Sunday, April 5, 2015

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, January 30, 1863

Shady Hill, 30 January, 1863.

One busy day has succeeded another since you were here till I am at last reduced to a condition in which I am fit for no work, and so set about writing a note and sending my love to you.

The Hero of one hundred ungained Victories, — the conqueror in his own bulletins, is at present in Boston, and but a few people remain calm. Some are excited with enthusiastic admiration of their own imagination of McClellan; some busy with wire-pulling; some active to prevent others, “without distinction” of party, gaining any advantage out of relations with the disgraced Captain and candidate for the next Presidency; and some very much disquieted by all this folly. So you see those who keep quiet and innocent minds are in a despicable minority. . . .

We are making arrangements here to secure the circulation of good telling articles from foreign and our own newspapers, to influence and direct public opinion. We propose to secure from one hundred thousand to five hundred thousand readers for two articles per week, and perhaps more. I shall be the “editor,” so to say, with John Forbes and Sam Ward1 as advisers. Please bear this in mind and send to me, marked, articles which you think should be thus circulated. I shall have frequent occasion to borrow from “Harper,” — or rather from you in “Harper.” . . .
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1 Samuel [Gray] Ward, later an active correspondent of Norton's.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 259-60

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