Athens March 2, 1858

Dear Sir

I wrote to you in the month of December last and have got no answer, I think the letter must have been miscarried, so I will now write as near as I can ascertain, the substance of that letter.  Dear Sir I received your epistle of the and am truly grateful for a copy of the elegy on my Mother's death. The piece I think has merit, and with a little revision might bear the criticism of a connoisseur. Excuse me if I, suggest a change of the word meet in the seventh line of first stanza,  grave in the third line of the t stanza, and the two last lines of the fourth stanza. I am feelingly touched with the sentiment in the sixth verse, it is so consonant with my own. I am glad to be remembered by you and your family, 'several of whom I have never seen; and if I could as readily extend the right hand of' fellowship as I can conceive of a friendly meeting in your social circle, we would soon be in your midst.

You have asked me repeatedly how many children we have; I meant to answer that in my first letter but it seems that I have forgot it; I will now say that we have none. My wife and I constitute our household. And it is not altogether on account of age, she being in her 47 year since the first of May last, and I'm my 53 year since the first of October last.

Sir you want to know something of the place we live in.  Athens is a Borough Town settled about 60 years ago, of, slow progress containing only about 2000 inhabitants, situated on the Hocking River about 26 miles from the Ohio. The Hocking is not navigable only for flat boats in the time of a freshet. When I came to Athens in the spring of 18.50, land was cheap.

I bought JO acres, a part of it improved, and a hewed log house on it, for about six dollars per acre, and had five years to pay it in. Since that time things are greatly changed, owing to the Marietta and Cincinnati railroad which passes through Athens. Land is now selling in the vicinity of Athens at 100 dollars per acre, and land is selling contiguous to mine and of no better quality at 25 dollars per acre. I keep no horse. I pay for my horse work, as the extent of my agricultural operations would not justify me in keeping a horse. We keep four good milch cows, and has our butter engaged by the year at 17 cents per pound; market is near, it being but one mile and a quarter to Athens. When I have leisure I work out some among the neighboring fanners, but more especially in the town as I have acquired a knowledge of gardening I get considerable employ in that line.

Sir I am glad to hear that your political principle is Democratic. Democracy is a principle inherent in the breast of every man if left to him to follow the dictates of his own conscience, but men of an aristocratic principle and with an eye to self aggrandizement try to pervert the principles of weak minded men, and thereby profit by their credulity. The intolerant and proscriptive spirit of republicanism  falsely so called  blazons forth the domineering spirit of the British Aristocracy. Democracy is gaining the ascendancy in several States of the Union. In Ohio at the Presidential Election, we were in a minority of about 1700, and there was a majority of Whigs in both branches of the Legislature. This fall though we (through bribery) failed to elect a governor, we have in Senate a majority of five, and in the House a majority fourteen and the governor has no veto.

Every purchase and annexation of Territory has been acquired under Democratic Administration; and the greatness (of the) American Republic, its vast extent of Territory, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific is attributable to the Democracy; and it is more than probable that in some future day the Island of Cuba, the Sandwich Islands, and Canada shall all be annexed to the American Republic. Sir your ideas of abolitionism are correct  the Negro should never have been brought from his native country, and it is degradation to a Caucasian or White man to amalgamate with the Negro. They should not be admitted to the same social and political privileges with White men. And it has been decided by the Supreme Court of the United States (the highest Tribunal in the nation) that the Negro is not a citizen of the United States. Sir have you read a speech of Senator Brown of Mississippi in the United States Senate on 22 Dec. 1856, if not try to find it in some of the Democratic papers; it is one of the most sublime pieces I have ever read, and is sufficient to satisfy any man that there is an evil in emancipating the slave.

Sir I think you ought to have made application before now for admission to citizenship. You will have to go to the Probate Court of Lenawee and declare intentions of becoming a citizen; this must be done at least two years previous to naturalization.

Extract from Senator Brown's speech on the Kansas trails: Men were enlisted and sent there not to cultivate the soil, not to erect workshops and carry on the mechanic arts; no, not for these purposes. They went not with the artisan's tools or the implements of husbandry in their hands, but with rifles, bowie knives, and other deadly weapons. Their object could not be mistaken. Instead of colonizing the country and making for themselves beneficent and wholesome laws under which they meant to live  people went to Kansas for no higher purposes than to fan the flames of discord, and to make laws from which the meant themselves to flee. The( y) went for mischief and they got it; they sowed the whirlwind and they reaped the storm. They went to Kansas to make Kansas a free state nolens volens, and the Missourians were inflamed to madness by their conduct.

