Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Montgomery Blair to Gustavus V. Fox, January 31, 1861

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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