Saturday, February 1, 2014

George Bancroft to Elizabeth Davis Bancroft, December 16, 1861

Monday, December 16, 1861.

MY DEAR WIFE,  . . . Keeping down my sorrow  at heart for the woes of our poor country, which under  incompetent hands is going fast to ruin, I have much  to say of my proceedings yesterday, more than I can  find time for. But here is the Outline. I breakfasted with Mr. Chase, which occupied from 8½ to l0¼. His views are good; his integrity and ability make him the  first man in the cabinet; but he cannot find money so  abundantly as to meet the extravagant and excessive  demands on the government. His constitutional views on the south go but a little beyond mine; he applies to all the states in rebellion what I think there is no doubt may be applied to those formed out of Louisiana.

I wished to see Lander,1 and asked where he lived. Mr. Chase was so good as to offer to go with me. I found in Lander a man, if not of genius, of inspiration; brave, hardy, fearless, of immense executive ability; full of ideas, a poet and a very good one. He married about 14 months ago a person of whom he seemed very fond; and she in return, enters into his tales of battles and his zeal for desperate service. “The Lord thinks for me,” he said to me. He has written a poem which he calls “Inspiration,” in which he carries out the thought that underlies the remark I have just quoted. What he repeated of it to me I liked very much. He said he had not shown the poem to his wife till he had been married six months; but when he read or rather repeated it to her and she entered into his conception, she rose in his affection a hundred per cent. They seemed very happy: he is recovering from the bad wound he got at Edward's Ferry, and she was his companion, and nurse, and delight. I was so attracted that I remained with him till after one o'clock.

Just at three I went by appointment to the President. We discussed when we had met before: he remembered seeing me at Springfield, Illinois, but had forgotten our interview at Brady's. He wanted to know if I had seen Gen. McClellan. I said no. “I will take off my slippers,” said he, “and draw on my boots and take you over.”  I liked the novelty of the thing. He went through the processes of getting ready, and we walked to McClellan's. The President rang, and began asking the servant if he could see McClellan, and then checked that form of speech, and sent in word, who were waiting to see him. The general came in to us very soon, and we sat talking on indifferent things, the army, the prospect in Tennessee, the railroad recommended by the President from Kentucky south. Of all silent, uncommunicative, reserved men, whom I ever met, the general stands among the first. He is one, who if he thinks deeply keeps his thoughts to himself. However with what I knew before, I was able to extract something; and I shall probably see him again. The President is turning in his thoughts the question of his duty in the event of a slave insurrection; he thinks slavery has received a mortal wound, that the harpoon has struck the whale to the heart. This I am far from being able to see.

I invited myself to dine with the Hoopers. We had Sumner, and two others. In the evening young Lowell2 came in, of whom by the way, I spoke at large to McClellan, giving him the praises that are his due. Sumner at once vindicates and censures the administration. After this I called on Gen. Heintzelman, one of the bravest and best soldiers in the army. He was in the Bull's Run fight. I wound up the evening with a long talk with the famous Griffin, of Griffin's batteries, who, if not overvalued by his superior Barry, would have saved the battle of Bull's Run. . . .
__________

1 Gen. F. W. Lander, author of Rhode Island to the South and other war poems.

2 Charles Russell Lowell

SOURCE: M. A. DeWolfe Howe, The Life and Letters of George Bancroft, Volume 2, p. 145-7

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