Charles Eliot Norton to James Russell Lowell, August 10, 1864

Ashfield, 10 August, 1864.

. . . George Curtis spent last Sunday with us, and desired me not to forget to send you his love. He was very pleasant and gave us very animated and interesting accounts of the Baltimore Convention, and of the visit of the Committee of the Convention to the President. He is firm in his confidence in the excellence of Mr. Lincoln's judgment, and in his strong common sense. He agreed with me in thinking that Woodman's¹ stories of his interference with military affairs might have such foundation that they could not be called false, but that they would bear a very different aspect did we know the whole concerning them. Mr. Lincoln is obliged to carry on this war as a civil as well as a military leader, and civil considerations may often compel him to act in a manner which would be very unwise were he guided by purely military conditions.

I dare say you have heard that Arthur Sedgwick² has been taken prisoner. We have heard nothing directly from him.  . . . This is a pretty severe experience for him, — and for his sisters, especially for Sara, but she bears it with great strength and cheerfulness.

Curtis has promised me an article on Hawthorne, and we must squeeze some dull article out of the next number to get it in. I like Howells' paper on Modern Italian Dramatists. It is pleasantly written and full of agreeable information. I hope you have asked him to write again. I have been writing a short article on Goldwin Smith. . . .

_______________

¹ Probably Governor Andrew's intimate friend, Cyrus Woodman.

² Mrs. Norton's brother was a first Lieutenant in the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteers.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 275-6

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis January 24, 1864

Shady Hill, Class Day, 24 June, 1864.

. . . The Baltimore Convention¹ did its duty well, and the air has cleared a good deal since it was held. I should have been glad if a more solid democratic plank had been inserted in the platform, — but our politicians do not yet begin to understand the distinctive, essential feature of our institutions, and have only a distant, theoretic comprehension of the meaning and worth of truly democratic ideas. This war is a struggle of the anti-democrats with the democrats; of the maintenance of the privilege of a class with the maintainers of the common rights of man. This view includes all the aspects of the war, and it is the ground upon which the people can be most readily brought to the sacrifices still required, and to the patient bearing of the long and heavy burdens it imposes upon them.

I have great confidence that the summer's campaign will end well for us. If we have, as we may have (though I shall not be disappointed if we do not have it), a great victory, then the rebellion as a military power will be nearly at an end. But if we merely take Richmond, one more serious campaign at least will be before us, and the country will feel the weight of the war more than ever before. . . .

_______________

¹ The National Union Convention, held early in June at Baltimore, had renominated Lincoln for the Presidency.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 268-9

Governor William Dennison to Abraham Lincoln, June 9, 1864

Mr. President: — The National Union Convention, which closed its sittings at Baltimore yesterday, appointed a committee, consisting of one from each State, with myself as chairman, to inform you of your unanimous nomination by that convention for election to the office of President of the United States. That committee, I have the honor of now informing you, is present. On its behalf I have also the honor of presenting you with a copy of the resolutions or platform adopted by that convention, as expressive of its sense and of the sense of the loyal people of the country which it represents, of the principles and policy that should characterize the administration of the Government in the present condition of the country. I need not say to you, sir, that the convention, in thus unanimously nominating you fur re-election, but gave utterance to the almost universal voice of the loyal people of the country. To doubt of your triumphant election would be little short of abandoning the hope of a final suppression of the rebellion and the restoration of the government over the insurgent States. Neither the convention nor those represented by that body entertained any doubt as to the final result, under your administration, sustained by the loyal people, and by our noble army and gallant navy. Neither did the convention, nor do this committee, doubt the speedy suppression of this most wicked and unprovoked rebellion.

[A copy of the resolutions, which had been adopted, was here handed to the President.]

I would add, Mr. President, that it would be the pleasure of the committee to communicate to you within a few days, through one of its most accomplished members, Mr. Curtis, of New York, by letter, more at length the circumstances under which you have been placed in nomination for the Presidency.

SOURCE: Henry J. Raymond, Lincoln, His Life and Times, Vol. 2, p. 559

George William Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, June 16, 1864

My Dear Charles, — I hope you like our Baltimore work. The unanimity and enthusiasm were most imposing. I voted against the admission of Tennessee, because I did not want the convention to meddle with the question; and, since she only wanted to come in to help do what we were sure to do without her, I thought that, as the cause was exactly the same for both of us, she should give us forbearance while we gave her sympathy. But it was impossible to resist the torrent, and they all came in. There is no harm done. I cannot but think Sumner wrong. If all New York rebels, I am still a citizen of the United States. That is the simple, obvious, necessary ground.

The committee of one from each State appointed me to write the official letter to the President, and refused to instruct me. I sent it yesterday, having read it to Mr. Bryant and to Raymond. They were both entirely pleased with everything in it.

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 178-9