Boston, July 7, 1861.
My Dearest Mary:
I can't tell you how much delight your letters give me. . . .
Seid umschlungen, Millionen! You must give my kindest
regards to dear Mrs. Norton, to Lady Dufferin, — if you are so fortunate as to
see her, which seems too great a privilege ever really to come within your
reach, — to Lady Palmerston and Lord Palmerston, to the adorable Lady and Lord
, to Milnes, Stirling, Forster, to dear Lady William, with my most sincere
wishes for her restoration to health. Tell her I should give myself the
pleasure of writing to her, but my whole mind is absorbed with American
affairs, and I know that they bore her inexpressibly, and I could write of
nothing else. Don't forget my kind regards to Arthur, and to Odo if he comes.
If you see Lady John Russell and Lord John, I wish you would present my best
compliments, and say that I have been and am doing everything within my humble
means to suppress the noble rage of our countrymen in regard to the English
indifference to our cause, and that I hope partially to have succeeded. At any
rate, there is a better feeling and less bluster; but alas and alas! there will
never in our generation be the cordial, warm-hearted, expansive sentiment
toward England which existed a year ago. Yet no one is mad enough not to wish
for peaceful relations between the countries, and few can doubt that a war at
this moment would be for us a calamity too awful to contemplate. Pray give my
kindest regards to Mrs. Stanley; it was so kind of her to ask you to so
pleasant a party as you mention. I hope you took the responsibility of remembering
me to Froude; and indeed I wish really that you would say to all our friends
individually, when you see them, that I beg my remembrances in each letter.
There is no need of my specifying their names, as you see now that I have got
to my third page and have not mentioned one third. Vivent nos amis les
ennemis, and so I give my kind regards to Delane. I wish he wasn't such a
good fellow, and that I didn't like him so well, for the “Times” has played the
very devil with our international relations, and if there is one thing I have
ever set my heart upon it is the entente cordiale between America and
England. Give my kind regards to Mr. and Mrs. Sheridan.
. . . It never occurs to me that any one can doubt the
warmth of my feelings toward England, and so when I try to picture the
condition here it is that my friends in England may see with my eyes, which
must be of necessity quicker to understand our national humors than those of
any Englishman can be. Give my regards to Parker, to whom I dare say you read
portions of my letters. Pray don't forget to present my most particular regards
to Lord Lansdowne, and I hope it may have occurred to you to send him some of
my letters, as I can't help thinking that it would interest him to have private
information about our affairs, which, so far as it goes, can at least be relied
upon. Don't forget my kind regards to Layard and to the dear Dean of St. Paul's
and Mrs. Milman, and to those kindest of friends, Lord and Lady Stanhope, and
also to the Reeves. As for my true friend Murray, I am ashamed not to have
written him a line; but tell him, with my best regards to him and Mrs. M., that
I have scarcely written to any one but you. If you see him, tell him what I
think of our politics. It will distress his bigoted Tory heart to think that
the great Republic has not really gone to pieces; but he must make up his mind
to it, and so must Sir John Ramsden. The only bubble that will surely burst is
the secession bubble. A government that can put 250,000 men in the field within
ten weeks, and well armed, officered, and uniformed, and for the time well
drilled, may still be considered a nation. You see that Abraham asks Congress
for 400,000 soldiers and 400,000,000 of dollars, and he will have every man and
every dollar.
But before I plunge into politics, let me stick to private
matters for a little. If I have omitted any names in my greetings, supply them
and consider them as said. I write to scarcely any one but you, and then to
such as I know are sincerely interested in American affairs. To-day I send a
letter to Lord Lyndhurst, a long one, and I am awfully afraid that it will bore
him, for unluckily I haven't the talent of Sam Weller to make my correspondent
wish I had said more, which is the great secret of letter-writing.
McClellan and Lyon and Mansfield and McDowell and a host of
others, all thoroughly educated soldiers with large experience, to say nothing
of old Scott, whose very name is worth 50,000 men, are fully a match for Jeff
and Beauregard, able men as they unquestionably are. Then as to troops, I wish
those who talk about Northern mercenaries, all Irish and German, and so on,
could take a look at the Rhode Islanders, at the Green Mountain boys from
Vermont, at the gigantic fellows from Maine, whose magnificent volunteers
excite universal applause, at the Massachusetts fellows, who can turn their
hands to anything, at the 50,000 men from the “Empire State,” already marched
forward and equipped like regulars, and so on to Ohio and Pennsylvania,
Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, etc. I thought before I came home that there was
some exaggeration in the accounts we received; but the state of things can't be
exaggerated. I never felt so proud of my country as I do at this moment. It was
thought a weak government because it was forbearing. I should like to know how
many strong governments can stamp on the earth and produce 250,000 — the
officially stated number of fighting men — almost at a breath; and there was
never in history a nobler cause or a more heroic spectacle than this unanimous
uprising of a great people to defend the benignant government of their choice
against a wanton pro-slavery rebellion which had thought the country cowardly
because she had been forbearing and gentle. A whole people, 22,000,000, laying
aside all party feeling, stand shoulder to shoulder to protect this western
continent, the home of freemen, from anarchy, perpetual warfare, and the
universal spread of African slavery. But for this levy of bucklers the great
Republic would have been Mexico and Alabama combined. Now slavery as a
political power is dethroned, it can never spread an inch on this continent,
and the Republic will come out of this conflict stronger and more respected
than it ever was before.
