Charles Russell Lowell to John M. Forbes, February 11, 1861

Mt. Savage, February 11, 1861.

My Dear Mr. Forbes, — I was delighted to see your name among the Massachusetts Commissioners — and very glad to hear that you were going to take Mrs. Forbes and the young ladies with you.¹ If all the Representatives and Commissioners would show the same confidence in the good intentions of Maryland and Virginia towards the Capital, it might have a good effect — but perhaps it would be unsafe to trust too many ladies together at a Peace Conference even.

I see that in some of the Western Delegations, there are more “Generals” than “Judges.” I hope this does not indicate fight.

If Massachusetts stands where Charles Francis Adams has put her, it seems to me she will be right, and will look right in history. I did not know till now that Webster was so nearly correct in his 7th of March speech. I have always supposed he stretched the facts to suit his purposes.

We had a Union meeting in this county some three weeks ago which was more anti-slavery than Faneuil Hall dares to be — but this seems by no means the feeling throughout the State. I doubt if any compromise which did not virtually acknowledge the right of secession would be acceptable here: and yet with this right acknowledged, will not the credit of the General Government and of many of the States be badly damaged abroad — will not New York and Massachusetts be asked to endorse the Federal securities?

As to the extreme South — I suppose Benjamin & Co.,² after the raid on the New Orleans mint, will scarcely come back unless we all express through the Constitution our approbation and admiration of stealing. It seems likely now that we shall avoid a war with them; but will not the fighting mania they have encouraged force them into an attack on Cuba or Nicaragua — and thus bring about a war with some strong foreign power which will enable us to re-cement the Union on our terms? I sincerely hope that Lincoln will not consult too nicely what is acceptable even to the Border States, but will take his stand on the principles which the framers of the Constitution stood upon, and if there comes a collision, call upon the Border States alone to aid him — I believe they would at once rally to sustain him, even in a course which they would now pronounce totally unacceptable.

As my views are taken from the New York papers, they will probably be novel to you.

In fact, I write chiefly to express a faint hope that we may see you and the ladies at Mt. Savage. Mr. Graham tells me that he has invited you. In these dull times I cannot be expected to have acquired very much information about the manufacturing of Iron, but I should like very much to go over the ground with you. If the works are ever to go on, I am well satisfied with my change from Iowa — I think there are practical economies to be introduced in almost every department.

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¹ “The war,” wrote Mr. Forbes, in his notes, “virtually began for me with what is called the ‘Peace Congress’ of February, 1861. In January, Virginia asked the other States to send delegates to a congress for the purpose of devising means to avert the civil war then threatening. This was pretty generally responded to at the North, and resulted in the meeting of what was called the Peace Congress at Washington, in the early part of February, 1861. It was unauthorized by law and entirely informal, and simply a conference of men of the different States. Each State was represented by as many delegates as it had members of Congress, our Massachusetts contingent being thirteen (I think), all nominated by Governor Andrew under authority from the legislature. Of my colleagues I recall the names of George S. Boutwell, J. Z. Goodrich, F. N. Crowninshield, T. P. Chandler, and B. F. Waters of Marblehead, as having been the most active. We started nearly all together, about February 10, with the political horizon everywhere darkly lowering. My wife and daughter accompanied me.  . . . I had secured an asylum for them with Baron Stoeckel, the Russian ambassador, to be availed of in case the rebels pushed into Washington, an event which seemed as probable as it really was easy of accomplishment, had the rebels been half as smart as we thought them. . . .

“We soon plunged into our work, our [the Massachusetts delegation's] advent having very much the effect of a bombshell explosion. Before our arrival, the talk had been chiefly of compromise, and some progress seemed to have been made in preparing the way for a surrender by the North, on the basis of the Crittenden Resolutions, so called from Senator Crittenden, who introduced them into the Senate. They practically surrendered the ground which the North and West had taken against the extension of Slavery, and gave up the advanced position for Freedom which had been gained after long years of conflict, and which was represented by the election of Lincoln.  . . . We who went to see what chance there was of any real peace, soon found that the Southerners in the convention were ready to receive any concessions from us ‘in the hope that it might do some good,’ but to commit themselves to nothing.

“When we asked the Border States, ‘Suppose the North concedes what you ask, will you join them in forcing the South to obey the laws?’ ‘No,’ was the reply, ‘but we should hope that such concessions would lead to a settlement, and we will do all we peaceably can to bring this about.’  . . . Our only policy then was to stand firm, and, as the Fourth of March was approaching, when the weak old Buchanan and his Cabinet would go out, to make all the time we could in the Peace Convention and avert, as long as possible, the onslaught of the better prepared South, which was plainly impending.  . . . So the Massachusetts delegates introduced a resolution calling upon the representatives of the Border States, who had asked us to meet them, for ‘a statement of the grievances which we were asked to redress.’

“This led to long debates, and some of us who had not the gift of speaking, and could read the reports of the convention in print, turned our thoughts naturally to some other modes of saving the Union.” (John Murray Forbes, Letters and Recollections, edited by his daughter, Sarah Forbes Hughes. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1899.)

Mr. Forbes wrote a draft for a report of the Peace Commission to Governor Andrew, in which he said: “We have no belief that any absolute settlement was practicable, short of an entire subversion of the constitutional rights of the majority of the people of the United States.”

² Judah P. Benjamin, a Jew, came to North Carolina in early youth, and became a prominent lawyer and politician in New Orleans. He was a leading secessionist and was Secretary of War, and, later, of State, to the Confederacy. After the war, he was a noted practitioner of law in England. He died in Paris.

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 193-6, 400-2