Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, September 30, 1862

Shady Hill, 30 September, 1862.

Your note was most welcome. It was delightful to exchange congratulations on the Declaration, not of Independence, but of Liberty. The 22d September will be one of our memorable days forever. As you say nothing could be better than the answer made by the New York Convention to the Proclamation. Wadsworth's speech was excellent; it had the true tone, and was not only earnest but effective. The field is well laid out, — and there can be no doubt as to who will win.

Now when does your Congressional Nominating Convention meet? And what are your prospects? I will "stump" for you, or write for you, or do anything to promote your success which you want done. It will be service for the nation, not for you.¹

I did not thank you in my last note for the delightful notice of Clough and his poems in the last Harper. It said everything I could have wished, and will give real pleasure, I am sure, to Mrs. Clough, to whom I have sent it. There has been no notice so appreciative, so tender or so just. . . .

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¹ Curtis did not receive the nomination.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 257-8

Charles Eliot Norton to Arthur H. Clough, May 27, 1861

Shady Hill, 27 May, 1861.

. . . My last letter to you was written a day or two before the fall of Fort Sumter. Since then I have wished over and over again that you were here, that you might have seen and taken part in the magnificent popular movement of these days.

As events have turned out nothing could have been more fortunate than the bombardment of the fort, and the lowering of the national flag before the force of a rebellious State. The guns of South Carolina battered down a great deal more than the walls of the fort, — party divisions and prejudices, personal interests, private or social differences, all fell before them. The whole Northern people was heartily united, and there was but one feeling and one will among them all. It was not that their passions were aroused, or that they were seized with the sudden contagion of a short-lived popular excitement, — but all their self-respect, their intelligent and conservative love of order, government, and law, all their instinctive love of liberty, and their sense of responsibility for the safety of the blessings of freedom and of popular government, were stirred to their very depth. The question at issue was put so plainly by the Charleston guns that no man in the Free States could hesitate as to the answer. . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 234

Charles Eliot Norton to Arthur H. Clough, April 10, 1861

Shady Hill, April 10,1861.

. . . Truly this is a time when one may well be glad to be on the spot to study our public affairs. Our troubles do not appear to be coming to a speedy close, and I do not know that there has been a moment since their beginning in November, of greater interest than the present. A collision between the forces of the United States and those of the Confederates seems imminent.

The new Administration in coming into power on the 4th March found every branch of the public service in a state of disorganization. The treasury was empty, the fleet scattered, the little army so posted that it could not at once be brought to the points where it was needed. Everywhere was confusion, uncertainty of counsel, and weakness, the result of the treacherous and imbecile course of Buchanan and his Cabinet. For weeks Mr. Lincoln and his new Cabinet were necessarily engaged in getting things into working order. They could undertake no vigorous measures and make no display of energy; but they were quietly and actively collecting their forces. The newspapers, puzzled by the delay, and baffled by a secrecy in the Administration to which they had long been unaccustomed, began to complain that the affairs of state were no better conducted than under the previous regime, that the Cabinet had no policy, that the country was drifting to ruin. But last week the Government showed its hand, and it became plain that it had waited only to gather strength to act, that it had a definite policy, and that the policy was a manly and straightforward one. Within the past four or five days a fleet has sailed from New York, with large supplies of material and provisions, and a considerable force of soldiers. Not yet does the public know its destination, but there are three directions which it will take according to circumstances. In the first place, Fort Sumter is to be provisioned. This will be done by sending in an unarmed vessel to the fort while the vessels of war wait outside the harbour. If she be fired upon, they will enter and protect her, at whatever cost. I fear that we may hear to-morrow that the South Carolinians have been mad enough to begin the attack. After provisioning Fort Sumter, the next object is to relieve Fort Pickens in Florida which is menaced by a large body of Southern troops. Men and provisions can be thrown into this fort from the water, but an attack is threatened if this is done. The third object is to garrison the frontier posts on the Texas borders, to defend the Texans against Indians and Mexicans, and to cut off the Confederates from making a descent upon Mexico. This is a step of prime importance. Secession is not a valid fact so long as the boundaries of the States declaring themselves seceded are defended by United States troops.

More vessels will sail this week from Boston and New York. The work the Administration has undertaken will be done. Of course we are waiting with most painful anxiety the news from the South. It seems now as if the leaders of the Revolution were determined to push it to the bloodiest issue. Governor Pickens of South Carolina has been informed that Fort Sumter would be provisioned, and that the Government desired to do it peaceably; the answer from him was the ordering out of the reserves, the getting the batteries ready for an attack on Fort Sumter, and the making all the preparations for a fight. One cannot but pity the poor Southern troops; they are brave, no doubt, and are certainly full of zeal for battle, but hardly one of them has ever seen a shot fired, none of them are regular soldiers, many of them are men whose pursuits have hitherto been peaceful, and many belong to the most cultivated and best Southern families. Think of a shell bursting in the ranks of men like these, fighting for such a cause as that for which they have engaged!

