Submitted by: Cat Edwards
Galveston Texas, March 15 / 68
Dear James,
I wrote to you a few days since and Waddell is now on his way to Trenton. I write again. I am back here without a dollar in my pocket, expecting to have had enough to carry and lands and pay what I owed. I sold my crop as it grew to some Yankees who sold it and run away. It left me the bag to hold with both ends open. I went to Brazil and invested everything I had, which you know was but little and I was in debt when the break up took place, so that I am placed in a about the same situation I was when a young Dr. and without anything but my profession and too old for anything of that kind. So that I am thrown on my own without the power of profession and my children being raised without the proper industry. I to do anything for me, leaves me without any means of support except my own precarious health to carry out what may be necessary. It's a gloomy prospect through life after having labored fifty years & acquiring not only a plenty, but an abundance for all time to come. I am now so perfectly reduced as to be compelled to use the same invention of a young man. I received a dun from James Jones for some horses in Confederate times, which the boys got while defending our common interest. I have made no reply to it neither do I intent to do so. All I had went up & if others had done as well we would now be free of Yankee Thraldom. But they had more confidence then in Yankee government & they may abide the consequences. You never got any of your mother's part of the estate, let them do you justice. I ask for nothing for myself. The will and the case give you the general features of assets better than I can.
Affectionately, _____
J. H. Crisp
P. S. - I expect you will have received my former letter before this reaches you. I may get off in May. If I can will come by.
