My dear son Alfred,

I yesterday afternoon received Charlotte's letter of 16th Inst. from which I learn that you wish me to enter into new arrangements with you [relation?] to your remaining on Cold Springs altogether different to those you desired in a letter of the 22 March, and with which I fully complied in a letter of the 29th of the same month, I afsure you I did not accept what you proposed without due consideration.¹ Though it subjected me to some lofs, yet as it appeared from the letter written by your direction that it was the only way that you could be extricated from your present great difficulties, if not absolute ruin I met your wishes.

In my letter of the 29th I afsigned several reasons for wishing to part with Cold Springs. I have [] with [several?] judicious persons inspecting it and they all concur with me "that it is the best thing I could do with it." To that letter I would refer you, requesting you to give it due consideration. In addition I may state "Cold Springs" has been a complete drain upon my resources; for more than 23 years all that I have received from it, and a great deal more has been sunk upon that property. My resources are in consequence so diminished that I can not [sic] afford to keep it longer. The Farm must be sold and that too before October.

When I sent to you Bills announcing it for sale [sic], I did so to other persons in different parts of the country. That were I not to carry out my intentions I should subject myself to ridicule for not knowing my own mind.

And as I consider the arrangement entered into with you according to your very strongly exprefsed desire in the letter of 22 March last, which left me no alternative but to comply with your wishes, as that which is most likely to be beneficial to both parties, I cannot consent to annul or alter it.

You will therefor be pleased to [] the Bills when they will attract [most?] attention any expence [sic] incurred I will meet.

That you may be divinely guided in all your present and future movements and that [many needful?] blefsing may be bountifully bestowed on yourself, Wife [sic] and family, pray,

your affectionate father

Thomas Baker

¹ We do not have the letter written to Rev. Baker on March 22, 1864 but we do have a copy of the reply written on March 29, see W2953. For more details about James Alfred's debts and eviction from Cold Springs, see W2960.