Wash. 31 Jany 61
Dear Fox:
I recd yours about the Tug of War yesterday and laid it
before Genl Scott, who upon reading it said it had been reported by Blount and
your qualifications extolled to the highest degree and that he knew no man in
whose judgment of a Sailor he had more implicit confidence than in Blount. I
gave him a short sketch of your personal history myself and left the letter. I
rather suspect, from what appears in the papers, that there may have been
already attempts and perhaps powerful attempts made to relieve Fort Sumpter
upon your scheme substantially, that is, by boats from heavier vessels lying
out at night. I have some doubt whether in fact the authorities would not
connive at reenforcement made in a manner not to subject them to suspicion of
complicity. I cannot think the Gov. of S.C. is at all anxious to drive the Gnl
Gov't to an expedition against Charleston involving a great battle between the
forces of the North and South to relieve this garrison. It must come to that,
if relief is not furnished in the manner you suggest. In a controversy of the
sort I refer to, there must be immense destruction of life, and no one can
doubt what the ultimate result must be. I can therefore well see that men of
forecaste should seek to avoid bringing it to their own doors. I am not sure
however that it will not come to that, and it may not in the end be the worst
course. The real cause of our trouble arises from the notion generally
entertained at the South that the men of the North are inferiors and the
rebellion springs altogether from pride which revolts against submission to
supposed inferiors. You hear these blusterers say every where that one Southern
man is equal to half a dozen Yankees, and that feeling has impelled them to
appeal from the Constitutional mode of determining who shall govern, to arms.
They will not submit, they say, to mere numbers made up of the Mudsills, the
factory people and shop keepers of the North. They swell just like the
grandiloquent Mexicans. And I really fear that nothing short of the lesson we
had to give Mexico to teach the Spanish don better manners, will ever satisfy
the Southern Gascons that the people of the North are their equals even upon
the field upon which they have now chosen to test the questions. And it is my
deliberate opinion that nothing will do so much to secure real and permanent
fraternity between the Sections as a decisive defeat on this field. It will
show the Southern people that they wholly mistake the quality of the men they
are taught by demagogues to despise. Having taught them to respect the North,
conciliatory language wd be listened to as proceeding from kindness of feeling
and not from fear and in a short time a better state of feeling wd grow up than
has ever existed between the two Sections.
I do not at all believe in the dissolution of the Union, or
that the application of force involving the destruction of life to preserve the
Union will so exasperate the Sections as to render reconciliation impossible.
On the contrary, I believe that it is necessary to enforce the laws to prevent
a deeper contempt falling upon the North than is now entertained by the South,
and that having vindicated the laws and secured respect even at the cost of
blood, the real good feeling which the people of the North have for the South
will work off all bitterness in a short time. In other words, in this, as in
all cases, I believe it is wisest and most politic to do exactly right. It is
not right to suffer this noble fabric of freedom to be overthrown by
demagoguery. It needs but determination in the rulers of the people to maintain
and to save it from all its enemies, and with less of blood and treasure than
any alarmist will believe. I am for the Union, now and forever, and against all
its enemies, whether fire-eaters or abolitionists.
Love to Gin and believe me,
Yrs truly,
M. BLAIR
SOURCE: Robert Means Thompson & Richard Wainwright,
Editors, Publications of the Naval Historical Society, Volume 9: Confidential
Correspondence of Gustavus Vasa Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1861-1865,
Volume 1, p. 3-5
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