Gerry W. Cochrane and John M. Forbes to Abraham Lincoln, December 24, 1862

December 24. 1862

To Abraham Lincoln

President of the United States

Washington

Sir.

The undersigned, as Electors performed two years ago the pleasant duty of certifying to your appointment to the Chief Magistracy of this country by the choice of the People.

Believing that the approaching new year brings with it a crisis in the life of the Nation, they beg leave to congratulate you upon your having begun the greatest act in American history; the emancipation of three millions of blacks and of five millions of whites from the power of an aristocratic class.

It is admitted upon all sides that the transfer of three millions of Slaves, from the productive force of the Rebels to that of the loyal States would instantly end the Rebellion; it follows that each Slave so transferred will proportionately contribute to that end.

It is only a question of time when emancipation must take place, and it is believed, that no time can occur, so safe from violence as when the Slaves have the Strength of the Union to rally behind, and when a large army of the Rebels can & ought to be thus withdrawn, from opposing the laws to the more fitting work of keeping order around their own homes. For these & other reasons the undersigned believe that Emancipation is the weapon which, efficiently used can not only strike at the heart of the Rebellion but lay the foundation for a true & permanent republic; a consummation even more beneficent to the moral & material interests of the people of the South, than to those of the North.

They therefore earnestly pray you to complete now your great work, by taking every possible measure to carry into practical effect the promise of your proclamation of 22d September, and especially by demanding of every person in the Military Naval & civil service of your government to obey strictly the regulations by which you will enforce your now settled policy.

They believe that by so doing you will place yourself among the great benefactors of your country & of the human race, and that you will live in future ages by the side of the Father of his Country – George Washington.

Respectfully Submitted

J. M Forbes}
}	Electors
Gerry. W. Cochrane}

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 347-8; This letter can be located amongst the Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

William Cullen Bryant to Dr. Dewey, August 17, 1862

August 17, 1862

 . . . I must answer your letter a little. Neither you nor I understand war nor medicine ; but of medicine we know enough not to employ a physician who regularly doses all his patients, nor one who proposes to cure an inflammation of the bowels by poulticing the little finger, I judge of the merits of military men in the same way. Again, I have a right to choose between the opinions of men well acquainted with the military art, and I know that officers of great merit hold that McClellan has mismanaged the campaign throughout. Pope, one of the most successful of them, does so. (I know this;) so does Wadsworth; so does General Hitchcock, a veteran officer personally kind toward McClellan, and disposed to judge him candidly (I speak from personal knowledge); so also, I have reason to believe, do hundreds of other officers.

What the “Evening Post” has said in regard to the course taken by the Government I said in still stronger terms to Mr. Lincoln himself ten days since, when I went to Washington for the purpose. With me was Mr. K—, a millionaire (or millionary — which?) of this city, who said to him that unless the war was prosecuted with greater energy — far greater — and the confiscation and emancipation act carried into vigorous execution, not sixty days would elapse before the Government securities would be so depressed that the administration would not have a dollar to carry on the war.

Mr. Lincoln knows that McClellan is wanting in some of the necessary qualities of a general officer. He said to Mr. Field: “McClellan is one of the most accomplished officers in all the army. No man organizes or prepares an army better, but when the time for action comes he is greatly deficient.”

As to emancipation, I have none of the fears which you entertain, and the conduct of the blacks already freed — more than fifty thousand of them — convinces me that there is no ground for them. Their peaceful and docile behavior assures me that we have neither “wild disorder nor massacre to dread.” The rebellion has buried its roots so firmly into the social system of the South that they must both be pulled up together.

You anticipate a bad effect upon the recruiting service from such criticisms on the conduct of the Government as the “Evening Post” had thought it necessary to make. The mischief was done before the “Evening Post” began to criticise. A gloomy and discouraged feeling prevailed, throughout this city and this State at least, which seemed to make the raising of the necessary number of volunteers hopeless. The only remedy that the case seemed to admit was the adoption by the press and by public speakers of a more vigorous style of animadversion on the conduct of the war, and the representations of disinterested persons made personally to the President. Mayor Opdyke, William Curtis Noyes, Dr. Charles King, and many others, singly or in pairs, have visited Washington for this purpose. There is not one of these men to whom such conclusions as you have reached would not be matter of exceeding surprise. They have all regarded the cause of the Union as drifting to ruin if instant and powerful means were not applied to give things a new direction. I believe their representations, and the language held in public meetings, and to some degree also the comments of the press, have had a certain effect. I hear this morning that it was Pope who recommended Halleek to the President as a fit person to force McClellan into action, and to push on the war with vigor. Other proceedings of the administration within a few days give token that it is waking to a sense of the danger we are in from causes very much like those of which you speak.

I have written thus largely because I had some things to say which I cannot print. If I could, I would have received your rebuke without a reply.

SOURCE: Parke Godwin, A Biography of William Cullen Bryant, Volume 1, p. 176-8

Salmon P. Chase to Joshua R. Giddings,* October 20, 1846

Oct. 20, 1846.