I wish I could read you some of the extremely interesting letters which Jane has received this winter from her friend, Miss Middleton, of Charleston. They have given us a most vivid view of the state of feeling there, and of the misery which war, which a single battle, would produce. But the people there are truly demented.

How is it all to end? I believe, somehow for good. But the commercial spirit is very strong with us at the North, and the corruption of long prosperity very manifest. We have need of a different temper from that which prevails, before we can reap much good from our present troubles.

Meanwhile everything is astonishingly quiet here. No one travelling in New England would imagine that such a revolution was going on in any part of the country. There is less business done than common, but there is no suffering; no labourers are turned out of employment; life everywhere runs on in its common course. . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 228-31

Charles Eliot Norton to Arthur H. Clough, February 10, 1861

Shady Hill, 10 February, 1861.

. . . Well, since I wrote last to you, great things have been going on here. It has been no time for writing letters, for the speculations of one day were forgotten the next in the new aspect of affairs. Not even yet is there any certainty as to the result of our present troubles and excitements, so far as the South is concerned. It is still doubtful whether the states that have already left the Union will be the only ones to do so, or whether the whole body of Slave States will go off and set up an attempt at a Confederacy to be managed in the interest of the owners of slaves, and for the protection and extension of slavery. There is little to choose between the two. For many reasons, political, social, and economical, it would be desirable to keep the northern tier of Slave States united with the Free States; but on the other hand, if they go off, the Free States no longer have any connection with or responsibility for Slavery. For my own part I have been hopeful from the beginning that the issue of these troubles, whatever it might be, would be for the advantage of the North, and for the permanent and essential weakening of the Slave power; and I see no reason to change this opinion. The truth is that it is the consciousness of power having gone from their hands that has induced the revolutionists of the South to take the hasty, violent, and reckless steps they have done. It is not the oppression of the North, it is not any interference with the interests of the South, it is not John Brown, or Kansas, or the principles of the Republican party, that are the causes of secession, — but it is the fact that the South, which has heretofore, from the beginning, controlled the government of the country, is now fairly beaten, and that it prefers revolution to honest acknowledgment of defeat and submission to it. But disunion is no remedy for defeat; the South is beaten in the Union or out of it. If the Slave States had accepted in a manly way their new position they would have secured their own interests. Slavery would not have been interfered with. But the course they have pursued has already done more work in damaging Slavery as an institution than all the labours of the Abolitionists could have effected for years. The competition for the supply of cotton which has now been effectually roused will be the great means by which slave labour will be rendered unprofitable to the owners of slaves; and as soon as they find this out Slavery will cease to be defended as a Divine Institution, and as the necessary basis of the best form of society. In fact we are seeing now the beginning of the death struggles of Slavery; and there is no ground for wonder at the violence of its convulsions. Civil war between the Free and the Slave States is a remote possibility. It will be hard to drive us of the North into it. But we are quite ready to fight, if need be, for the maintenance of the authority of the Civil Government, (threatened by a prejudiced attack of the Southern revolutionists on Washington,) and, I hope, also for the freedom of the Territories. But I trust that fighting will not be required, and I believe that Mr. Lincoln will be quietly inaugurated on the 4th March. He has shown great courage and dignity in holding his tongue so completely since his election.

I could fill twenty sheets with the rumours, the fancies, and the theories of the day, but by the time my letter reaches you they would not be worth so much as last year's dead leaves. Of course there is no other news with us, for the intensity of the interest in public affairs lessens that of the other events, and diminishes the number of the events themselves. . . .

Emerson's new volume has been a great success here, and has met with far more favour than it seems to have done in England. Ten thousand copies of it have gone off here in spite of the political excitements. I do not wonder that the English critics do not like the book, for every year the imaginative and mystic element of the intellect, as it shows itself in literature, is getting more and more scouted at by them, — but I do not wonder at the abusive vulgarity of the article in the “Saturday Review.” The book is the most Emersonian, good and bad, of all his books; certainly a book to do good to any one who knows how to think. But Emerson's books, as you know, are not nearly so good as himself. . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 216-8

Charles Eliot Norton to Arthur H. Clough, December 11, 1860

Shady Hill, 11 December, 1860.

