Thursday, October 23, 2014

Charles Russell Lowell to Charles E. Perkins, June 7, 1861

Washington, June 7, '61.

I am down for a Captaincy of Cavalry and have good hopes of being put upon N. P. Banks's staff: but I cannot say I take any great pleasure in the contemplation of the future. I fancy you feel much as I do about the profitableness of a soldier's life, and would not think of trying it, were it not for a muddled and twisted idea that somehow or other this fight was going to be one in which decent men ought to engage for the sake of humanity, — I use the word in its ordinary sense. It seems to me that within a year the Slavery question will again take a prominent place, and that many cases will arise where we may get fearfully in the wrong if we put our cause wholly in the hands of fighting men and Foreign Legions.

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 210-1

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