I this morning recd. yours of the 6th Inst. after I had despatched one to Cave Johnson on the subject on which yours is written. It is not possible for you to be more unwilling than I am for any thing to occur calculated to mar that friendship to which you refer as having so long existed between us. To avoid writing any more about it & thereby keep the avenues of friendship the wider open until your return & an opportunity for a fuller understanding of each other’s views & feelings, I prefer refering you to that letter, with the assurances that if in aught I have written to him I have done you injustice or wrong of any sort, I shall at all times be more than ready & willing to repair it. I am free to admit that I may not have allways been sufficiently aware of the embarrassments which have surrounded you, whilst I think your own candor must also allow that you may not have sufficiently appreciated the trying difficulties & perplexities through which I have had to pass during your absence from the State. I think if you will refer to my letter1 you will find the words which you have marked as a quotation, used not in reference to the position indicated in your letter—not to the offer of that position, for whilst I felt bound to decline it, I certainly did not intend to take exceptions to the tender. But in giving my reasons for declining it I allude to the probability of removal by the new President—then if I escaped the guillotine, I referd. to the odious light in which I might be viewd in the City by the new comers, who would look upon me as a sort of spy, holding me therefore at a distance & making my residence in the city any thing but agreeable either to me or my family. It was in tracing out these disagreeable consequences as reasons for declining your offer that I think I used those expressions—it was certainly only in that way that I intended their application—for I did not suppose you had taken time to trace out these matters or to consider much, if at all, these points of personal sensitiveness to which acceptance might expose me.

Regretting of course that any thing should have occured to make such a correspondence as this necessary for the first time in our lives. . . .