1850 Newburyport MA letter stampless HUDSON family, WEBSTER TRIAL, SATANIC FEVER

Description

This folded lettersheet / stampless letter has a circular date stamp for NEWBURYPORT Ms, a  matching 5 cents rate, and is addressed to Mr John R. Hudson, care of Sackett, Davis & Potter, New York, NY, and is a three page letter, also with writing on the back folds.
You can tell it was mostly written by H J H (as indicated on the front cover), who was Henry James Hudson of Newburyport. The writing on the back folds was apparently a sister, 'with much love, yrs, Lucy [??].'
The dateline is Sunday Evg March 24 '50 [1850] Newburyport.
The letter is lengthy and short abstracts don't do it justice.
From some on-line research:
Rev. Henry James Hudson, was born in Newburyport, MA in 1821. He graduated from Harvard in 1843, later started a school in Akron, Ohio. Afterward studied for the ministry in Cambridge, MA. He married, in 1854, Hannah Elizabeth Blake.
Some abstracts:
"
I'll apologize to my sterling brother in New York for having so long kept silence toward him."
"Charles is thoroughly in the Tel. business & professes my going into it, but I think the confinement of an office would be as bad as preaching or teaching ...."
"Should like very well to get my phonetic alphabet introduced, and have thought of many plans for keys simpler than the one we cooked up some years ago ..."
"I have no doubt a Phonographic Telegraphic alphabet will some day be in demand for reporting (with a set of keys &c) and I'm certain I've got the thing pretty well cut and dried, though experiment & practice might suggest some improvements."
"I read the Webster trial with deepest interest, for he was quite a favorite professor with me, gentlemanly, accessible, obliging, amiable, one of the last men on earth to become a murderer, though the hypothesis of his guilt or innocence seems equally improbable."
"... a mystery deeper than that of the deed itself. Some strange monomania must have seized him with Satanic fever."
The letter has some wear / tear / stains.
As usual with antebellum stampless letters, after writing on one or more sides of a sheet of paper, the letter was folded several times and mailed.
An interesting letter good for genealogy and history research. See my other auctions for similar items.
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