Sunday, July 19, 2015

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, Sunday Evening, September 25, 1864

Sunday evening, 25 September, 1864.

. . . We had a pleasant Club dinner yesterday.  . . . Sumner has toned down greatly since it seems certain that Lincoln is to be reelected. His opinion of Lincoln “is at least not higher than it was three years ago.” An officer, just from Atlanta, came in and told us some good stories of Sherman, — and of the transportation department of the army. There has been a corps of six thousand men detailed to keep the Rail Road from Nashville to Atlanta in order. The bridge across the Chattahoochie, — a railroad bridge seven hundred and eight feet long, and ninety-three feet high, was built in four days. The army has been well supplied, in great measure with canned food; — “Yes,” said Sherman, “I am perfectly satisfied with the transportation service, — it has given us abundance of desecrated vegetables and consecrated milk.”

This as a pendant to his recent letters. What a week this last has been for good letters! Two from Lincoln, that are worthy of the best letter-writer of the time, — so simple, manly, and direct; one from Grant, not less simple and straightforward, clearing the air with its plain frankness from rumours and innuendoes, and affording a most striking contrast to the letters which Mr. Lincoln was in the habit of receiving from a former Commander-in-Chief; and two from Sherman, masterpieces of strong sense in strong words. How his wrath swells and grows till it bursts in “Tell that to the Marines,” and with what indignant common-sense does he reject the canting appeal to God and humanity of the Southern slave-drivers. He writes as well as he fights. . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 279-80

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