Thursday, May 24, 2018

Thomas Hart Benton to Colonel James Patton Preston, December 16, 1821

Washington City, Dec. 16th, 1821.
dear Sir:

We left Missouri 13th Oct. We were all very well there during the summer, Elizabeth better than she had been for several years. We staid two weeks in Kentucky, and left all our friends well there. Mr. and Mrs. McDowell travelled with us from that place. In the Cumberland mountains we were stopped five days by some alarming symptoms in Elizabeth and afterwards travelled slowly to Abingdon, where I left her to proceed leisurely with her father and mother, and I came on in the stage. She has wrote to me several times since, the last from Mrs. Madison's, on the 7th, having left your house the day before. Your mother, wife and family were well, but suffering an excessive solicitude on your account, not having heard from you for a great while. Mrs. Preston expected you might be here, but I have written to her to the contrary.

I expect to be at Col. McDowell's at Christmas, and again about the first of February. My dear Elizabeth expects to be a mother at that time.

Nothing essential going on here. The Captain General of all the Floridas* has resigned. A letter from Nashville states he is now bestowing his inconsiderate and intemperate abuse upon his old friend the President.

Pray write to us, and let us know how you are and when we are to see you.

Your sincere friend,
Thomas H. Benton.
Col. Preston, Athens, Georgia.

SOURCE: William Montgomery Meigs, The Life of Thomas Hart Benton, p. 130

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