Shady Hill, 10 February, 1861.
. . . Well, since I
wrote last to you, great things have been going on here. It has been no time
for writing letters, for the speculations of one day were forgotten the next in
the new aspect of affairs. Not even yet is there any certainty as to the result
of our present troubles and excitements, so far as the South is concerned. It
is still doubtful whether the states that have already left the Union will be
the only ones to do so, or whether the whole body of Slave States will go off
and set up an attempt at a Confederacy to be managed in the interest of the
owners of slaves, and for the protection and extension of slavery. There is
little to choose between the two. For many reasons, political, social, and
economical, it would be desirable to keep the northern tier of Slave States
united with the Free States; but on the other hand, if they go off, the Free
States no longer have any connection with or responsibility for Slavery. For my
own part I have been hopeful from the beginning that the issue of these
troubles, whatever it might be, would be for the advantage of the North, and
for the permanent and essential weakening of the Slave power; and I see no
reason to change this opinion. The truth is that it is the consciousness of
power having gone from their hands that has induced the revolutionists of the
South to take the hasty, violent, and reckless steps they have done. It is not
the oppression of the North, it is not any interference with the interests of
the South, it is not John Brown, or Kansas, or the principles of the Republican
party, that are the causes of secession, — but it is the fact that the South,
which has heretofore, from the beginning, controlled the government of the
country, is now fairly beaten, and that it prefers revolution to honest
acknowledgment of defeat and submission to it. But disunion is no remedy for
defeat; the South is beaten in the Union or out of it. If the Slave States had
accepted in a manly way their new position they would have secured their own
interests. Slavery would not have been interfered with. But the course they
have pursued has already done more work in damaging Slavery as an institution
than all the labours of the Abolitionists could have effected for years. The
competition for the supply of cotton which has now been effectually roused will
be the great means by which slave labour will be rendered unprofitable to the
owners of slaves; and as soon as they find this out Slavery will cease to be
defended as a Divine Institution, and as the necessary basis of the best form
of society. In fact we are seeing now the beginning of the death struggles of
Slavery; and there is no ground for wonder at the violence of its convulsions.
Civil war between the Free and the Slave States is a remote possibility. It
will be hard to drive us of the North into it. But we are quite ready to fight,
if need be, for the maintenance of the authority of the Civil Government,
(threatened by a prejudiced attack of the Southern revolutionists on
Washington,) and, I hope, also for the freedom of the Territories. But I trust
that fighting will not be required, and I believe that Mr. Lincoln will be
quietly inaugurated on the 4th March. He has shown great courage and dignity in
holding his tongue so completely since his election.
I could fill twenty
sheets with the rumours, the fancies, and the theories of the day, but by the
time my letter reaches you they would not be worth so much as last year's dead
leaves. Of course there is no other news with us, for the intensity of the
interest in public affairs lessens that of the other events, and diminishes the
number of the events themselves. . . .
Emerson's new
volume has been a great success here, and has met with far more favour than it
seems to have done in England. Ten thousand copies of it have gone off here in
spite of the political excitements. I do not wonder that the English critics do
not like the book, for every year the imaginative and mystic element of the
intellect, as it shows itself in literature, is getting more and more scouted
at by them, — but I do not wonder at the abusive vulgarity of the article in
the “Saturday Review.” The book is the most Emersonian, good and bad, of all
his books; certainly a book to do good to any one who knows how to think. But
Emerson's books, as you know, are not nearly so good as himself. . . .
SOURCE: Sara Norton
and M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton,
Volume 1, p. 216-8
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