. . . Confusion and alarm are the order of the day with us. The movement for the breaking-up of the Union has acquired a most unexpected force. No one could have supposed beforehand that the South would be so blind to its own interests, so deaf to every claim of safety and honour, as to take such a course as it has done since the election a month ago. This course if followed out must bring ruin to the Southern States, and prolonged distress to the North. We are waiting on chance and accident to bring events. Everything in our future is uncertain, everything is possible. The South is in great part mad. Deus vult perdere. There is no counsel anywhere; no policy proposed. Every man is anxious; no one pretends to foresee the issue out of trouble. I have little hope that the Union can be preserved. The North cannot concede to the demands of the South, and even if it could and did, I doubt whether the result would be conciliation. The question is now fairly put, whether Slavery shall rule, and a nominal Union be preserved for a few years longer; or Freedom rule and the Union be broken up. The motives which the Southern leaders put forward for disunion are mere pretexts; their real motives are disappointed ambition, irritated pride, and the sense that power which they have so long held has now passed out of their hands.

There is little use in speculating on the consequences of disunion. If but one or two States secede, if the terrorism now established in South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, and which has strength to control every expression of sentiment opposed to disunion, — if this terrorism be broken through, and a chance be given for the conservative opinion in these States to manifest itself, it is possible that secession may take place without violence. But if, on the other hand, the excited feeling now prevalent should extend and gather force, peaceable secession becomes hardly possible, and all the horrors of servile insurrection and civil war loom up vaguely in the not distant future.

At present there is universal alarm; general financial pressure, great commercial embarrassment. The course of trade between the North and the South is interrupted; many manufacturing establishments are closed or working on short time; there are many failures, and many workmen thrown out of employment. This general embarrassment of business is shared in by foreign commerce, and must be sympathetically felt in England. The prospects of the next cotton crop are most uncertain.

The North stands in a perfectly fair position. It waits for action on the part of the South. It has little to regret in its past course, and nothing to recede from. It would not undo the election of Mr. Lincoln if it could; for it recognizes the fact that the election affords no excuse for the course taken by the South, that there was nothing aggressive in it and nothing dangerous to real Southern interests. It feels that this is but the crisis of a quarrel which is not one of parties but of principles, and it is on the whole satisfied that the dispute should be brought to a head, and its settlement no longer deferred. It is, however, both astonished and disappointed to find that the South should prefer to take all the risks of ruin to holding fast to the securities afforded to its institutions and to all the prosperity established by the Union. It is a sad thing, most sad indeed, to see the reckless flinging away of such blessings as we have hitherto enjoyed; most sad to contemplate as a near probability the destruction of our national existence; saddest of all to believe that the South is bringing awful calamities upon itself. But on the other hand there is a comfort in the belief that, whatever be the result of present troubles, the solution of Slavery will be found in it; and that the nature of these difficulties, the principles involved in them, and the trials that accompany them, will develop a higher tone of feeling and a nobler standard of character than have been common with us of late.

All we have to do at the North is to stand firm to those principles which we have asserted and which we believe to be just, — to have faith that though the heavens fall, liberty and right shall not fail, and that though confusion and distress prevail for the time in the affairs of men there is no chance and no anarchy in the universe.

We are reaping the whirlwind, — but when reaped the air will be clearer and more healthy.

I write hastily, for it is almost the mail hour, and I want to send this to you to-day. But even were I to write at length and with all deliberation, I could do no more than show you more fully the condition of anxious expectancy in which we wait from day to day, and of general distress among the commercial community.

Of course in these circumstances there is little interest felt in other than public affairs. It is a bad time for literature; the publishers are drawing in their undertakings; — and among other postponements is that of your poems. So much do our personal concerns depend on political issues. The only new book of interest is Emerson's.¹ It was published a day or two since and could not have appeared at a fitter time, for it is full of counsels to rebuke cowardice, to confirm the moral principles of men, and to base them firmly on the unshaken foundations of eternal laws. It is a book to be read more than once. It is full of real wisdom, but the wisdom is mingled with the individual notions of its author, which are not always wise. . . .

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¹ The Conduct of Life.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 212-5

Arthur H. Clough to Charles Eliot Norton, July 4, 1861

London: July 4, 1861.

On coming back from abroad ten days ago I received two letters from you, one of which I had received by copy from my wife at Athens. Many thanks for them; they were very interesting, and I hope you will not be discouraged by my brief acknowledgments from writing further. I am still invalided, and am to go abroad again the day after to-morrow. I have achieved a good deal already, having seen Athens and Constantinople. I was half-tempted to come over to pay you the visit you so kindly proposed, but I should have had to return early in September, and I hope some year to spend a September on your side. I have just made a call on a former acquaintance in America, Miss E. H., of Concord, who brought me a letter from Emerson moreover. She tells me that in New England, she believes, people do not expect that the Southern States will ever be brought back into the Union, and that it is not the object simply to make them return; it being indeed hardly possible that the States, North and South, should ever again live together in union, but that the war is rather in vindication of the North and its rights, which have been trampled upon by the South. Is this true, in your judgment? Certainly it does seem hardly conceivable that South Carolina should ever return. On what terms then would the North be willing to make peace, and what conditions would it require in limine before entering upon the question of separation?

