Burnley, near Otley,
March 30, 1861.
My Dear Mr. Motley:
I am very much obliged to you for both your letters, and can assure you that
they, especially the longer one, will be of the greatest service to me if I
take part in the debate on the 16th prox.
As I go up to London next Friday, and as I hope to see you
and talk the matter over fully between then and the 16th, I will do little more
now than thank you.
So far as I can judge from the newspapers, the chances of
avoiding war increase. It seems to me Lincoln's policy is shaping itself into
first attempting, by refraining from hostile measures, by keeping the door for
return open on the one hand, and by making their exclusion on the other as
uncomfortable as possible, to get the seceding States back; and, secondly,
should this turn out to be impossible, to let them go peaceably, straining
every nerve to keep the border States. My great fear still is, lest the
Republicans should, in order to keep the border States, compromise principle;
but as yet they have stood as firm as one can reasonably expect.
You must excuse my saying that I do not agree with you that
supposing the Union patched up again, or the border slave States left with the
North, you will even then get rid of the negro question. So long as the free
States remain in union with slave States, that question will every day press
more and more urgently for solution. Such union will be impossible without a
fugitive-slave law, and any fugitive-slave law will become every day more and
more impossible to execute; and, again, slave-holding in one State, with
freedom of speech and pen in the next State, will become more and more
untenable. I do not doubt, however, that the question will, in case of the
border States being left by themselves with the North, be solved by their
freeing themselves before long from their slave population, partly by sale and
partly by emancipation. Did I not think so, I would wish them to join the
South.
As it is, however, unless the North degrades and enslaves
itself by concession of principle, the cause of freedom must gain by present
events, either in case of the cotton States returning, as they would have to do
on Northern terms, or in case of their going on by themselves, when they will
be far less powerful for harm than they were while backed by the whole strength
of the North. I am therefore most anxious that our government should not, as
yet, recognize the South, not only because I think a premature recognition
would be an interference in your affairs, and an interference most unjust and
unfriendly to the old Union, our ally, but because I think it would strengthen
the South, and so either tend to harden her against concession to the North, or
give her a fairer chance, and therefore more power for evil, in a separate
start. Such recognition would also, I fear, do harm by making it less unlikely
for the seceding States to join the South. I thought I ought to write this much
in order to show you why I feel so interested in this matter; but the best mode
of meeting the debate in the House must be left for consideration nearer the
time, when I hope to see you.
Yours most faithfully,
W. E. FORSTER
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition,
Volume 2, p. 121-3
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