Warsaw, Illinois, August 25, 1864.
. . . . We are waiting with the greatest interest for the
hatching of the big peace-snake at Chicago. There is throughout the country, I
mean the rural districts, a good, healthy Union feeling, and an intention to
succeed in the military and the political contests; but everywhere in the towns
the copperheads are exultant, and our own people either growling and despondent
or sneakingly apologetic. I found among my letters here, sent by you, one from
Joe Medill, inconceivably impudent, in which he informs me that on the 4th of
next March, thanks to Mr. Lincoln's blunders and follies, we will be kicked out
of the White House. The d----d scoundrel needs a day's hanging. I won't answer
his letter till I return and let you see it. Old Uncle Jesse is talking like an
ass, — says if the Chicago nominee is a good man, he don't know, etc., etc. He
blackguards you and me — says we are too big for our breeches, — a fault for
which it seems to me Nature or our tailors are to blame. After all your
kindness to the old whelp and his cub of a son he hates you because you have
not done more. I believe he thinks the Executive Mansion's somehow to blame. .
. .
Land is getting up near the stars in price. It will take all
I am worth to buy a tater-patch. I am after one or two small pieces in Hancock
for reasonable prices, 20 to 30 dollars an acre. Logan paid $70,000 for a farm
a short while ago, and everybody who has greenbacks is forcing them off like
waste paper for land. I find in talking with well-informed people a sort of
fear of Kansas property, as uncertain in future settlement and more than all uncertain
in weather. The ghost of famine haunts those speculations.
You were wrong in thinking either Milt or Charley Hay at all
copperish. They are as sound as they ever were. They of course are not quite
clear about the currency, but who is?
Our people here want me to address the Union League. I
believe I won't. The snakes would rattle about it a little, and it would do no
good. I lose my temper sometimes talking with growling Republicans. There is a
diseased restlessness about men in these times that unfits them for the steady
support of an administration. It seems as if there were appearing in the
Republican party the elements of disorganization that destroyed the Whigs.
If the dumb cattle are not worthy of another term of
Lincoln, then let the will of God be done, and the murrain of McClellan fall on
them.
SOURCES: Abstracted from Clara B. Hay, Letters of
John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 219-21. See Michael
Burlingame, Editor, At Lincoln’s Side:
John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings, p. 91-2 for the
full letter.
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