my Dear Sir My engagements have been such since I received your last letter with the resolutions that I have had no time to write or think as I could wish, — I saw by a letter from Mr. Atkins published in the Cleveland American that you read my letter to you at a meeting in Hartford and I have thought it a duty to those with whom I have acted for several years past to write to that paper stating my true position so as to prevent the dissemination among liberty men of misapprehensions under which Mr. Atkins labored and which it was natural enough he should receive from the letter unconnected with the whole correspondence.—I have faild. in expressing myself with as much clearness as I wish^d, if I have convey^d, the idea to yr. mind that I am prepar^d. to accede to any political union, wch. is not based upon the substantial principles & measures of the Liberty men. What I am willing to give up is names, separate organizations, what I am not willing to give up is Principle & Consistent action both with reference to men & measures in accordance with principle. — I have no objectⁿ, to the reading of my letter — no complaint to make on that score — for I do not wish to conceal any sentiments w^h. it contain^d, but I fear that it was not sufficiently explicit in its terms to be free from the risk of misapprehension, when read separate from the correspondence of w^h. it was a part. In relation to your resolutions I will say that in my judgm^t. they are good, so far as they go; but they do not go far enough if intended as a basis of a political organization separate from existing parties. If intended merely as resolutions to guide the action of those who adopt them in their existing political relations, they are certainly a great way in advance of any positions heretofore takⁿ by bodies of men in the old parties & it is very desirable to augment the number of adherents to them in those parties. I would except only to one of them, viz. the resolution relating to new states, & to this only so far as its phraseology is concern^d. It seems by implication to deny the right of Congress to admit new states if foreign at the time into the union. I have no doubt that this may be done constitutionally, perhaps not by joint resolution but certainly by the concurrent action of the treaty making & legislative powers of the government. My objection to the introduction of such states is founded entirely in other considerations than defect of power, indeed so far as any such introduction has yet taken place exclusively on the consideration of slavery. I enclose you a liberty creed w^h. was drawn up by me & has been widely circulated & everywhere endorsed by the Liberty presses. May I ask of you to consider the several articles of it attentively & give me your assent or dissent to them, severally with a brief statement of the reasons of your dissent why you do dissent — Let me state to you briefly my idea of the grounds w^h. in my judgm^t. sh^d. determine the course of an honest man in political action in reference to the subject of slavery. If I were a whig in the whig party & believed that by the action of that party the extinction of slavery & the overthrow of the slave power could be most speedily achieved I would act with & in that party supporting however for office only anti slavery men. If I were a Democrat in the democrtic party, & entertained the same belief as to that party as above stated in regard to the whig party I would act with & in the democratic party supporting however for office only anti slavery men.

If I were persuaded (as I am) that there is now no reasonable prospect that either the whig or democratic party constituted as both are of slaveholders & nonslaveholders & as national parties admitting no anti slavery article into their creed & much less any avowed anti slavery measures into their action can at present be relied on for cordial, inflexible, & uncompromising hostilities to slavery & the slave power, I could (& of course do) abstain from cooperation with either of those parties & act with & in the only party with w^h. I agree as to principle & action in relation to the paramount, political question before the country.—What is y^r. objection to this. — Recurring to your resolutions let me ask if you do not perceive a great practical difficulty growing out of the terms “satisfactory evidence” &c? You on the Reserve, Whigs, Liberty men, & democrats thought there was satisfactory evidence that Mr. Bebb was hostile to whole the black code.¹ The Cleveland American gave him full credit for such hostility & yet in Mercer Co. where of all places on earth Mr. Bebb should have been outspoken in denunciation of the cruel outrages on the blacks & of the laws which lead to such outrages we find him most materially changing his ground, stating as a ground for the repeal of the testimony clause the expectation of a slaveholder that he could then get at abolitionists who aided the escape of fugitive slaves by means of their testimony when recaptured, & actually proposing a law to prevent colonization of colored people in Ohio, & to that end, suggesting a law to prevent them from holding real estate! He reiterated these views at Dayton with additions. Would these speeches have been satisfactory evidence on the reserve of opposition to the Black laws?

Could he have been elected had he avowed these sentiments on the Reserve or in such time that authentic reports could have reached the Reserve? The effect of such a course as this upon the confidence of Liberty men &. others in Anti-Slavery men acting with the whigs, however honestly cannot fail to be appreciated by you.

_______________

* From letter book 6, pp. 42. Extracts from this letter were printed by Schuckers, p. 100.

¹ For an account of the Ohio black laws and the struggle for their repeal, see The Negro in Ohio, 1802-1872, by C. J. Hickok, A. M. Published by Western Reserve University, Cleveland, 1896.

SOURCE: Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1902, Vol. 2, p. 108-11

John M. Forbes to Joshua Bates, of Baring Bros. & Co., London., November 11, 1862

Boston, November 11, 1862.

My Dear Mr. Bates, — Nothing from you lately; and I suppose even your steady nerves and heart are shaken by our long supineness. We have awaked at last, and if we had only a William Pitt to put over our cabinet, we should be all right.

Mr. Chase, I hear, shows some signs of returning sanity by inquiring (outside of the clique who had his ear) as to his future course. Our friend Hooper has a good deal to answer for in leading him into the legal tender labyrinth; it will take wiser heads to guide him out. We are not quite lost yet, and if the report due next month shows that he has sounded the depths of the currency issue as a resource, and is coming back to sound principles of finance, we may, with large revenues from our tax bill (reported to be very large), and with some military vigor, still save ourselves from utter ruin, — financially, I mean.

Somehow or other, in spite of weak-kneed friends and open traitors at home, and a sharp enemy outside, we can and will keep the old ship together.

To fail now is to establish the most dangerous military government for our neighbors that the world ever saw. Five or six millions of whites despising labor, and having a black slave race to work for them, while they fight! If we disarm, with such a neighbor unconquered, and our so-called democracy ready to ally itself with them, we may as well give up our government at once and return to feudalism.

I hope you will give me the benefit of a hint now and then from your deep stores of financial experience, and am, with best regards to Mrs. Bates,

Yours, very truly,

J. M. Forbes.

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 339-40

Diary of William Howard Russell: May 20, 1861

I left Mobile in the steamer Florida for New Orleans this morning at eight o'clock. She was crowded with passengers, in uniform. In my cabin was a notice of the rules and regulations of the steamer. No. 6 was as follows: “All slave servants must be cleared at the Custom House. Passengers having slaves will please report as soon as they come on board.”

