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Copy to Secy Stanton

University of Va
May 6. 1865.

Sir,

The name subscribed to this letter was
not unfamiliar to you, where thirty three years
ago, we were fellow-students at College. If
you retain any recollection of him who bears it
you may perhaps, be not {be} disinclined to read
what follows.

And I beg [?] to say say at the outset
that I have no favors to ask for myself personally,
wish only to present to you, as a cabinet
minister, the view which I take from my
stand-point, of that which concerns what I must
now call our Common Country.

I trust that I do my old school-fellow
simple justice when I assume that he had no
resentments to gratify, nor passions to indulge
in the exercise of the functions of his high place,
and that he [w]ould be sincerely gratified to
be an agent in the hands of Providence, in
restoring permanent peace to this distracted
Country, and establishing {in} the Union once
more on a stable basis of mutual confidence,
and good-will.

That the people of Virginia would voluntarily
& spontaneously return to the Federal Union
had they a free choice, is too much to be affirmed,
They abandoned it four years ago with infinite
pain, upon connections of political
duty, but with the expec[tation?] that the sepa

Copy to Secy Stanton

University of Va
May 6. 1865.

Sir,

The name subscribed to this letter was
not unfamiliar to you, where thirty three years
ago, we were fellow-students at College. If
you retain any recollection of him who bears it
you may perhaps, be not {be} disinclined to read
what follows.

And I beg [?] to say say at the outset
that I have no favors to ask for myself personally,
wish only to present to you, as a cabinet
minister, the view which I take from my
stand-point, of that which concerns what I must
now call our Common Country.

I trust that I do my old school-fellow
simple justice when I assume that he had no
resentments to gratify, nor passions to indulge
in the exercise of the functions of his high place,
and that he [w]ould be sincerely gratified to
be an agent in the hands of Providence, in
restoring permanent peace to this distracted
Country, and establishing {in} the Union once
more on a stable basis of mutual confidence,
and good-will.

That the people of Virginia would voluntarily
& spontaneously return to the Federal Union
had they a free choice, is too much to be affirmed,
They abandoned it four years ago with infinite
pain, upon connections of political
duty, but with the expec[tation?] that the sepa