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Autograph letter signed. One page, on 4-page conjugate letterhead of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, in Congressional envelope with Colfax's frank.

Schuyler Colfax, whose presidential aspirations were cut short by failed political opportunism and by implication in the Credit Mobilier scandal, writes to a New Yorker who wants a letter of recommendation for a friends, with some reluctance: "...I am always glad to serve my friends, but when they ask me to widen the circle and introduce their friends whom I don't know, I generally decline... If you to not know Dr. J.'s views on reconstruction to be generally identical with mine, please destroy these letters; for I would not wish one of other views to go through the south with letters from me..." (Colfax  was firmly against those who participated in the Confederate rebellion to be reinstated in office and control Republican Reconstruction policy.) The franked envelope is quite attractive, with large red wax seal still in place.