Cambridge, Mass., 24 January, 1864.
My Dear Olmsted,
— . . . Mr. Lincoln continues to gain the confidence of the people, and it
looks now as if there would be little opposition to his reelection. You will
find an able article by Lowell on the President's Policy in the “North American”
for January, a copy of which I have sent to you. Lowell and I have undertaken
the editing of this old Review. . . . I
trust that you will help us by writing for us, — and in asking you to do so I
do not feel that I am asking as for a contribution for the amusement of the
readers of a magazine, —but rather for a patriotic work. We must use the
advantages which the times give us. There is an opportunity now to make the “North
American” one of the means of developing the nation, of stimulating its better
sense, of setting before it and holding up to it its own ideal, — at least of
securing expression for its clearest thought and most accurate scholarship. I
hope you will feel that it is an opportunity not to be thrown away. Whatever
you may like to write we shall be glad to print. If you have anything to tell
or say concerning life in California or the relations of the Pacific to the
Atlantic States, or of the state of society in Bear Valley, or of the habits
and characters of the miners, — pray put it into the form of an article, and
send it to me. I wish you would send something of this kind to me before the
summer. . . .
SOURCE: Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters
of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 267-8
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