Yesterday was a painfully interesting day. The Gordon
regiment — the Massachusetts Second, of which I have spoken to you so often — took
its departure for the seat of war. They have been in camp at Brook Farm for
several weeks, and I have visited them often and have learned to have a high
regard for Gordon. He was an excellent scholar at West Point, and served with
distinction in the Mexican War. Afterward, becoming tired of quarters in Oregon
and such wildernesses in the piping times of peace, he left the profession and
studied and commenced the practice of law in Boston. But on the breaking out of
the great mutiny he at once applied for leave to raise a regiment. His
lieutenant-colonel, Andrews, is also a West Point man, having graduated first
in his class. Wilder Dwight, whom you knew in Florence, is major, and a most
efficient, energetic, intelligent fellow he is. . . .
Well, a telegram came on Saturday evening last, signed “Winfield
Scott,” ordering the Second to move forward at once to help reinforce General
Patterson in Martinsburg, Virginia. Patterson is expecting daily an engagement
with Johnston, one of the best of the rebel generals, who commands some 20,000
men within a few miles of Martinsburg, so that the Second Regiment is going
straight to glory or the grave. It was this that made the sight so interesting.
It is no child's play, no holiday soldiering, which lies before them, but
probably, unless all the rebel talk is mere fustian, as savage an encounter as
men ever marched to meet. Within four days they will be on the sacred soil of
Virginia, face to face with the enemy. The regiment came in by the Providence
Railroad at eleven o'clock. It had been intended that they should march through
many streets, as this was the first opportunity for the citizens of Boston to
see the corps; but the day was intensely hot, a cloudless sky and 95° of
Fahrenheit in the shade, so they only marched along Boylston, Tremont, up
Beacon streets, to the Common, very wisely changing the program. They made a
noble appearance: the uniform is blue, and they wore the army regulation hat,
which I think — although Mr. Russell does not — very becoming with its black
ostrich plumes, and I am assured that it is very convenient and comfortable in
all weathers, being both light, supple, and shady. The streets were thronged to
cheer them and give them God-speed. There was a light collation spread on
tables in the Beacon Street Mall, and I walked about within the lines, with
many other friends, to give the officers one more parting shake of the hand.
There were many partings such as press the life from out the heart.
I was glad that M— and the girls were not there; but I saw
Mr. and Mrs. D—, Mrs. Quincy, and many other wives and mothers. You may judge
of the general depth of feeling when even Tom D— wouldn't come to see the
regiment off for fear of making a fool of himself. People seemed generally to
be troubled with Lear's hysterica passio, so that the cheers, although
well intentioned, somehow stuck in their throats. The regiment got to the cars
at three o'clock, and were to go via Stonington to New York, and soon via
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, to Williamsport, Maryland, and Martinsburg. We
shall hear of them by telegram, and I hope occasionally to get a line from Gordon.
Oh, how I wish that I had played at soldiers when I was young; wouldn't I have
applied for and got a volunteer regiment now! But alas! at forty-seven it is
too late to learn the first elements, and of course I could not be a subaltern
among young men of twenty-two. William Greene — lucky fellow! — is raising a
regiment; he was educated at West Point, you know, and served in the Florida
war; and Raymond Lee, also a West Point man, is raising another of the
additional ten regiments offered by Massachusetts. Young Wendell Holmes — who,
by the way, is a poet and almost as much a man of genius as his father, besides
being one of the best scholars of his time — has a lieutenant's commission in
Lee's regiment, and so on. Are you answered as to the Irish and German nature
of our mercenaries?
Nothing decisive has yet occurred. The skirmishes — outpost
affairs, and which have furnished food for telegrams and pictures for the
illustrated newspapers — are all of no consequence as to the general result.
Don't be cast down, either, if you hear of a few reverses at first. I don't
expect them; but, whether we experience them or not, nothing can prevent our
ultimate triumph and a complete restoration of the Union. Of this I feel very
confident. I don't like to prophesy, — a man always makes an ass of himself by
affecting to read the future, — yet I will venture one prediction: that before
eighteen months have passed away the uprising of a great Union party in the
South will take the world so much by surprise as did so recently the unanimous
rising of the North. For example, only a very few months ago, the Confederate
flag was to wave over Washington before May 1, and over Faneuil Hall before the
end of this year; there was to be a secession party in every Northern State,
and blood was to flow from internecine combats in every Northern town. Now
Washington is as safe as London; the North is a unit, every Northern town is as
quiet and good-natured, although sending forth regiment after regiment to a
contest far away from home, as it was five years ago; while Virginia is the
scene of civil war — one Virginia sending senators and representatives to
Washington, while another Virginia sends its deputies to Jeff Davis's wandering
capital, and the great battle-field of North and South will be on the “sacred
soil.” I feel truly sorry for such men as C—; there could not be a man more
amiable or thorough gentleman than he seemed to be on our brief acquaintance.
But rely upon it that Abraham is a straightforward, ingenuous, courageous
backwoodsman, who will play his part manfully and wisely in this great drama.
The other day I dined with Mr. Palfrey. It was a very
pleasant little dinner, and besides Frank and the daughters there were Holmes,
Lowell, and John Adams. Frank Palfrey is lieutenant-colonel in William Greene's
regiment; Mr. Palfrey's other son, John, is a lieutenant in the regular army,
and I am truly sorry to hear today that he has just come home from Fortress
Monroe with typhoid fever. I am just going down to inquire after him. Lowell
and Holmes were as delightful as ever. I liked John Adams very much indeed; he
seemed to me very manly, intelligent, and cultivated, and very good-looking. He
was kind enough to ask me to come down to Quincy to dine and pass the night, and
I certainly shall do so, for besides wishing to see the ancient abode of the
Adamses, I must go and see the venerable Mr. Quincy, who has kindly sent for me
once or twice. By the way, remember me kindly to Mr. and Mrs. Adams whenever
you see them. I hear that they speak of you in all their letters in the most
friendly and agreeable manner. . . .
Ever yours
affectionately,
J. L. M.
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition,
Volume 2, p. 164-72
