Thomas Wentworth Higginson, January 27, 1857

Worcester, January 27, 1857

I send you my speech at our Convention. You asked if I was led into it. It was entirely my doing, from beginning to end; nobody else would have dared to do it, because I knew of nobody at first who would take part with me, except the Garrisonians who were Disunionists before, but I found several rather influential persons, and the whole thing has succeeded better than we expected.

A nice pamphlet report will soon appear. I am surprised that you should not see the weakness of Theodore Parker's idea of preserving the Union for the slaves, when everybody admits that but for the Union, ten would escape where one now does, and slavery be soon abolished in the Northern Slave States. Last week Colonel Benton was here, and when he said these things as arguments against Disunion, everybody applauded, much to his surprise. They say his speech did more than our Convention.

I had a note from Mr. Sumner the other day, who thinks that Virginia will secede, first or last, and take all the States except perhaps Maryland, which can only be held by force. If it were not for the necessity of keeping Washington and the Mississippi, it would be well to have it so, but since those must be kept, it is hard to predict the end. I think however that you need feel no anxiety in Brattleboro'; I don't think the battering-rams (of which the old lady in the Revolutionary times, according to Rose Terry, was so afraid, her only ideas of warfare being based on the Old Testament and Josephus) will get so far. And I think there is more danger of compromise than war, at any rate.

I don't know whether you are aware of an impression which exists in many minds, but which I cannot attach any weight to, as yet, that the seceding States will prefer to abolish slavery, under the direction of England and France, rather than come under Yankee domination again. Wendell Phillips thinks this and says the Fremonts are very confident of it. If they made such a bargain, I think it would end the war and separate us and I don't think it would be so formidable a result, certainly. Even as a matter of Union, it would lead to ultimate reconstruction, for nothing but slavery can ever keep us permanently apart. And the slaves may be better off if emancipated by their masters than by us. Still I don't believe there is any chance of it.

Nothing could have happened better fitted to create enthusiasm than to begin the war by such a distinct overt act from the Southern Confederacy — and by a great disappointment. When you consider that such a man as Mr. Ripley firmly expected to see fighting in the streets of New York with the friends of the South there, and that the New York Mayor advocated annexation to the Southern Confederacy, the unanimous enthusiasm there is astonishing, compelling Bennett [of the "New York Herald"] to turn his editorials to the Northern side, for personal safety. Nothing else has been so remarkable as this.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 78-80