Sunday, November 23, 2014

George William Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, June 18, 1862

18th June, '62.

What a resplendent summer! How densely rich and blooming! I am out all I can be. This moment A. darts in and out again, asking,”What's your hat on for?” I've just been pruning and quiddling, and feeling of the ground with the roots of the Virginia creeper (no allusion to McClellan), and of the air with the white blossom sprays of the deutzia. I am grand in my square foot principality! My patch to me a kingdom is, and that elm tree! (do you remember it ?) my prime minister.

Colonel Raasloff waits to see what Congress will do about his St. Croix proposition. I have written to him that it seems to me we want our Southern laborers where they are, but we want them free, and, until they are so, I should cry godspeed to any man who wanted to escape as a free man to another country. Consequently I shall work all the harder upon public opinion to hasten the day of their freedom. It is better they should be a “free rural population” in their native land, which wants their labor, than in another country, isn't it?

Colonel Raasloff says, and this is entre nous, that he saw Sumner the day before; and when the colonel said that the war would be long, the Senator was evidently “delighted,” which R. says he was sorry to observe. He says that Speaker Grow told him that Congress would not adjourn before the middle of July, or certainly until Richmond was taken, adding, “The army is encamped before Richmond, and we are encamped behind the army.” Fortunately for us all, Mr. Lincoln is wiser than Mr. Sumner. He is very wise.

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 155-6

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