A few miles from Mobile the steamer, turning to the right, entered one of the narrow channels which perforate the whole of the coast, called “Grant's Pass.” An ingenious person has rendered it navigable by an artificial cut; but as he was not an universal philanthropist, and possibly may have come from north of the Tweed, he further erected a series of barriers, which can only be cleared by means of a little pepper-castor iron lighthouse; and he charges toll on all passing vessels. A small island at the pass, just above water-level, about twenty yards broad and one hundred and fifty yards long, was being fortified. Some of our military friends landed here ; and it required a good deal of patriotism to look cheerfully at the prospect of remaining cooped up among the mosquitoes in a box, on this miserable sand-bank, which a shell would suffice to blow into atoms.

Having passed this channel, our steamer proceeded up a kind of internal sea, formed by the shore, on the right hand and on the left, by a chain almost uninterrupted of reefs covered with sand, and exceedingly narrow, so that the surf of the ocean rollers at the other side could be seen through the foliage of the pine-trees which line them. On our right the endless pines closed up the land view of the horizon; the beach was pierced by creeks without number, called bayous; and it was curious to watch the white sails of the little schooners gliding in and out among the trees along the green meadows that seemed to stretch as an impassable barrier to their exit. Immense troops of pelicans flapped over the sea, dropping incessantly on the fish which abounded in the inner water; and long rows of the same birds stood digesting their plentiful meals on the white beach by the ocean foam.

There was some anxiety in the passengers' minds, as it was reported that the United States cruisers had been seen inside, and that they had even burned the batteries on Ship Island. We saw nothing of a character more formidable than coasting craft and a return steamer from New Orleans till we approached the entrance to Pontchartrain, when a large schooner, which sailed like a witch and was crammed with men, attracted our attention. Through the glass I could make out two guns on her deck, and quite reason enough for any well-filled merchantman sailing under the Stars and Stripes to avoid her close companionship.

The approach to New Orleans is indicated by large hamlets and scattered towns along the seashore, hid in the piney woods, which offer a retreat to the merchants and their families from the fervid heat of the unwholesome city in summer time. As seen from the sea, these sanitary settlements have a picturesque effect, and an air of charming freshness and lightness. There are detached villas of every variety of architecture in which timber can be constructed, painted in the brightest hues — greens, and blues, and rose tints — each embowered in magnolias and rhododendrons. From every garden a very long and slender pier, terminated by a bathing-box, stretches into the shallow sea; and the general aspect of these houses, with the light domes and spires of churches rising above the lines of white railings set in the dark green of the pines, is light and novel. To each of these cities there is a jetty, at two of which we touched, and landed newspapers, received or discharged a few bales of goods, and were off again.

Of the little crowd assembled on each, the majority were blacks — the whites, almost without exception, in uniform, and armed. A near approach did not induce me to think that any agencies less powerful than epidemics and summer-heats could render Pascagoula, Passchristian, Mississippi City, and the rest of these settlements very eligible residences for people of an active turn of mind.

The livelong day my fellow-passengers never ceased talking politics, except when they were eating and drinking, because the horrible chewing and spitting are not at all incompatible with the maintenance of active discussion. The fiercest of them all was a thin, fiery-eyed little woman, who at dinner expressed a fervid desire for bits of “Old Abe” — his ear, his hair; but whether for the purpose of eating or as curious relics, she did not enlighten the company.

After dinner there was some slight difficulty among the military gentlemen, though whether of a political or personal character, I could not determine; but it was much aggravated by the appearance of a six-shooter on the scene, which, to my no small perturbation, was presented in a right line with my berth, out of the window of which I was looking at the combatants. I am happy to say the immediate delivery of the fire was averted by an amicable arrangement that the disputants should meet at the St. Charles Hotel at twelve o'clock on the second day after their arrival, in order to fix time, place, and conditions of a more orthodox and regular encounter.

At night the steamer entered a dismal canal, through a swamp which is infamous as the most mosquito haunted place along the infested shore; the mouths of the Mississippi themselves being quite innocent, compared to the entrance of Lake Pontchartrain. When I woke up at daylight, I found the vessel lying alongside a wharf with a railway train alongside, which is to take us to the city of New Orleans, six miles distant.

A village of restaurants or “restaurants,” as they are called here, and of bathing boxes has grown up around the terminus; all the names of the owners, the notices and sign-boards being French. Outside the settlement the railroad passes through a swamp, like an Indian jungle, through which the over-flowings of the Mississippi creep in black currents. The spires of New Orleans rise above the underwood and semi-tropical vegetation of this swamp. Nearer to the city lies a marshy plain, in which flocks of cattle, up to the belly in the soft earth are floundering among the clumps of vegetation. The nearer approach to New Orleans by rail lies through a suburb of exceedingly broad lanes, lined on each side by rows of miserable mean one-storied houses, inhabited, if I am to judge from the specimens I saw, by a miserable and sickly population.

A great number of the men and women had evident traces of negro blood in their veins, and of the purer blooded whites many had the peculiar look of the fishy-fleshy population of the Levantine towns, and all were pale and lean. The railway terminus is marked by a dirty, barrack-like shed in the city. Selecting one of the numerous tumble-down hackney carriages which crowded the street outside the station, I directed the man to drive me to the house of Mr. Mure, the British consul, who had been kind enough to invite me as his guest for the period of my stay in New Orleans.

