Transcript:
New York Oct. 19th 1861
Dear Sir
Please see to the children. I have just arrived from Washington, & shall be detained until to-morrow night trying to to find my baggage, which has “slipped up” somewhere between here & Washington. Cant find it yet; & think it may be at Philadelphia. Mrs. Andrew has remained in New York, during the week. Give my best love to the babies.
I wish you would inform some of the newspaper folks; that I have been looking into the subject about which the Northern newspapers are very much disturbed; viz. the sending abroad by the gov’t for soldiers clothes. Tell them that I have presented a statement of the capacity of the New England mills for the manufacture of these clothes, & the insistence of the views of our manufacturers of clothes and the substance of the views of our manufacturer or [illeg.] men to Quartermaster General Meigs, who is very frank, manly & clear in his business methods, listened attentively, explained his views & proceedings, without any withholding: regrets the necessity which has compelled him for temporary purposes to invest some money abroad. But the statements I have seen in the newspapers are a most absurd and monstrous over statement of what he has done. He fully acceded to all my notions of employing home manufacturing &c &c. But he must have an immediate stock on hand, & be kept ahead of the demands made by the troops on his department [& not] remain [astern?] [or he would] a long ways. He will doubtless want all that the New England mills will make, at fair prices; & will need all that he is buying abroad to enable him to keep up a proper stock distributed in the various depots over the country.
Please let some person like Wm Din of the Journal, or Mr. Dunbar of the Adv, see the foregoing statement, in order to make a letter agreeable for the Monday morn’g papers.
Yours Truly,
John A. Andrew