Legation of the United
States,
March 3, 1863.
My Dearest Mother:
As I have now made up my mind that our war is to be protracted indefinitely, I
am trying to withdraw my attention from it, and to plunge into the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries again. While I am occupying myself with the events of
a civil war which lasted eighty years and engaged and exhausted the energies of
all the leading powers of Europe, perhaps I may grow less impatient with
military operations extended over a much larger and less populated area, and
which have not yet continued for two years. Attention in Europe, I am happy to
say, is somewhat diverted from our affairs by the events which are taking place
in Poland.
Meetings are held day by day all over England, in which the
strongest sympathy is expressed for the United States government, and
detestation for the slaveholders and their cause, by people belonging to the
working and humbler classes, who, however, make up the mass of the nation, and
whose sentiments no English ministry (Whig or Tory) dares to oppose. As for Poland,
I suppose the insurrection will be crushed, although it will last for months. I
don't believe in any intervention on the part of the Western powers. There will
only be a great deal of remonstrating, and a great talk about liberty and free
institutions on the part of that apostle of liberty and civilization, Louis
Napoleon.
I feel very much grieved that our only well-wisher in
Europe, the Russian government, and one which has just carried out at great
risks the noblest measure of the age, the emancipation of 25,000,000 slaves,
should now be contending in arms with its own subjects, and that it is
impossible for us to sympathize with our only friends. The government here
keeps very quiet.
Ever your most
affectionate son,
J. L. M.
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition,
Volume 2, p. 317-8
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