Thursday.
Damn Yankee: I
lose with you all the cold blood in my veins and all patience. Why misuse,
desecrate, the holiest words and conceptions? What for I write books and give
to you specially long lectures? Again you speak of the two civilizations.
Shame! shame! If you northern wiseacres do not stop such balderdash, I shall be
obliged to pitch into you all, and expose your ignorance rivalling that of the
South. One of the banditti, Wigfall or Iverson, said in the Senate, “the South
will organize a confederacy or government never yet known in the world.” Tell
him that he is an ass, as they are all. History knows already, and has recorded
a society, community, and government based upon piracy, enslavement, rapine,
and slave-traffic. It existed about nineteen hundred years ago for the first
time, in Kilikia, or Cilicia, in Asia Minor, and was destroyed by Pompey (not
African). Only the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Syrians, representants of
civilization at that era, called the Kilikians pirates, and not a different
state of civilization. How can you make such confusion and offend the civilized
Northern villages, operatives, farmers, mechanics? Atone for it. I suggest to
you for the next definition to use the expression, two different and opposed to
each other social conditions, as piracy is a social condition after all. How
much did T. Weed get for his pacificatory article? The South will be amazed to
hear soon the terrible thunder and malediction coming from the other side.
Already a forerunner arrived in the London Saturday Review, the best and
most independent English weekly, and a Tory. It answers to the menaces made
previous to the election. It is splendid, vigorous, and going to the bottom.
And what will they say when they learn the fact?
The Saturday Review takes, in the name of
civilization (there is only one civilization, recollect that), of Europe and of
England, the same ground as did the Tribune of November 28th. Guess who
wrote it?
My respectful compliments to Mrs. Pike, and my sincere love
to my young great favorite, Miss Mary. You are not worthy to have such a
daughter. Tell to Sumner that I regret not to have seen him, but that does not
interfere with my hearty friendship. .
Good-by. Stand firm, but believe that the going out of the
slave or cotton States will not ruin the country or the principles. Quite the
contrary. After one or two years of confusion, unavoidable in every transition,
the Free States will take a new start, and more grand and brilliant than was
the past. A body, politic or animal, to be healthy, to function normally, must
throw out the deleterious poison from its vitals.
This is my deliberate conclusion and creed, based on much
philosophizing within myself, and looking from all points of view on the thus
called secession. Truth, mankind, liberty, civilization, and manhood will be
great winners by secession.
Yours,
Gurowski.
_______________
* This letter is dated only as “Thursday.” By the fact James S. Pike places this letter
between April 16 and May 12, 1860 in his book, and taking into account the speed of the mail, I made an educated guess that the
date this letter was written was probably about half way between the two
letters mentioned above and Thursday, April 26, 1860 seemed the most
appropriate date. But again it is only a
guess on my part, purely for purposes of fitting it into my timeline.
SOURCE: James Shepherd Pike, First Blows of the
Civil War: The Ten Years of Preliminary Conflict in the United States from 1850
to 1860, p. 514-5
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