18th June, '62.
What a resplendent summer! How densely rich and blooming! I am
out all I can be. This moment A. darts in and out again, asking,”What's your
hat on for?” I've just been pruning and quiddling, and feeling of the ground
with the roots of the Virginia creeper (no allusion to McClellan), and of the
air with the white blossom sprays of the deutzia. I am grand in my square foot
principality! My patch to me a kingdom is, and that elm tree! (do you remember
it ?) my prime minister.
Colonel Raasloff waits to see what Congress will do about
his St. Croix proposition. I have written to him that it seems to me we want
our Southern laborers where they are, but we want them free, and, until they
are so, I should cry godspeed to any man who wanted to escape as a free man to
another country. Consequently I shall work all the harder upon public opinion
to hasten the day of their freedom. It is better they should be a “free rural
population” in their native land, which wants their labor, than in another
country, isn't it?
Colonel Raasloff says, and this is entre nous, that
he saw Sumner the day before; and when the colonel said that the war would be long,
the Senator was evidently “delighted,” which R. says he was sorry to observe.
He says that Speaker Grow told him that Congress would not adjourn before the
middle of July, or certainly until Richmond was taken, adding, “The army is
encamped before Richmond, and we are encamped behind the army.” Fortunately for
us all, Mr. Lincoln is wiser than Mr. Sumner. He is very wise.
SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p.
155-6
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