Washington D.C.
Octr. 16, 1860
To James Buchanan
President of the U.S.A. Sir: Having just returned from the Territory of Kansas, where I have been an eyewitness to the deplorable and starving condition of that scorched and famine stricken land, I come to implore of the Executive as an act of clemency in behalf of its suffering inhabitants, that all Government lands now offered for sale in that Territory may be witheld from market, and more especially those lands embraced in (proclamation No 669) what is known as the New York Indian Reserve.
You need be informed Sir, of but half the desolations and heart rending scenes I have witnessed among that heroic & industrious but unfortunate people to arouse your utmost sympathies.
Thousands of once thrifty and prosperous American Citizens are now perishing of want. winter is upon them. of clothing they are nearly bereft. food they have not to last them through the cold season that is approaching. of over a hundred thousand people upon Kansas soil six months ago, at least one quarter or a third have left. of the remainder it is safe to say that 40,000 at this moment see nothing but exodus or starvation at the end of the sixty days now just before them. from 10 to 20 thousand look with only despairing eyes upon November. thousands cannot subsist a month longer unaided. other thousands are living upon the little which their neighbors deprive themselves of to give to them; neighbors equally unfortunate, and with whom the starvation is merely a question of but a few days longer. while still other thousands if not at once relieved must perish from hunger or the diseases that follow in its train. Some have already died. others are daily dying.
While the hours grow darker and the days wax longer for the living to whom relief comes not, and whose eyes are aching with watchings for the succor that delays.
In confirmation of these frightful statements I refer your Excellency to the accompanying extracts from my diary while in Kansas recently, and from numerous letters sent to me from various districts of the famine land.
Had the blood of this poor people in 1860 been as valuable for coinage into votes as it was in 1856 your Department would have long since been made aware of their miseries, and it would not have remained for the discharge of a mere mechanical duty to have brought to your notice the sickening fact that the more discharge of the duty was in its terrible workings a practical cruelty, such as no Despotism on Earth would intentionally be guilty of, and such as being once brought to the notice of your Department it cannot but rejoice to have escaped committing.
Commending these facts to your careful consideration, I have the honor Sir, to subscribe myself
Very Respectfully Yours
Thaddeus Hyatt