(1)

Sacramento City, Oct 21st 1850 

Dear Father

A good opportunity occurring, I embrace it to send you a line, but have not time to write at length.
I wish to trouble you to procure for me and transmit as soon as convenient a letter of dismissal or 
of recommendation (I do not recollect the proper term) from the Mount Pleasant Church, as I am 
desirous of connecting myself with the church in this city. But stop, I am always making some kind 
of blunder. The fact just now popped into my head that this is a Congregational and not a 
Presbyterian society. So a letter would do me no good I suppose except to show that I was ever a 
member of a church. What effect do they allow such certificates to have with [hole in manuscript] 
Pres churches! You can probably throw some light upon the [hole in manuscript].

The church here is of very respectable size and marks among its members a number of men of energy, 
zeal and intelligence. Many, probably most of them are eastern men - real Massachusetts Yankees. At 
prayer meeting last night, a young gentleman in his remarks alluded to the recent admission of 
California into the Union. He spoke of it as the work not of man but of the Being who protected the 
"Mayflower" amid the ocean tempests and guided the pilgrims who trod her decks not only till they 
reached the snow covered rock of Plymouth, but till they became first a flourishing colony, then a 
noble state, and then jointly with her sister states a member of a proud confederacy in which she 
held a lofty and exalted position, surrounded with the choicest blessings which the highest moral 
and political institutions could confer. I was deeply interested in his remarks not only because I 
was a New Englander but because in some points, California strongly resembles New England, and 
could it be peopled with her sons and built up in New England principles would be the proudest 
state in the union. 

(2)

There are six thousand degrading, destroying influences incessantly at work in this city and
throughout the country and nothing but counter spirits of Presbyterianism or something akin to it,
whatever name it may bear, can overcome them. We want a thousand active, zealous missionaries to 
take their stands and build their strong hold in every corner. Now is the time for action, or it 
will soon be too late. The stripling will soon have become a full grown giant with formed and 
unalterable principles whether good or promiscuous. The characters of yet unborn sister states, to 
exert a might influence upon their half civilized neighbor Mexico and give no inconsiderable tinge 
to the manners and morals of the whole Pacific Coast, the islands of the sea and the Eastern edge 
of the Asiatic continent China and the [profound?] islets of the Indian Ocean must also witness her 
example and will imitate more or less. How important, then not only for herself but for her neighbors 
that she take a lofty and distinguished position that she adopt the wisest policy and the finest 
principles that Earth and Heaven can provide.

My health is first rate and my spirits always buoyant. Since coming here I have never been one tenth 
part as homesick as I was at Paris. Give my love to mother and remember me kindly to Mr. & Mrs. Grant 
if they are still with you.

Yours affly E C Winchell