The streets are badly paved, as those of most of the American cities, if not all that I have ever been in, but in other respects they are more worthy of a great city than are those of New York There is an air thoroughly French about the people — cafes, restaurants, billiard-rooms abound, with oyster and lager-bier saloons interspersed. The shops are all magazines; the people in the streets are speaking French, particularly the negroes, who are going out shopping with their masters and mistresses, exceedingly well dressed, noisy, and not unhappy looking. The extent of the drive gave an imposing idea of the size of New Orleans — the richness of some of the shops, the vehicles in the streets, and the multitude of well-dressed people on the pavements, an impression of its wealth and the comfort of the inhabitants, The Confederate flag was flying from the public buildings and from many private houses. Military companies paraded through the streets, and a large proportion of men were in uniform.

In the day I drove through the city, delivered letters of introduction, paid visits, and examined the shops and the public places; but there is such a whirl of secession and politics surrounding one it is impossible to discern much of the outer world.

Whatever may be the number of the Unionists or of the non-secessionists, a pressure too potent to be resisted has been directed by the popular party against the friends of the federal government. The agent of Brown Brothers, of Liverpool and New York, has closed their office and is going away in consequence of the intimidation of the mob, or as the phrase is here, the “excitement of the citizens,” on hearing of the subscription made by the firm to the New York fund, after Sumter had been fired upon. Their agent in Mobile has been compelled to adopt the same course. Other houses follow their example, but as most business transactions are over for the season, the mercantile community hope the contest will be ended before the next season, by the recognition of Southern Independence.

The streets are full of Turcos, Zouaves, Chasseurs; walls are covered with placards of volunteer companies; there are Pickwick rifles, La Fayette/Beauregard, MacMahon guards, Irish, German, Italian and Spanish and native volunteers, among whom the Meagher rifles, indignant with the gentleman from whom they took their name, because of his adhesion to the North, are going to rebaptize themselves and to seek glory under one more auspicious. In fact, New Orleans looks like a suburb of the camp at Chalons. Tailors are busy night and day making uniforms. I went into a shop with the consul for some shirts — the mistress and all her seamstresses were busy preparing flags as hard as the sewing-machine could stitch them, and could attend to no business for the present. The Irish population, finding themselves unable to migrate northwards, and being without work, have rushed to arms with enthusiasm to support Southern institutions, and Mr. John Mitchell and Mr. Meagher stand opposed to each other in hostile camps.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 227-31

Diary of William Howard Russell: May 12, 1861

I was busy making arrangements to get to Pensacola, and Fort Pickens, all day. The land journey was represented as being most tedious and exceedingly comfortless in all respects, through a waste of sand, in which we ran the chance of being smothered or lost. And then I had set my mind on seeing Fort Pickens as well as Pensacola, and it would be difficult, to say the least of it, to get across from an enemy's camp to the Federal fortress, and then return again. The United States squadron blockaded the port of Pensacola, but I thought it likely they would permit me to run in to visit Fort Pickens, and that the Federals would allow me to sail thence across to General Bragg, as they might be assured I would not communicate any information of what I had seen in my character as neutral to any but the journal in Europe, which I represented, and in the interests of which I was bound to see and report all that I could as to the state of both parties. It was, at all events, worth while to make the attempt, and after a long search I heard of a schooner which was ready for the voyage at a reasonable rate, all things considered.

Mr. Forsyth asked, if I had any objection to take with me three gentlemen of Mobile, who were anxious to be of the party, as they wanted to see their friends at Pensacola, where it was believed a “fight” was to come off immediately. Since I came South I have seen the daily announcement that “Braxton Bragg is ready,” and his present state of preparation must be beyond all conception. But here was a difficulty. I told Mr. Forsyth that I could not possibly assent to any persons coming with me who were not neutrals, or prepared to adhere to the obligations of neutrals. There was a suggestion that I should say these gentlemen were my friends, but as I had only seen two of them on board the steamer yesterday, I could not accede to that idea. “Then if you are asked if Mr. Ravesies is your friend, you will say he is not.” “Certainly.” “But surely you don't wish to have Mr. Ravesies hanged?” “No, I do not, and I shall do nothing to cause him to be hanged; but if he meets that fate by his own act, I can't help it. I will not allow him to accompany me under false pretences.”

At last it was agreed that Mr. Ravesies and his friends, Mr. Bartre and Mr. Lynes, being in no way employed by or connected with the Confederate Government, should have a place in the little schooner which we had picked out at the quayside and hired for the occasion, and go on the voyage with the plain understanding that they were to accept all the consequences of being citizens of Mobile.

Mr. Forsyth, Mr. Ravesies, and a couple of gentlemen dined with me in the evening. After dinner., Mr. Forsyth, who, as mayor of the town, is the Executive of the Vigilance Committee, took a copy of “Harper's Illustrated Paper,” which is a very poor imitation of the “London Illustrated News,” and called my attention to the announcement that Mr. Moses, their special artist, was travelling with me in the South, as well as to an engraving, which purported to be by Moses aforesaid. I could only say that I knew nothing of the young designer, except what he told me, and that he led me to believe he was furnishing sketches to the “London News.” As he was in the hotel, though he did not live with me, I sent for him, and the young gentleman, who was very pale and agitated on being shown the advertisement and sketch, declared that he had renounced all connection with Harper, that he was sketching for the “Illustrated London News,” and that the advertisement was contrary to fact, and utterly unknown to him; and so he was let go forth, and retired uneasily. After dinner I went to the Bienville Club. “Rule No. 1” is, “No gentleman shall be admitted in a state of intoxication.” The club very social, very small, and very hospitable.

