Sunday, April 19, 2015

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, February 26, 1863

Shady Hill, 26 February, 1863.

. . . It was pleasant to hear from you of your visit to Philadelphia, and to hear from John,1 on the same day, his glowing account of it. What a loyal place Philadelphia has become! We should be as loyal here if we had a few more out-and-out secessionists. Our Union Club — we have dropped the offensive word “League” — promises well: two hundred members already, and Mr. Everett and his followers pledged to principles which suit you and me. We are proposing to take the Abbott Lawrence house on Park Street, and to be strong by position as well as by numbers. But nothing will do for the country, — neither Clubs nor pamphlets nor lectures, nor Conscription Bills (three cheers for the despotism necessary to secure freedom), nor Banking Bills, nor Tom Thumb, nor Institutes, — nothing will do us much good but victories. If we take Charleston and Vicksburg we conquer and trample out the Copperheads, — but if not?

I confess to the most longing hope, the most anxious desire to know of our success. I try to be ready for news of failure, indeed I shall be ready for such news if it comes, and we must all only draw a few quick breaths and form a sterner resolve, and fight a harder fight.

Where is the best statement, in a clear and quiet way, of the political necessity of the preservation of the Union, its vital necessity to our national existence? Seward has done harm by keeping up the notion of the old Union, — but who has seen clearest the nature of the new Union for which we are fighting? . . .
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1 Their common friend, John W. Field of Philadelphia, with whom Norton had travelled in Sicily.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 260-1

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