Ashfield, Mass., 24 July, 1864.
. . . This week, let us hope, we shall hear that Sherman is
in Atlanta, and that he is breaking up the army opposed to him. His work is not
better done than Grant will do his. But I do not want peace till there is
certainty of our carrying the Amendment to the Constitution. We must have that
to make peace sure.
The Rebel self-appointed peacemakers took nothing by their
move, and Lincoln showed as usual his straightforward good sense. What a
contrast between him and the politicians who fancy themselves his superiors in
insight and shrewdness! What does Raymond1 mean by his
Saturday's article on Lincoln's statement of terms? Is he hedging for a
reconstruction with slavery? If so, he is more shortsighted and more
unprincipled than I believed. I never fancied, indeed, that he had principles,
and I thought he had learned enough not to confess such bad ones. . . .
_______________
1 Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times.
SOURCE: Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters
of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 274
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