Saturday, February 14, 2015

George William Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, April 7, 1864

My Dear Charles, — How grandly the country is speaking for the war and the policy! Night before last I dined with Colonel Raasloff1 and Count Piper and Habricht, and I claimed that thus far we had proved that in a republic patriotism was not necessarily subordinated to party spirit. It seems just now as if our true victory were to be greater than even we had supposed.

I have seen Lincoln tete-a-tete since I saw you, and my personal impression of him confirmed my previous feeling. I am sorry that Fremont seems to be placed in a position which can please no real friend of his. Only to-day I have an invitation from the office of “The New Nation” to meet some friends of all the radical candidates to “take steps to form a radical national committee, and to secure a radical platform, and a reliable radical man for the presidential campaign about to open.” Last week I went to Baltimore, and supped at the Union Club with a dozen of the most strenuous men there. Every one, when the war began, was a pro-slavery man; now they will have nothing but immediate, uncompensated emancipation. Charles, you and I are superannuated fogies.
_______________

1 The Danish Minister.

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 177-8

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