Later paid my respects to Mrs. Forsyth, whom I found anxiously waiting for news of her young son, who had gone off to join the Confederate Army. She told me that nearly all the ladies in Mobile are engaged in making cartridges, and in preparing lint or clothing for the army. Not the smallest fear is entertained for the swarming black population.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 197-8

Diary of William Howard Russell: May 10, 1861

The cabin of one of these steamers, in the month of May, is not favorable to sleep. The wooden beams of the engines creak and scream “consumedly,” and the great engines themselves throb as if they would break through their  thin, pulse covers of pine, — and the whistle sounds, and the calliope shrieks out “Dixie” incessantly. So, when I was up and dressed, breakfast was over, and I had an opportunity of seeing the slaves on board, male and female, acting as stewards and stewardesses, at their morning meal, which they took with much good spirits and decorum. They were nicely dressed — clean and neat. I was forced to admit to myself that their Ashantee grandsires and grandmothers, or their Kroo and Dahomey progenitors were certainly less comfortable and well clad, and that these slaves had other social advantages, though I could not recognize the force of the Bishop of Georgia's assertion, that from slavery must come the sole hope of, and machinery for, the evangelization of Africa. I confess I would not give much for the influence of the stewards and stewardesses in Christianizing the blacks.

The river, the scenery, and the scenes were just the same as yesterday's — high banks, cotton-slides, wooding stations, cane brakes, —and a very miserable negro population, if the specimens of women and children at the landings fairly represented the mass of the slaves. They were in strong contrast to the comfortable, well-dressed domestic slaves on board, and it can well be imagined there is a wide difference between the classes, and that those condemned to work in the open fields must suffer exceedingly.

A passenger told us the captain's story. A number of planters, the narrator among them, subscribed a thousand dollars each to get up a vessel for the purpose of running a cargo of slaves, with the understanding they were to pay so much for the vessel, and so much per head if she succeeded, and so much if she was taken or lost. The vessel made her voyage to the coast, was laden with native Africans, and in due time made her appearance off Mobile. The collector heard of her, but, oddly enough, the sheriff was not about at the time, the United States Marshal was away, and as the vessel could no[t] be seen next morning, it was fair to suppose she had gone up the river, or somewhere or another. But it so happened that Captain Maher, then commanding a river steamer called the Czar (a name once very appropriate for the work, but since the serf emancipation rather out of place), found himself in the neighborhood of the brig about nightfall; next morning, indeed, the Czar was at her moorings in the river; but Captain Maher began to grow rich, he had fine negroes fresh run on his land, and bought fresh acres, and finally built the “Southern Republic.” The planters asked him for their share of the slaves. Captain Maher laughed pleasantly; he did not understand what they meant. If he had done anything wrong, they had their legal remedy. They wrere completely beaten; for they could not have recourse to the tribunals in a case which rendered them liable to capital punishment. And so Captain Maher, as an act of grace, gave them a few old niggers, and kept the rest of the cargo.

It was worth while to see the leer with which he listened to this story about himself. “Wall now! You think them niggers I’ve abord came, from Africa! I'll show you. Jist come up here, Bully!" A boy of some twelve years of age, stout, fat, nearly naked, came up to us; his color was jet black, his wool close as felt, his cheeks were marked with regular parallel scars, and his teeth very white, looked as if they had been filed to a point, his belly was slightly protuberant, and his chest was marked with tracings of tattoo marks.

“What's your name, sir?”

“My name Bully.”

"Where were you born?"

"Me born Sout Karliner, sar!'

“There, you see he wasn't taken from Africa," exclaimed the Captain, knowingly. "I've a lot of these black South Caroliny niggers abord, haven't I, Bully?”

“Yas, sar.”

“Are you happy, Bully?”

“Yas, sar.”

"Show how you're happy."

Here the boy rubbed his stomach, and grinning with delight, said, “Yummy! yummy! plenty belly full.”

“That's what I call a real happy feelosophical chap,” quoth the Captain. “I guess you've got a lot in your country can't at their stomachs and say, ‘yummy, yummy, plenty belly full!’”

“Where did he get those marks on his face?”

“Oh, them? Wall, it's a way them nigger women has of marking their children to know them; isn't it, Bully?”

“Yas, sar! me 'spose so!”

“And on his chest?”

“Wall, r'ally I do b'l'eve them's marks agin the smallpox.”

“Why are his teeth filed?”

“Ah, there now! You'd never have guessed it; Bully done that himself, for the greater ease of biting his vittels.”

In fact, the lad, and a good many of the hands, were the results of Captain Maher's little sail in the Czar.

“We're obleeged to let 'em in some times to keep up the balance agin the niggers you run into Canaydy.”

From 1848 to 1852 there were no slaves run; but since the migrations to Canada and the personal liberty laws, it has been found profitable to run them. There is a bucolic ferocity about these Southern people which will stand them good stead in the shock of battle. How the Spartans would have fought against any barbarians who came to emancipate their slaves, or the Romans have smitten those who would manumit slave and creditor together!

To-night, on the lower deck, amid wood fagots, and barrels, a dance of negroes was arranged by an enthusiast, who desired to show how “happy they were.” That is the favorite theme of the Southerners; the gallant Captain Maher becomes quite eloquent when he points to Bully's prominent “yummy,” and descants on the misery of his condition if he had been left to the precarious chances of obtaining such developments in his native land; then turns a quid, and, as if uttering some sacred refrain to the universal hymn of the South, says, ‘Yes, sir, they're the happiest people on the face of the airth!”