As for the feeling here, you must always expect statesmen to be cold in their language, and the newspapers impertinent and often brutal. Beyond this, I think people here had been led to suppose at the outset that the Northern feeling was strong against civil war, (and so it was I suppose,) and that the principle of separation was conceded; the indignation being merely at the mode adopted for obtaining it. And the attack on Fort Sumter which caused so sudden a revulsion of feeling with you was naturally attended with no such change here. But coexisting with all this, I believe there is a great amount of strong feeling in favour of the North.

Technically we are wrong, I suppose, and as a matter of feeling, we are guilty of an outrage in recognising the South as a belligerent power, but as a matter of convenience between your government and ours, I suppose the thing is best as it is.

Miss H. will take to Emerson four photographs of Rowse's picture of me; one for you: it may be better than nothing.

My nervous energy is pretty well spent for to-day, so I must come to a stop. I have leave till November, and by that time I hope I shall be strong again for another good spell of work.

Lord Campbell's death is rather the characteristic death of the English political man. In the cabinet, on the bench, and at a dinner party, busy, animated, and full of effort to-day, and in the early morning a vessel has burst. It is a wonder they last so long. I shall resign if it proves much of a strain to me to go on at this official work. Farewell.

SOURCE: Arthur Hugh Clough, Letters and Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, p. 316-7

Arthur H. Clough to Charles Eliot Norton, March 10, 1861

Freshwater, Isle of Wight: March 10, 1861.

I hope your being at home may be understood to prove that you are a good deal stronger. I am a good deal better myself, and have no very good excuse for not writing beyond the advice which is given me to indulge in laziness. Had I had six months' leave proclaimed to me from beforehand, I should have naturally thought of going over to see you in America; but, what with water-cure and other things, I don't think I shall even go abroad to the Continent for more than a month.

I am glad to hear you speak so hopefully of your future much, however, will I suppose in any case depend on the good sense and character of your new President and his advisers. I for my part should suppose that an attempt to retake the federal forts would be unwise. You are strong enough not to need it.

Emerson's new essays were to me quite as good as, if not better than, any former volume. The reviews are no great index of public interest unless you collect a good number. There are now so many local reviews, and people with us depend so very little on Athenaeums and Literary Gazettes, or even Saturday Reviews. An article in the 'Times' is the really important thing for a book to get with a view to sale, but even that proves little as to people's interest. There is a vast deal of anti-mysticism, and of a dense, supercilious, narrow-minded common sense, which of course speaks pretty loudly.

SOURCE: Arthur Hugh Clough, Letters and Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, p. 301-2

Arthur H. Clough to Charles Eliot Norton, December 5, 1859

Council Office: December 5.

We are here in a state of rifle fever, which I do not think will be allayed by the imperial smooth words. Palmerston is not to go to the Congress, and France, I fear, will do as she pleases.

I was glad to have your account of Brown. His behaviour before his death struck me quite in the way in which you regard it: nothing could be plainer, and more composed and upright.

SOURCE: Arthur Hugh Clough, Letters and Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, p. 294

Charles Eliot Norton to Arthur H. Clough, December 6, 1859

Shady Hill, 6 December, 1859.

. . . Have you read the accounts of John Brown's invasion of Virginia, of his capture, trial, and death? If so you have been greatly interested in the man. His scheme was a mad one; he was legally punishable with death; but he is not the less a martyr in the cause of freedom. The whole affair has excited the deepest feeling both at the North and the South. Its results promise to be great, — whether good or not Heaven only knows. John Brown's name will be famous in our history, — and perhaps even more than famous. He is of a race of men rare in all time and lands, rare especially in our days; he was one of those men who thought themselves commissioned to do the work of the Lord, — and were ready to meet death or whatsoever else in the cause. Pray read his speech at the close of his trial; and read too the account of his death. We have had nothing like it since the days of the Regicides. He mounts his coffin to be driven to the gallows, and looks round on the landscape, and says, “What a fine prospect!” There has been no rhetoric or mere words in his talk; and the letters he has written from prison add a noble chapter to the volume of the literature of the cell.¹ . . .

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¹ Above Norton's mantelpiece in his study at Ashfield, there hung a photograph of Lincoln, and, near it, one of “Old Brown.”

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 196-7