Wednesday evening,
September 3.
I have waited long enough. We get the most confused and
unsatisfactory, yet agitating, rumors. Pope seems to be falling back on the
capital after having got the worst of it in a battle on the 30th. Since that
there has been little fighting so far as we know, but this noon we get a story
that Stonewall Jackson is marching by Leesburg on Baltimore, and yesterday we
learned that Cincinnati is in imminent danger of a rebel invasion. How well I
remember the confidence that you expressed in General Scott — a confidence
which we all shared! The old general had to give up, and then it was nothing
but McClellan. But do not think that the pluck or determination of the North
has begun to yield. There never was such a universal enthusiasm for the defense
of the Union and the trampling out of rebellion as at this perilous hour. I am
willing to believe that many of the rumors we hear are mere fabrications. I
won't say to you, be of good courage, because men of ideas are not put down by
the accidents of a day or a year.
Yours always,
O. W. H.
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition,
Volume 2, p. 271
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