Shady Hill, 27 May, 1861.
. . . My last letter to you was written a day or two before
the fall of Fort Sumter. Since then I have wished over and over again that you
were here, that you might have seen and taken part in the magnificent popular
movement of these days.
As events have turned out nothing could have been more
fortunate than the bombardment of the fort, and the lowering of the national
flag before the force of a rebellious State. The guns of South Carolina
battered down a great deal more than the walls of the fort, — party divisions
and prejudices, personal interests, private or social differences, all fell
before them. The whole Northern people was heartily united, and there was but
one feeling and one will among them all. It was not that their passions were
aroused, or that they were seized with the sudden contagion of a short-lived
popular excitement, — but all their self-respect, their intelligent and
conservative love of order, government, and law, all their instinctive love of
liberty, and their sense of responsibility for the safety of the blessings of
freedom and of popular government, were stirred to their very depth. The
question at issue was put so plainly by the Charleston guns that no man in the
Free States could hesitate as to the answer. . . .
SOURCE: Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters
of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 234
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