Cambridge, Mass., December 27, 1864.
. . . Your last letter was very welcome, and should have
been sooner answered had not I been too busy for letter-writing during the last
month or two. A little more than a year ago Lowell and I assumed editorial
charge of the “North American Review,” our oldest and most important quarterly.
The weight of editing falls upon me, and at times I am fully occupied by it. I
should not have undertaken it had I not believed that the “Review” might be
made a powerful instrument for affecting public opinion on the great questions
now at issue here, and had I not known that something might be done by its
means to raise the standards of criticism and scholarship among us. I have not
been wholly disappointed. We have succeeded in giving new influence to the “Review,”
and have good reason for hoping to gain still more for it.
But this, with other work, keeps me very busy. A stronger
man than I might do much more, but I can, in any given time, effect but so
much. . . .
The last three months have done more for us than any others
since the war began. The reelection of Mr. Lincoln was a greater triumph than
any military victory could be over the principles of the rebellion. The eighth
of November, 1864, — the election day, will stand always as one of the most
memorable days in our history. . . .
Mr. Lincoln is constantly gaining in popular respect and
confidence. He is not a man whose qualities are fitted to excite a personal
enthusiasm, but they are of a kind to inspire trust. He is an admirable ruler
for our democratic republic. He has shown many of the highest qualities of
statesmanship, and I have little doubt that his course and his character will
both be estimated more highly in history than they are, in the main, by his
contemporaries. . . .
SOURCE: Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters
of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 281-2
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