There was a fiddler, and also a banjo-player, who played uncouth music to the clumsiest of dances, which it would be insulting to compare to the worst Irish jig; and the men with immense gravity and great effusion of sudor, shuffled and cut and heeled and buckled to each other with an overwhelming solemnity, till the rum-bottle warmed them up to the lighter graces of the dance, when they became quite overpowering. “Yes, sir, jist look at them, how they're enjoying it; they're the happiest people on the face of the earth.” When “wooding” and firing up, they don't seem to be in the possession of the same exquisite felicity.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 186-9

A Woman's Diary Of The Siege Of Vicksburg: May 1, 1863

It is settled at last that we shall spend the time of siege in Vicksburg. Ever since we were deprived of our cave, I had been dreading that H–– would suggest sending me to the country, where his relatives lived. As he could not leave his position and go also without being conscripted, and as I felt certain an army would get between us, it was no part of my plan to be obedient. A shell from one of the practicing mortars brought the point to an issue yesterday and settled it. Sitting at work as usual, listening to the distant sound of bursting shells, apparently aimed at the court-house, there suddenly came a nearer explosion; the house shook, and a tearing sound was followed by terrified screams from the kitchen. I rushed thither, but met in the hall the cook's little girl America, bleeding from a wound in the forehead, and fairly dancing with fright and pain, while she uttered fearful yells. I stopped to examine the wound, and her mother bounded in, her black face ashy from terror. "Oh! Miss V––, my child is killed and the kitchen tore up." Seeing America was too lively to be a killed subject, I consoled Martha and hastened to the kitchen. Evidently a shell had exploded just outside, sending three or four pieces through. When order was restored I endeavored to impress on Martha's mind the necessity for calmness and the uselessness of such excitement. Looking round at the close of the lecture, there stood a group of Confederate soldiers laughing heartily at my sermon and the promising audience I had. They chimed in with a parting chorus:

“Yes, it's no use hollerin, old lady.”

“Oh! H––,” I exclaimed, as he entered soon after, “America is wounded.”

“That is no news; she has been wounded by traitors long ago.”

“Oh, this is real, living, little, black America; I am not talking in symbols. Here are the pieces of shell, the first bolt of the coming siege.”

“Now you see,” he replied, “that this house will be but paper to mortar-shells. You must go in the country.”

The argument was long, but when a woman is obstinate and eloquent, she generally conquers. I came off victorious, and we finished preparations for the siege to-day. Hiring a man to assist, we descended to the wine-cellar, where the accumulated bottles told of the “banquet-hall deserted,” the spirit and glow of the festive hours whose lights and garlands were dead, and the last guest long since departed. To empty this cellar was the work of many hours. Then in the safest corner a platform was laid for our bed, and in another portion one arranged for Martha. The dungeon, as I call it, is lighted only by a trap-door, and is so damp it will be necessary to remove the bedding and mosquito-bars every day. The next question was of supplies. I had nothing left but a sack of rice-flour, and no manner of cooking I had heard or invented contrived to make it eatable. A column of recipes for making delicious preparations of it had been going the rounds of Confederate papers. I tried them all; they resulted only in brick-bats, or sticky paste. H–– sallied out on a hunt for provisions, and when he returned the disproportionate quantity of the different articles obtained provoked a smile. There was a hogshead of sugar, a barrel of sirup, ten pounds of bacon and peas, four pounds of wheat-flour, and a small sack of com-meal, a little vinegar, and actually some spice! The wheat-flour he purchased for ten dollars as a special favor from the sole remaining barrel for sale. We decided that must be kept for sickness. The sack of meal, he said, was a case of corruption, through a special providence to us. There is no more for sale at any price, but, said he, “a soldier who was hauling some of the Government sacks to the hospital offered me this for five dollars, if I could keep a secret. When the meal is exhausted perhaps we can keep alive on sugar. Here are some wax candles; hoard them like gold.” He handed me a parcel containing about two pounds of candles, and left me to arrange my treasures. It would be hard for me to picture the memories those candles called up. The long years melted away, and I

“Trod again my childhood's track

And felt its very gladness.”

In those childish days, whenever came dreams of household splendor or festal rooms or gay illuminations, the lights in my vision were always wax candles burning with a soft radiance that enchanted every scene. * * * And, lo! here on this spring day of '63, with war raging through the land, I was in a fine house, and had my wax candles sure enough, but, alas! they were neither cerulean blue nor rose-tinted, but dirty brown; and when I lighted one, it spluttered and wasted like any vulgar tallow thing, and lighted only a desolate scene in the vast handsome room. They were not so good as the waxen rope we had made in Arkansas. So, with a long sigh for the dreams of youth, I return to the stern present in this besieged town, my only consolation to remember the old axiom, “A city besieged is a city taken,” — so if we live through it we shall be out of the Confederacy. H–– is very tired of having to carry a pass around in his pocket and go every now and then to have it renewed. We have been so very free in America, these restrictions are irksome.

SOURCE: George W. Cable, “A Woman's Diary Of The Siege Of Vicksburg”, The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Vol. XXX, No. 5, September 1885, p. 769-70

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: May 18, 1865

A feeling of sadness hovers over me now, day and night, which no words of mine can express. There is a chance for plenty of character study in this Mulberry house, if one only had the heart for it. Colonel Chesnnt, now ninety-three, blind and deaf, is apparently as strong as ever, and certainly as resolute of will. Partly patriarch, partly grand seigneur, this old man is of a species that we shall see no more — the last of a race of lordly planters who ruled this Southern world, but now a splendid wreck. His manners are unequaled still, but underneath this smooth exterior lies the grip of a tyrant whose will has never been crossed. I will not attempt what Lord Byron says he could not do, but must quote again: “Everybody knows a gentleman when he sees him. I have never met a man who could describe one.” We have had three very distinct specimens of the genus in this house—three generations of gentlemen, each utterly different from the other — father, son, and grandson.

African Scipio walks at Colonel Chesnut's side. He is six feet two, a black Hercules, and as gentle as a dove in all his dealings with the blind old master, who boldly strides forward, striking with his stick to feel where he is going. The Yankees left Scipio unmolested. He told them he was absolutely essential to his old master, and they said, “If you want to stay so bad, he must have been good to you always.” Skip says he was silent, for it “made them mad if you praised your master.”

