Vienna, January 13, 1862.
Dearest Little Mary:
The cloud has blown over for the present, at least, and the war with England
has been averted by the firmness, tact, prudence, and sense of right displayed
by our government. I have been thinking, talking, writing so much of this Trent
affair that I am determined not to fill my letters with it any longer, now
that it is settled. I will, however, make one observation in regard to England.
We must not confound the efforts of the war faction in that country with the
whole nation. By so doing we commit a great injustice, and do ourselves an immense
injury. There is a strong pro-slavery party in England, which has almost thrown
off all disguise in their fury in regard to the Trent affair. This party
seized upon the first plausible pretext that had been offered to them since our
Civil War began, and used it with all their energy to bring about the instant
recognition of the Southern Confederacy, the raising of the blockade, and a
destructive war against us. There has been a daily manifestation of pro-slavery
sympathy in the Tory party in England, shared to a considerable extent by a
certain portion of the Whigs. The course of the government of England has been
courteous and proper, and we make a mistake in attributing too much importance
to the manifestations of the press. As a member of the English cabinet says to
me in a letter written so soon as the news of peace came, in order to express
his joy and sympathize with mine: “What mischief the press of both countries
has been doing! Your people quote our ‘Times,’ we quote the New York ‘Herald,’
and mutual exasperation is natural enough.” This is the Duke of Argyll, as
sincere and warm a friend to America and to everything good in it as any one of
our own countrymen. I had a letter from Layard, Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs,
written in the same spirit.
There is no doubt that there is a large and strong party,
probably a majority, that hates the idea of a war with America, and is much
relieved by the pacific termination to this quarrel. On the other hand, no
doubt, the pro-slavery faction is very active and noisy, and we shall have no
end of efforts in the coming session of Parliament to procure the recognition
of the slave Confederacy. One thing is perfectly certain: if we continue to
dally with the subject of emancipation much longer, and continue our efforts to
suppress the rebellion without daring to lay a finger on its cause, we shall
have the slave Confederacy recognized by all the governments of Europe before
midsummer. The proslavery party in England dare not avow itself in favor
of slavery, for that institution is so odious to the great mass of the English
nation as to consign any party openly supporting it to destruction; but
it contents itself with persuading the public that slavery has nothing to do
with secession, that the North is no more antislavery than the South, and that
therefore all the sympathies of liberal Englishmen ought to be given to the
weaker of the two sections, which is striving by a war of self-defense to
relieve itself from a tyrannical oppression, and so on. An answer to this
insidious reasoning will, I hope, be soon furnished by the action of Congress.
My dear child, I have been writing to you as if you were Mr.
Seward or Abraham Lincoln, and I have half a mind to scratch your name from the
top of the letter and substitute that of one of these worthies. However, you
have become such a furious politician that I dare say you will excuse such a
long political letter. Your last letter, of December 23, gave us much pleasure,
as do all your letters. You cannot give us too many details, or write too much
or too often. We think of nothing but America now.
I cannot tell you much about Vienna. Yesterday your mother
and I went to a great diplomatic dinner at Prince Liechtenstein's. About thirty
people, mostly dips. The prince is kind-hearted, genial, with charming manners;
the princess very much the same. In the absence of the court, on account of the
illness of the empress, they do a little entertaining in a kind of vice-regal
way. Last week we all turned out in cocked hats and laced coats to make an
evening call, in order to express New Year's wishes and ask after the health of
the emperor and empress. We had an extremely pleasant dinner at Prince
Esterhazy's, and we dine occasionally with our colleagues of the diplomatic
corps, many of whom are very agreeable. To-morrow night is the first ball of
the season. It is the first of a set called picnics, the Vienna Almack's
subscription balls for the crèmè
de la crèmè. Lily will give you an account of it when she writes next week.
The winter is not likely to be gay, but I feel already a little better disposed
to look for blue sky, now that our government, and especially our much-abused
Secretary of State, have manifested so much magnanimity and real statesmanship.
I never felt so much confidence as I do now in the Washington authorities.
I do not yet begin to enjoy society. Much English society, I
regret almost to say, is very spoiling for any other kind. Yet there is a great
charm of manner about the Austrians. The great distinction between Vienna and
London company is that here the fine world is composed exclusively of folks of
rank and title; there, every illustration from the world of science,
art, letters, politics, and finance mingles in full proportion with the
patricians, and on equal terms. Society so constituted must be
entertaining and instructive.
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition,
Volume 2, p. 228-31
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