I was very sorry I was not well enough to be present at the meeting in Asheville with you, Mr. Nickerson Gen'l Davidson & Judge Mayer from London. I have been sick for nearly a month— over this night & day financial struggle to carry to success this R. R. work. There are a very few men who have any idea of the volume of work that has been done, and being done, every day now for nearly seven years, and slowly but surely winning the work.

If Cyrus Field had as little encouragement and had given up his great work the world might still be without cable communications. Captain Mayer wrote me he was much pleased with his interview with you, & that you had promised to do all within your power to favor the work. He says there is nothing but the completion of the right kind of construction Company that can comply with the requirements that I have insisted upon—that of filing obligatory evidence of capital, absolutely secured and available before we would involve the state any deeper than it is involved now—in the use of the few convicts during the period of financing. I have been hoping to get well enough to come to see you, but it looks like I will not be able to do so, before you get away.

I got a letter this morning from Eastern Carolina from a friend, saying he had met a member of your Prison Board and that that member had stated the Board was not favorably impressed with our work or with the strength of our Company; and that the Tenn. & N.C. R.R. people had told the B'd that we could not build our road, & that our road was a "dead duck."

This is the second report gone back to Raleigh from State appointees without their having seen or had a conversation with a single man connected with the Trans-continental Rail-road.

We are sorry, but it was entirely incidental that Mr. Councill was not there either time that your officers were there. So far as the R. R. Co. is concerned it set out to secure relief for this state, not pretending to have the capital to build the road, but to work in co-operation with the state and [illegible] to find the capital, and it will accomplish it if not interfered with by your administration, and I cannot feel not withstanding all that is being said by new officers that know nothing whatever, only what is said by our enemies, about what has been done and is being done—that you will permit any interference with this work, when such men, as you can easily ascertain in Asheville have been giving their moral and financial support to this work, & I think are thoroughly [competent?] to live up to, as we have been, the letter of the Law in our contract with the state. The state itself has been nine years in this fight and accomplished nothing, except an expenditure of a lot of public funds. We have been at it seven years, and it has not yet cost the state, all told, in helping us, what it has cost the entire [illegible] of Rutherfordton, to vote to this work over a million of dollars.

I wish to ask if you will kindly advise me if you have ever had time to read the copy of my report, as Commissioner of this State, on this work, a copy of which I gave you just after we elected you Governor? Unless you take time to investigate the work for which your friends and mine have been putting up their time and good money to accomplish, indications are that you are going to be urged to do a very grave & cruel wrong about a little bunch of convicts, and the Lord knows we have had enough obstacles thrown in our way to overcome, & we lay practically passive during the entire Kitchin Administration waiting for a Governor who would be in sympathy and hearty co-operation with Western Carolina's efforts in this work & lying here sick as I am, largely caused in the effort given this work, it would certainly not only be grievous but humiliating to have to defend our work among those whose friendship we had been waiting to get in power to stand by us until we accomplish the work, which we will inevitably do and if we can't have the sympathy and cooperation of your officers, please do us the kindness to just let our work alone for a little while longer.

And I do ask you as my Friend, and as I know you to be the Friend of the State, please read my official report made to the Kitchin Gen' l Assembly on this work, and you will find out that the salvation of this state's relief is wrapped up in this work and that the integrity of this state is involved with other states that have endorsed this work, because they believed North Carolina would remain faithful until success is won.