, and I suppose with it all hope of any thing by way of appointment of any kind. I do not know that I have a right to complain for many better and more worthy have had no better success. Denis wrote me that he had delivered my papers to Trumbull immediately after he got to Washington. Why he did not to you, I cannot say, for it was my express direction, and he promised me to hand them to you. They went into his hands only because you had gone out to sit for your portrait, and I could not see you before I was obliged to leave on the train. Yet Denis in taking them to Trumbull may have done

the best and all that could have been done, and have acted by your advise, and that of my other friends. I feel confident that he done all he could to induce Trumbull to use some efforts in my behalf. He says that he could not induce Trumbull to do any thing whatever to forward my interests, that he would not even endorse my papers. If that had been the last of the matter, I should have felt that I was but one of hundreds, and soon forgotten the entire subject, for I had always felt that my chances were as in a lottery with one prize to a hundred or two blanks. But some ten days ago a propposition came to me from a person in Lacon who stated that he was in the confidence of a person in Alton who was opperating for Trumbull, stating that he the Alton man, would secure for me

through Trumbull an appointment worth from fifteen hundred to two Thousand dollars a year on the following conditions - that I pay Trumbull four hundred dollars down, and the ballance of a thousand dollars in payments. I was disgusted, insulted, and more, humiliated - to think that a man for whome the people of Illinois had done as much as for Lyman Trumbull, should ask money from their hands for his influence in appointments he chanced to control. I saved some two hundred dollars out of my Post Office servises last winter, and shall start about the middle of May for Minnesota with my family. I shall stay until fall, and if during the summer two or three hundred dollars can be made out of my old accounts, I shall try the winter there. I hope - but allmost against hope - that my

health may become so restored that I will live to see in four years a United States Senator from Northren Illinois, and in six years a seat which I cannot now but feel to be disgraced, filled by as able, and that far more honest, noble hearted man : Dick Yates. I should gladly, very gladly, have received some situation in the North West which would have aided me in supporting my family, but failing, will go and stay as long as my means will hold out, hoping to find some employment such as I have strength and health to engage in which will at least part defray my expenses. If you feel disposed to give me a short general letter of introduction, it might aid me in the direction of employment.

With respect,

Yours truly,

B. C. Lundy.