Monday, November 10, 2014

John Lothrop Motley to Anna Lothrop Motley, February 9, 1860

31, Hertford Street,
February 9th, 1861.

My Dearest Mother,  . . . . I wrote you a long letter of eight pages yesterday, and then tossed it into the fire, because I found I had been talking of nothing but American politics. Although this is a subject which, as you may suppose, occupies my mind almost exclusively for the time being, yet you have enough of it at home, as before this letter reaches you it will perhaps be decided whether there is to be civil war, peaceable dissolution, or a patch up; it is idle for me to express any opinions on the subject. I do little else but read American newspapers, and we wait with extreme anxiety to know whether the pro-slavery party will be able to break up the whole compact at its own caprice, to seize Washington, and prevent by force of arms the inauguration of Lincoln. That event must necessarily be followed by civil war, I should think. Otherwise, I suppose it may be avoided. But whatever be the result, it is now proved beyond all possibility of dispute that we never have had a government, and that the much eulogised constitution of the United States never was a constitution at all, for the triumphant secession of the Southern States shows that we have only had a league or treaty among two or three dozen petty sovereignties, each of them insignificant in itself, but each having the power to break up the whole compact at its own caprice. Whether the separation takes place now, or whether there is a patch up, there is no escaping the conclusion that a government proved to be incapable of protecting its own property and the honour of its own flag is no government at all, and may fall to pieces at any moment. The pretence of a people governing itself, without the need of central force and a powerful army, is an exploded fallacy which can never be revived. If there is a compromise now, which seems possible enough, because the Northern States are likely to give way, as they invariably have done, to the bluster of the South, it will perhaps be the North which will next try the secession dodge, when we find ourselves engaged in a war with Spain for the possession of Cuba, or with England on account of the reopened African slave trade, either of which events are in the immediate future.

But I find myself getting constantly into this maelstrom of American politics and must break off short.

I send you by this mail the London Times of the 7th of February. You will find there (in the parliamentary reports) a very interesting speech of Lord John Russell; but it will be the more interesting to you because it contains a very handsome compliment to me, and one that is very gratifying. I have not sent you the different papers in which my book has been reviewed, excepting three consecutive Times, which contain a long article. I suppose that “Littell's Living Age” reprints most of these notices. And the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and Westminster Reviews (in each of whose January numbers the work has been reviewed) are, I know, immediately reprinted. If yon will let me know, however, what notices you have seen, I will send you the others in case you care for them.

We are going on rather quietly. We made pleasant country visits at Sidney Herbert's, Lord Palmerston's, Lady Stanhope's, Lord Ashburton's, but now the country season is pretty well over, parliament opened, and the London season begun. I am hard at work in the State Paper Office every day, but it will be a good while before I can get to writing again.

I am most affectionately your son,
J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Volume 1, p. 357-9

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