Autograph Letter Signed ('J. H. Trumbull') from the philologist and Republican politician James Hammond Trumbull to A. S. Train, complaining of the dificulty of dealing with his query at 'moderate length'.

1p., 12mo. Good, on lightly-aged paper. He begins: 'It would be tolerably easy to write a duodecimo of a couple of hundred pages by way of answer to yours of the 22d, but really I do not know how to talk about it in a letter of modest length.' He refers him to 'newspapers, magazines, special biographies, encyclopaedias, histories of the several colonies, and of the Revolution, - passim'. He concludes: 'Such a subject must be worked up like a patchwork quilt. There is no one book better than another, in which to look for facts and authorities.'