Legation of the United
States of America, Vienna,
February 26, 1862.
My Dear Holmes:
You are the most generous and delightful of correspondents and friends. I have
two long and most interesting letters of yours to acknowledge, the first of 7th
January, the second of 3d February. They are exactly the kind of letters which
I most value. I want running commentaries on men and events produced on such a
mind as yours by the rapidly developing history of our country at its most
momentous crisis. I take great pleasure in reading your prophecies, and intend
to be just as free in hazarding my own, for, as you so well say, our mortal
life is but a string of guesses at the future, and no one but an idiot would be
discouraged at finding himself sometimes far out in his calculations. If I find
you signally right in any of your predictions, be sure that I will congratulate
and applaud. If you make mistakes, you shall never hear of them again, and I
promise to forget them. Let me ask the same indulgence from you in return. This
is what makes letter-writing a comfort and journalism dangerous. For this
reason, especially as I am now in an official position, I have the greatest
horror lest any of my crudities should get into print. I have also to
acknowledge the receipt of a few lines to Wendell. They gave me very great
pleasure. I am delighted to hear of his entire recovery, and I suppose you do
not object, so much as he does, to his being detained for a time from camp by
recruiting service. I shall watch his career with deep interest. Just now we
are intensely anxious about the Burnside expedition, of which, as you know, my
nephew Lewis Stackpole is one. He is almost like my son. I feel very proud of
his fine intellectual and manly qualities, and although it is a sore trial to
his mother to part with him, yet I am sure that she would in future days have regretted
his enrolment in the “stay-at-home rangers.”
That put me in mind to acknowledge the receipt of “Songs in
Many Keys.” It lies on our drawing-room table, and is constantly in our hands.
I cannot tell you how much pleasure I derived from it. Many of the newer pieces
I already know by heart, and admire them as much as you know I have always done
their predecessors. The “Ballad” is in a new vein for you, and is, I think,
most successful. If I might venture to mention the separate poems by name which
most please me, I should certainly begin with “Iris, her Book,” “Under the
Violets,” “The Voiceless,” which are full of tenderness and music. Then the
clarion ring of the verses for the centennial celebration of Burns has an
immense charm for me, and so the trumpet tones of “The Voice of the Loyal North”;
but I should go on a long time if I tried to express my honest and hearty
admiration for the volume as fully as it deserves. I thank you most sincerely
for it, and I assure you that you increase in fullness and power and artistic
finish without losing any of your youthful freshness of imagination. I am glad
that the emperor had the sense to appreciate your “Vive la France.” I agree
with him that it is plein d'inspiration and exceedingly happy. I admire
it the more because for the moment it communicated to me the illusion under the
spell of which you wrote it. For of course France hates us as much as England
does, and Louis Napoleon is capable of playing us a trick at any moment.
I am obliged to reason like a cosmopolite. The English have
a right to hate America if they instinctively feel that the existence of a
great, powerful, prosperous, democratic republic is a standing menace to the
tenure of their own privileges. I think the instinct false, however, to a certain
extent. Physical, historical, and geographical conditions make our democratic
commonwealth a possibility, while they are nearly all wanting in England. I do
not think the power or glory or prosperity of the English monarchy any menace
to our institutions. I think it an unlucky and unreasoning perverseness which
has led the English aristocracy to fear our advance in national importance. I
do not mean that, on the whole, the government has behaved ill to us.
Especially international dealings with us have been courteous and conciliatory.
I like personally English ways, English character, Englishmen and Englishwomen.
It is a great empire in arts and arms, and their hospitalities are very
pleasant. Nevertheless, I love my own country never so much as at this moment.
Never did I feel so strong a faith in her destiny as now. Of John Bright we
have already spoken, and of the daily and noble battle waged for us by the “Daily
News” (which I hope you read); and now how must we all rejoice at the
magnificent essay in “Fraser's Magazine” by the acknowledged chief of English
thinkers, John Stuart Mill!
It is awful to reflect that the crisis of our fate is so
rapidly approaching. The ides of March will be upon us before this letter
reaches you. We have got to squash the rebellion soon, or be squashed forever
as a nation — aut fer, aut feri. I do not pretend to judge military
plans or the capacity of generals; but, as you suggest, perhaps I can take a
more just view of the whole picture of this eventful struggle at this great
distance than do those absolutely acting and suffering in the scene. Nor can I
resist the desire to prophesy any more than you do, knowing that I may prove
utterly mistaken. I say, then, our great danger comes from foreign
interference. What will prevent that? Our utterly defeating the Confederates in
some great and conclusive battle, or our possession of the cotton
ports and opening them to European trade, or a most unequivocal policy of
slave-emancipation. Any one of these three conditions would stave off
recognition by foreign powers until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to
reduce the South to obedience.
The last measure is to my mind the most important. The South
has, by going to war with the United States government, thrust into our hands
against our will the invincible weapon which constitutional reasons have
hitherto forbidden us to employ. At the same time, it has given us the power to
remedy a great wrong to four millions of the human race, in which we have
hitherto been obliged to acquiesce. We are threatened with national
annihilation, and defied to use the only means of national preservation. The
question is distinctly proposed to us, Shall slavery die, or the great Republic?
