Shady Hill, 30 January, 1863.
One busy day has succeeded another since you were here till
I am at last reduced to a condition in which I am fit for no work, and so set
about writing a note and sending my love to you.
The Hero of one hundred ungained Victories, — the conqueror
in his own bulletins, is at present in Boston, and but a few people remain
calm. Some are excited with enthusiastic admiration of their own imagination of
McClellan; some busy with wire-pulling; some active to prevent others, “without
distinction” of party, gaining any advantage out of relations with the
disgraced Captain and candidate for the next Presidency; and some very much
disquieted by all this folly. So you see those who keep quiet and innocent
minds are in a despicable minority. . . .
We are making arrangements here to secure the circulation of
good telling articles from foreign and our own newspapers, to influence and
direct public opinion. We propose to secure from one hundred thousand to five
hundred thousand readers for two articles per week, and perhaps more. I shall
be the “editor,” so to say, with John Forbes and Sam Ward1 as
advisers. Please bear this in mind and send to me, marked, articles which
you think should be thus circulated. I shall have frequent occasion to
borrow from “Harper,” — or rather from you in “Harper.” . . .
_______________
1 Samuel [Gray] Ward, later an active correspondent
of Norton's.
SOURCE: Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters
of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 259-60
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