Shady Hill, Class Day, 24 June, 1864.
. . . The Baltimore Convention1 did its duty well, and the air has cleared a good
deal since it was held. I should have been glad if a more solid democratic
plank had been inserted in the platform, — but our politicians do not yet begin
to understand the distinctive, essential feature of our institutions, and have
only a distant, theoretic comprehension of the meaning and worth of truly
democratic ideas. This war is a struggle of the anti-democrats with the
democrats; of the maintenance of the privilege of a class with the maintainers
of the common rights of man. This view includes all the aspects of the war, and
it is the ground upon which the people can be most readily brought to the
sacrifices still required, and to the patient bearing of the long and heavy
burdens it imposes upon them.
I have great confidence that the summer's campaign will end
well for us. If we have, as we may have (though I shall not be disappointed if
we do not have it), a great victory, then the rebellion as a military power
will be nearly at an end. But if we merely take Richmond, one more serious
campaign at least will be before us, and the country will feel the weight of
the war more than ever before. . . .
_______________
1 The National Union Convention, held early in
June at Baltimore, had renominated Lincoln for the Presidency.
SOURCE: Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters
of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 268-9
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