It is most astounding to me that there can be two opinions in the free States
as to the answer. If we do fall, we deserve our fate. At the beginning of the
contest, constitutional scruples might be respectable. But now we are fighting
to subjugate the South, that is, slavery. We are fighting for the Union. Who
wishes to destroy the Union? The slaveholders. Nobody else. Are we to spend
$1,200,000,000 and raise 600,000 soldiers in order to protect slavery?
It really does seem to me too simple for argument. I am
anxiously waiting for the coming Columbus who will set this egg of ours on end
by smashing in the slavery end. We shall be rolling about in every direction
until that is done. I do not know that it is to be done by proclamation—rather,
perhaps, by facts. Well, I console myself by thinking that the people, the
American people at least, is about as wise collectively as less numerous
collections of individuals, and that the people has really decreed emancipation
and is only puzzling how to carry it into effect. After all, it seems to be a
law of Providence that progress should be by a spiral movement, so that when we
seem most tortuous we may perhaps be going ahead. I am firm in the faith that
slavery is now wriggling itself to death. With slavery in its primitive vigor I
should think the restored Union neither possible nor desirable. Do not
understand me as not taking fully into account all the strategical
considerations against premature governmental utterances on this great subject.
But are there any trustworthy friends of the Union among the
slaveholders? Should we lose many Kentuckians and Virginians who are now with
us if we boldly confiscated the slaves of all rebels? And a confiscation of
property which has legs and so confiscates itself at command is not only a
legal, but would prove a very practical, measure in time of war. In brief, the
time is fast approaching, I think, when “Thorough” should be written on all our
banners. Slavery will never accept a subordinate position. The great Republic
and slavery cannot both survive. We have been defied to mortal combat, and yet
we hesitate to strike. These are my poor thoughts on this great subject.
Perhaps you will think them crude.
I was much struck with what you quote from Mr. Conway, that
if emancipation was proclaimed on the Upper Mississippi it would be known to
the negroes of Louisiana in advance of the telegraph. And if once the blacks
had leave to run, how many whites would have to stay at home to guard their
dissolving property?
You have had enough of my maunderings. But before I conclude
them, may I ask you to give all our kindest regards to Lowell, and to express
our admiration for the “Yankee Idyl”? I am afraid of using too extravagant
language if I say all I think about it. Was there ever anything more stinging,
more concentrated, more vigorous, more just? He has condensed into those few
pages the essence of a hundred diplomatic papers and historical disquisitions
and Fourth of July orations. I have very pleasant relations with all the “J.
B.'s”1 here. They are all friendly and well disposed to the North. I
speak of the embassy, which, with the ambassador and ambassadress, numbers
eight or ten souls, some of them very intellectual ones.
Shall I say anything of Austria? What can I say that would
interest you? That is the reason why I hate to write. All my thoughts are in
America. Do you care to know about the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian (if L. N.2
has his way)? He is next brother to the emperor; but although I have had the
honor of private audience of many archdukes here, this one is a resident of
Triest. He is about thirty; has an adventurous disposition, some imagination, a
turn for poetry; has voyaged a good deal about the world in the Austrian ship
of war, for in one respect he much resembles that unfortunate but anonymous
ancestor of his, the King of Bohemia, with the seven castles, who, according to
Corporal Trim, had such a passion for navigation and sea affairs, “with never a
seaport in all his dominions.” But now the present King of Bohemia has got the
sway of Triest, and Ferdinand Maximilian has been resident there, and is Lord
High Admiral and chief of the Marine Department. He has been much in Spain and
also in South America. I have read some travels — “Reise Skizzen” — of his,
printed, not published. They are not without talent, and he ever and anon
relieves his prose jog-trot by breaking into a canter of poetry. He adores
bullfights, rather regrets the Inquisition, and considers the Duke of Alva
everything noble and chivalrous and the most abused of men. It would do your
heart good to hear his invocations to that deeply injured shade, his
denunciations of the ignorant and vulgar Protestants who have defamed him. “Du
armer Alva! weil du dem Willen deines Herren unerschütterlich treu warst, weil
die fest bestimmten Grundsätze
der Regierung,” etc., etc., etc. You can imagine the rest. (N. B. Let me
observe that the D. R. was not published until long after the “Reise Skizzen”
were written.)
Dear me, I wish I could get back to the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries! If once we had the “rebels licked, Jeff Davis hanged,
and all,” I might shunt myself back to my old rails. But alas! the events of
the nineteenth century are too engrossing. If Lowell cares to read this letter,
will you allow me to make it over to him jointly, as Captain Cuttle says? I
wished to write to him, but I am afraid only you would tolerate my writing so
much when I have nothing to say. If he would ever send me a line I should be
infinitely obliged, and would quickly respond. We read “The Washers of the
Shroud” with fervent admiration. Always remember me most sincerely to the club,
one and all. It touches me nearly when you assure me that I am not forgotten by
them. To-morrow is Saturday, and last of the month.3 We are going to dine
with our Spanish colleague.4 But the first bumper of the don's
champagne I shall drain to the health of the Parker House friends. Mary and
Lily join me in kindest regards to you and all yours; and I am, as always,
Sincerely your
friend,
J. L. M.
_______________
1 Cf. “Jonathan to John,” in “The Biglow Papers.”
2 Louis Napoleon.
3 The club dinner took place on that day.
4 M. de la Torre Ayllon.
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition,
Volume 2, p. 239-46
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