Cambridge, Dec. 31, 1860.
My Dear Sir, — I owe you a great many thanks for your
letters, both for their personal kindness towards myself and for the trouble
you have taken in sending the Yankeeisms — nearly all of which were new to me,
and whose salt-sea flavour has its own peculiar tang in it. I have now
to thank you also for your pamphlet, so timely and spirited, and which I read
with great satisfaction on its own account, and more for the sake of the
author.
I do not well know what to make of the present posture of
affairs — whether to believe that we have not succeeded in replacing the old
feeling of loyalty with the better one of Public Spirit, and whether this
failure be due to our federal system — whose excellence as a drag on
centralization in the general government is balanced by its evil of
disintegration, giving as it does to the citizens of each State separate
interests and what the Italians call belfry patriotism; or whether it be due to
the utter demoralization of the Democratic party, which has so long been
content to barter principle for office; or whether to the want of political
training and foresight, owing to our happy-go-lucky style of getting along
hitherto. All this puzzles me, I confess. But one thing seems to me clear—that we
have been running long enough by dead-reckoning, and that it is time to take
the height of the sun of righteousness.
Is it the effect of democracy to make all our public men
cowards? An ounce of pluck just now were worth a king's ransom. There is one comfort,
though a shabby one, in the feeling that matters will come to such a pass that
courage will be forced upon us, and that when there is no hope left we shall
learn a little self-confidence from despair. That in such a crisis the fate of
the country should be in the hands of a sneak! If the Republicans stand firm we
shall be saved, even at the cost of disunion. If they yield, it is all up with
us and with the experiment of democracy.
As for new “Biglow Papers,” God knows how I should like to
write them, if they would only make me as they did before. But I am so
occupied and bothered that I have no time to brood, which with me is as
needful a preliminary to hatching anything as with a clucking hen. However, I
am going to try my hand, and see what will come of it. But what we want is an
hour of Old Hickory, or Old Rough and Ready — some man who would take command
and crystallize this chaos into order, as it is all ready to do round the
slenderest thread of honest purpose and unselfish courage in any man who is in
the right place. They advise us to be magnanimous, as if giving up what does
not belong to us were magnanimity — to be generous, as if there were generosity
in giving up a trust reposed in us by Providence. God bless Major Anderson for
setting us a good example!
I hear one piece of good news. Our governor, in his speech
to the General Court, is going to recommend that the State be instantly put on
a war footing — so that, in case there should be need to order out the militia
at the call of the general government, they may be ready to march at a moment's
notice. If we can only get one or two Free States to show that they are in
earnest, it will do a world of good.
If you should see a “Biglow Paper” before long, try to like
it for auld lang syne's sake. I must run over to hear my classes, so good-bye,
and a Happy New Year from your
Cordial friend,
J. R. Lowell.
P.S. 1862. I think the letter rather curious than otherwise
now — we have got on so.
[The foregoing letter was not sent, as appears from the following
note, until more than a year had passed after its writing.]
SOURCE: Charles Eliot Norton, Editor, Letters of James
Russell Lowell, Volume 1, p. 346
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