Boston,1 Feb. 4, 1863.
I am very glad to see that the Negro Army Bill has got so
well through the House, — Governor Andrew is going to try a Regiment in
Massachusetts. I am afraid he is too sanguine — it would be wiser to start with
a smaller number, to be increased to a regiment in South Carolina, Texas, or
Louisiana. The blacks here are too comfortable to do anything more than talk
about freedom. I hope you are not too comfortable; comfort is so “demoralizing.”
1 Relative positions were now reversed, as
Captain Lowell had been detailed to raise and drill the Second Massachusetts
Cavalry, and his mother had been summoned to Washington, to the bedside of her
daughter Anna, a nurse in Armory Square Military Hospital, who had fallen ill.
SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of
Charles Russell Lowell, p. 233-4, 413
