Boston, March 8, 1862.
My Dear Motley: I have
been debating with myself whether to wait for further news from Nashville, the Burnside
expedition, Savannah, or somewhere, before writing you, and came to the
conclusion that I will begin this February 24, and keep my letter along a few
days, adding whatever may turn up, with a reflection thereupon. Your last
letter, as I told you, was of great interest in itself, and for the extracts it
contained from the letters of your correspondents. I lent it to your father and
your brother Edward, and a few days ago to William Amory, at his particular
request. Calling on old Mr. Quincy two days ago, we talked of you. He desired
me most expressly and repeatedly to send his regards and respects. I think I am
pretty near the words, but they were very cordial and distinguishing ones,
certainly. He takes the greatest interest in your prosperity and fame, and you
know that the greatest of men have not many nonagenarian admirers. It is nine
weeks, I think, since Mr. Quincy fell and fractured the neck of the thigh-bone,
and he has been on his back ever since. But he is cheerful, ready to live or
die; considers his later years as an appendix to the opus of his life,
that he has had more than he bargained for when he accepted life.
As you might
suppose it would be at ninety, though he greatly rejoices at our extraordinary
successes of late, he does not think we are “out of the woods,” as he has it,
yet. A defeat, he thinks, would take down our spirits as rapidly as they were
raised. “But I am an old man,” he says, “and, to be sure, an old man cannot
help seeing the uncertainties and difficulties which the excitable public
overlooks in its exaltation.”
Never was such
ecstasy, such delirium of excitement, as last Monday, a week ago to-day, when
we got the news from Fort Donelson. Why, — to give you an instance from my own
experience, — when I, a grave college professor, went into my lecture-room, the
class, which had first got the news a little before, began clapping and
clapping louder and louder, then cheering, until I had to give in myself, and
flourishing my wand in the air, joined with the boys in their rousing hurrahs,
after which I went on with my lecture as usual. The almost universal feeling is
that the rebellion is knocked on the head; that it may kick hard, even rise and
stagger a few paces, but that its os frontis is beaten in.
The last new thing
is the President's message, looking to gradual compensated emancipation. I
don't know how it will be received here, but the effect will be good abroad.
John Stuart Mill's article in “Fraser” has delighted people here more than
anything for a good while. I suppose his readers to be the best class of
Englishmen.
Yours always,
O. W. H.
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition,
Volume 2, p. 246-8
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