Sunday, July 19, 2015

John L. Motley to Anna Lothrop Motley, December 16, 1861

Vienna, December 16, 1861.

My Dearest Mother: It is painful to me to write under such circumstances, but I suppose it is better to send a line. While I write, we have not yet received a telegram of the steamer Asia, to leave December 4, and to bring the President's message. Perhaps before this note is posted this afternoon it will arrive. The telegrams are always sent to me in manuscript by my bankers here very soon after they arrive, and I cannot tell you the sickening feeling of anxiety with which we look at the little bit of folded paper brought in by a servant on a salver, which I always take up between my thumb and finger with loathing, as if it were a deadly asp about to sting us. If the President does not commit the government in his message I shall breathe again. I do not enter into the law or the history. I simply feel that if a war is to take place now between England and America I shall be in danger of losing my reason. To receive at this distance those awful telegrams day by day announcing, in briefest terms, bombardment of Boston, destruction of the Federal fleet, occupation of Washington and New York by the Confederates and their English allies, and all these thousand such horrors, while I am forced to sit so far away, will be too much to bear.

It is mere brag and fustian to talk about fighting England and the South at once, and I have a strong hope that Mr. Chase, who has to find the money, and General McClellan, who knows whether he has not already got enough on his own shoulders, will prevent this consummation of our ruin. If we are capable of taking a noble stand now, if we hold on to our traditional principle, the rights of neutrals and the freedom of the seas, instead of copying the ancient practice of England, we shall achieve the greatest possible triumph. We shall have peace by announcing to the world a high and noble policy, instead of desperate warfare by adopting an abominable one. The English government has fortunately given us a chance by resting its case on the impropriety of allowing a naval officer to act as judge of admiralty.1 When I first wrote to you on this subject I had only a word or two of information by telegraph, and that was exaggerated. The English demand seemed a declaration of war. It appears that it is not so, and I have still a faint hope. I will say no more on the subject. We are beginning to get accustomed to Vienna. It is a somber place at first, and our feelings about home just now would serve as a pall for the mansions of the blessed. The diplomatic corps are all friendly and cordial, and we are beginning to see something of the Viennese. But I have no heart for anything.

God bless you, my dear mother. Heaven grant that there may be some better news coming!

Your ever-affectionate son,
J. L. M.

P. S. I have just got a telegram that the President does not mention the Trent affair. This is a blessed sign.
_______________

1 This point was treated fully in Mr. Seward's letter to the British minister, announcing the release of Messrs. Slidell and Mason.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 223-4

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