It was not, Sir, that these men went, or the states from which they went, that stirred the blood of the Missourians, but it was the purposes for which they went. When the Kansas bill passed, very few of us cared much whether it did or not. But when we saw an attempt made by the enemies of slavery to plant on the borders of a free state a free soil colony, with no higher purpose than to harass that state; when we saw an attempt made by strangers to enslave the bona fide white settlers in Kansas, by forcing on them not a Kansas but a. New England government, our people rose .!!! masse, and swore by the great God that made them these things should not be. If Kansas comes here with a constitution made by her bona fide people, free from all outside influences, excluding slavery, there is not a Democrat in either house of Congress who will not vote for her admission; and if on the other hand, she comes with a constitution similarly made tolerating slavery, there is not a Democrat who will not vote for her admission. Break up your emigrant and societies of the North and all interference at the South will cease. Then Kansas, being left perfectly free to regulate her affairs in her own way, may assemble her people in convention, frame her constitution to suit herself, admit or exclude slavery as she pleases, and she shall be welcomed into the Union with open arms by every friend of free institutions from the   to the Rio Grande and from the Atlantic to the far off Pacific.

Sir the Democracy has stood for fifty years, like our own ocean bound Republic. The waves of the faction have beaten upon it, and they have broken in harmless ripples at its feet. It stands today a fit type of our glorious country  the hope of the oppressed in every land, and a beacon light to the sons of freedom throughout the world. It will uphold the Constitution; it will preserve the Union ; it will disappoint the tyrants of the old world and the enemies of liberty in the new. Democracy will go on conquering and to conquer, until all parties shall confess its dominion, and the whole world be converted to the sublime truths which it teaches. This is its mission: We mean to stop agitation; we mean to give repose to the South and quiet to the whole country; we mean to rout the Abolitionists and bury Black Republicanism so low that the sound of Gabriel's trumpet will not reach it on the day of judgment.    

Yours respectfully

(signed) William Getty

This 4th day of April 1859 signed in presence of William Golden and Carvel Griffin

The state of Ohio Athens County SS

Page 237, Book 7, Athens County Wills

WILLIAM GETTY WILL

In the name of God; I William Getty of feeble health but in my right mind, do give and bequeath in this my last will and testament to my beloved Wife Ann, all my chattel property, consisting of one bedstead one clock and one cow, And I do also will and bequeath to my said Wife Ann the farm in which I now live consisting of thirty acres being a part of 94 9/100 acres leased originally to John Gilmore situate in sections 8 and 4 of Town 9 Range 14 Ohio University Land in Athens Township. It is my last will and testament that said Ann have the entire control, benefit and enjoyment of said farm and chattel property during her natural life And after the death of the said Ann, said farm and chattel property becomes the property of my stepson Francis M. Smith and his children.

(signed) William Getty

We William Golden and Carvel Griffin being duly sworn in open court this 20th day of February AD 1860 depose and say that we were present at the execution of the last will and testament of William Getty hereunto attests, that we saw the said testator subscribe said will and heard him publish and declare the same to be his last will and testament, and that the said testator at the time of executing the same was of full age and of sound mind and memory & not under any Restraint, and that we signed the same as Witnesses at his request and in the presence of each other Sworn to and subscribed before me this 20th day of February AD 1860

Calvary Morris, Probate Judge

Probate Court Athens County Feb. 20th 1860

       said testator at the time of executing the same was of full age and of sound mind and memory, and not under any restraint and that they signed Said Will as Witnesses at his request and in the presence of each other. It is ordered that Said Will and testimony so reduced to writing be entered as Record. And thereupon Ann Getty Widow of said William Getty deceased appeared in Open Court, and the Court having explained to her, her rights under the Will obey Same. She then and there Elected to take under the Will of her said husband and her Election is accordingly entered upon the minutes of Said Court.

WIn Golden Carvel Griffin

Calvary Morris, Prob Judge