Sometimes this old man will stop himself, just as he is going off in a fury, because they try to prevent his attempting some feat impossible in his condition of lost faculties. He will ask gently, “I hope that I never say or do anything unseemly! Sometimes I think I am subject to mental aberrations.” At every footfall he calls out, “Who goes there?” If a lady's name is given he uncovers and stands, with hat off, until she passes. He still has the old-world art of bowing low and gracefully.

Colonel Chesnut came of a race that would brook no interference with their own sweet will by man, woman, or devil. But then such manners has he, they would clear any man's character, if it needed it. Mrs. Chesnut, his wife, used to tell us that when she met him at Princeton, in the nineties of the eighteenth century, they called him “the Young Prince.” He and Mr. John Taylor,¹ of Columbia, were the first up-country youths whose parents were wealthy enough to send them off to college.

When a college was established in South Carolina, Colonel John Chesnut, the father of the aforesaid Young Prince, was on the first board of trustees. Indeed, I may say that, since the Revolution of 1776, there has been no convocation of the notables of South Carolina, in times of peace and prosperity, or of war and adversity, in which a representative man of this family has not appeared. The estate has been kept together until now. Mrs. Chesnut said she drove down from Philadelphia on her bridal trip, in a chariot and four — a cream-colored chariot with outriders.

They have a saying here — on account of the large families with which people are usually blessed, and the subdivision of property consequent upon that fact, besides the tendency of one generation to make and to save, and the next to idle and to squander, that there are rarely more than three generations between shirt-sleeves and shirt-sleeves. But these Chesnuts have secured four, from the John Chesnut who was driven out from his father's farm in Virginia by the French and Indians, when that father had been killed at Fort Duquesne,² to the John Chesnut who saunters along here now, the very perfection of a lazy gentleman, who cares not to move unless it be for a fight, a dance, or a fox-hunt.

The first comer of that name to this State was a lad when he arrived after leaving his land in Virginia; and being without fortune otherwise, he went into Joseph Kershaw's grocery shop as a clerk, and the Kershaws, I think, so remember that fact that they have it on their coat-of-arms. Our Johnny, as he was driving me down to Mulberry yesterday, declared himself delighted with the fact that the present Joseph Kershaw had so distinguished himself in our war, that they might let the shop of a hundred years ago rest for a while. '”Upon my soul,” cried the cool captain, “I have a desire to go in there and look at the Kershaw tombstones. I am sure they have put it on their marble tablets that we had an ancestor one day a hundred years ago who was a clerk in their shop.” This clerk became a captain in the Revolution.

In the second generation the shop had so far sunk that the John Chesnut of that day refused to let his daughter marry a handsome, dissipated Kershaw, and she, a spoiled beauty, who could not endure to obey orders when they were disagreeable to her, went up to her room and therein remained, never once coming out of it for forty years. Her father let her have her own way in that; he provided servants to wait upon her and every conceivable luxury that she desired, but neither party would give in.

I am, too, thankful that I am an old woman, forty-two my last birthday. There is so little life left in me now to be embittered by this agony. “Nonsense! I am a pauper,” says my husband, “and I am as smiling and as comfortable as ever you saw me.” “When you have to give up your horses? How then?”

_______________

¹ John Taylor was graduated from Princeton in 1790 and became a planter in South Carolina. He served in Congress from 1806 to 1810, and in the latter year was chosen to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate, caused by the resignation of Thomas Sumter. In 1826 he was chosen Governor of South Carolina. He died in 1832.

¹ Fort Duquesne stood at the junction of the Monongahela and Alleghany Rivers. Captain Trent, acting for the Ohio Company, with some Virginia militiamen, began to build this fort in February, 1754. On April 17th of the same year, 700 Canadians and French forced him to abandon the work. The French then completed the fortress and named it Fort Duquesne. The unfortunate expedition of General Braddock, in the summer of 1755, was an attempt to retake the fort, Braddock's defeat occurring eight miles east of it. In 1758 General Forbes marched westward from Philadelphia and secured possession of the place, after the French, alarmed at his approach, had burned it. Forbes gave it the name of Pittsburg.

SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 390-3

Diary of William Howard Russell: May 4, 1861

In the morning I took a drive about the city, which is loosely built in detached houses over a very pretty undulating country covered with wood and fruit-trees. Many good houses of dazzling white, with bright green blinds, verandas, and doors, stand in their own grounds or gardens. In the course of the drive I saw two or three signboards and placards announcing that “Smith & Co. advanced money on slaves, and had constant supplies of Virginian negroes on sale or hire.” These establishments were surrounded by high walls enclosing the slave-pens or large rooms, in which the slaves are kept for inspection. The train for Montgomery started at 9:45 A. M., but I had no time to stop and visit them.

It is evident we are approaching the Confederate capital, for the candidates for office begin to show, and I detected a printed testimonial in my room in the hotel. The country, from Macon, in Georgia, to Montgomery, in Alabama, offers no features to interest the traveller which are not common to the districts already described. It is, indeed, more undulating, and somewhat more picturesque, or less unattractive, but, on the whole, there is little to recommend it, except the natural fertility of the soil. The people are rawer, ruder, bigger — there is the same amount of tobacco chewing and its consequences — and as much swearing or use of expletives. The men are tall, lean, uncouth, but they are not peasants. There are, so far as I have seen, no rustics, no peasantry in America; men dress after the same type, differing only in finer or coarser material; every man would wear, if he could, a black satin waistcoat and a large diamond pin stuck in the front of his shirt, as he certainly has a watch and a gilt or gold chain of some sort or other. The Irish laborer, or the German husbandman is the nearest approach to our Giles Jolter or the Jacques Bonhomme to be found in the States. The mean white affects the style of the large proprietor of slaves or capital as closely as he can; he reads his papers — and, by the by, they are becoming smaller and more whitey-brown as we proceed — and takes his drink with the same air — takes up as much room, and speaks a good deal in the same fashion.

