Addresses, speeches and miscellanies on various occasions, from 1854 to 1879

Front matter

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Preface

A WORD of explanation may properly accompany this volume. In former years, when certain questions that involved the most sacred rights of citizens, in connection both with the Church and the State, were agitating the public mind, it fell to me to take some part in their discussion. Believing the principles involved in some of those questions to be ol permanent interest, I have thought such a record of the controversies due to the subjects themselves. Then, again, to me has been assigned the office of interpreter of the spirit of some of our local institutions and of the lives of some of our representative characters — institutions and characters which are, and must continue to be, no small part of the pride and honor of Buffalo.

If that duty was in any degree properly discharged, the collection of these studies may have some value as a part of local history.

The other papers, though of less permanent interest, naturally find a place in this volume.

James O. Putnam.

Buffalo, Jatmary i, 1880.

Contents

Speech, 9

Delivered in the Senate of New York, January 30, 1855, on the Bill requiring Church Property to be Vested in Trustees, under the Act relating to Religious Corporations.

Independence Day, 45