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Monday, April 13, 2015

Edward Everett to Charles Francis Adams Sr., August 20, 1861

BosToN, 20 August, 1861.

MY DEAR SIR, - I had great pleasure in receiving your letter of the 26th July, and in your favorable opinion of my oration, which has also been kindly spoken of here.1

You informed me some time ago that Lord John – no longer Lord John2 — had read you a part of my letter to him of the 29th of May. I have thought you might like to see his answer, of which I accordingly send you a copy. I also venture to place under cover to you my reply to him, unsealed, should you be inclined to read it. You will be pleased before sending it, to seal it with some indifferent seal. I do not think I can add anything, as to the progress of the war, beyond what the papers will tell you. The Secretary of the Treasury has made satisfactory arrangements for the great loan. The Boston banks take at once ten millions. Some significant remarks were made at a meeting of the Presidents of our Banks, by Mr. Wm. Gray, to the effect that the country desires a united and efficient cabinet; and Mr. Gray, W. T. Andrews and another gentleman were chosen a committee to make this suggestion formally to the President. It was supposed to be aimed at General Cameron and Mr. Welles. A rather unpleasant impression was produced on the public mind yesterday, by the call of the Secretary of War, to have all the volunteers, accepted either by the Department or the State Governments, hastened on to Washington, with or without equipments and arms.

We are so unaccustomed to war, that every little incident, and especially every reverse tells upon the public mind, far beyond its importance, and the pulse of the community rises and falls, like the mercury in the thermometer.

Our newspapers are filled with the absurdest suggestions, about the unfriendly interference of England and France. But I am confident, that before the next crops of cotton and tobacco are ready for shipment, the Southern Ports will be so effectually blockaded, as to put any such interference out of the question. . . .

EDWARD EVERETT.
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1 Probably the address on “The Questions of the Day,” delivered in New York, July 4, 1861, and printed in Orations and Speeches, IV. 345.

2 Lord John Russell had been raised to the peerage, as Earl Russell, in July, 1861, the preceding month.

SOURCE: Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Volume 45: October 1911 – June 1912, November 1911 Meeting, p. 76-7

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