The people are all hearty Secessionists here — the Bars and Stars are flying at the road-stations and from the pine-tops, and there are lusty cheers for Jeff Davis and the Southern Confederacy. Troops are flocking towards Virginia from the Southern States in reply to the march of Volunteers from Northern States to Washington; but it is felt that the steps taken by the Federal Government to secure Baltimore have obviated any chance of successfully opposing the “Lincolnites” going through that city. There is a strong disposition on the part of the Southerners to believe they have many friends in the North, and they endeavor to attach a factious character to the actions of the Government by calling the Volunteers and the war party in the North “Lincolnites,” “Lincoln's Mercenaries,” “Black Republicans,” “Abolitionists,” and the like. The report of an armistice, now denied by Mr. Seward officially, was for some time current, but it is plain that the South must make good its words, and justify its acts by the sword. General Scott would, it was fondly believed, retire from the United States army, and either remain neutral or take command under the Confederate flag, but now that it is certain he will not follow any of these courses, he is assailed in the foulest manner by the press and in private conversation. Heaven help the idol of a democracy!

At one of the junctions General Beauregard, attended by Mr. Manning, and others of his staff, got into the car, and tried to elude observation, but the conductors take great pleasure in unearthing distinguished passengers for the public, and the General was called on for a speech by the crowd of idlers. The General hates speech-making, he told me, and he had besides been bored to death at every station by similar demands. But a man must be popular or he is nothing. So, as next best thing, Governor Manning made a speech in the General's name, in which he dwelt on Southern Rights, Sumter, victory, and abolitiondom, and was carried off from the cheers of his auditors by the train in the midst of an unfinished sentence. There were a number of blacks listening to the Governor, who were appreciative.

Towards evening, having thrown out some slight outworks, against accidental sallies of my fellow-passengers’ saliva, I went to sleep, and woke up at eleven P. M., to hear we were in Montgomery. A very rickety omnibus took the party to the hotel, which was crowded to excess. The General and his friends had one room to themselves. Three gentlemen and myself were crammed into a filthy room which already contained two strangers, and as there were only three beds in the apartment it was apparent that we were intended to “double up considerably;” but after strenuous efforts, a little bribery and cajoling, we succeeded in procuring mattresses to put on the floor, which was regarded by our, neighbors as a proof of miserable aristocratic fastidiousness. Had it not been for the flies, the fleas would have been intolerable, but one nuisance neutralized the other. Then, as to food — nothing could be had in the hotel — but one of the waiters led us to a restaurant, where we selected from a choice bill of fare, which contained, I think, as many odd dishes as ever I saw, some unknown fishes, oyster-plants, ‘possums, raccoons, frogs, and other delicacies, and, eschewing toads and the like, really made a good meal off dirty plates on a vile table-cloth, our appetites being sharpened by the best of condiments.

Colonel Pickett has turned up here, having made his escape from Washington just in time to escape arrest — travelling in disguise on foot through out-of-the-way places till he got among friends.

I was glad when bedtime approached, that I was not among the mattress men. One of the gentlemen in the bed next the door was a tremendous projector in the tobacco juice line: his final rumination ere he sank to repose was a masterpiece of art — a perfect liquid pyrotechny, Roman candles and falling stars. A horrid thought occurred as I gazed and wondered. In case he should in a supreme moment turn his attention my way! — I was only seven or eight yards off, and that might be nothing to him! — I hauled down my mosquito curtain at once, and watched him till, completely satiated, he slept.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 162-4

Edward S. Philbrick: February 19, 1862

Boston, February 19, 1862.

Dear –––: I think you will not be greatly astonished when I tell you that I am off for Port Royal next week. I go under the auspices of the Educational Commission to make myself generally useful in whatever way I can, in reducing some amount of order and industry from the mass of eight or ten thousand contrabands now within our lines there. Boston is wide awake on the subject, and I am determined to see if something can't be done to prove that the blacks will work for other motives than the lash.

The Treasury Department offer subsistence, protection, transportation, and the War Department offer their hearty cooperation to the work undertaken here by private citizens, but can't take any more active part at present for reasons obvious. They ridicule the idea , that these blacks can ever again be claimed by their runaway masters, which is a satisfactory foundation for our exertions in overseeing their labor and general deportment.

You don't know what a satisfaction it is to feel at last that there is a chance for me to do something in this great work that is going on.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Ware Pearson, Editor, Letters from Port Royal Written at the Time of the Civil War, p. 1-2

Edwin Lawrence Godkin: October 26, 1859

The affair has excited profound sensation, and, let me add, profound consternation at the South. The secrecy with which the plot was brought to maturity, the large quantity of arms and ammunition which Brown had collected, the facility with which he surprised the village and seized the armory, the desperate tenacity with which he held it, the resolution displayed by all his followers from first to last, and more than all, Brown's dauntless bearing since his capture, the lofty tone of moral superiority which he assumes over his captors, have made a profound impression on the Southern people. They have long been in the habit of accusing the abolitionists of tampering with the negroes and instigating them to flight or revolt, but it was always supposed to be in an underhand, sneaking way. The popular notion of an abolitionist made him above all things a coward. But here is at least a small taste of servile war, avowedly begun by this detested crew, and what manner of men do they find them to be? Why, 15 of them suffice to raise the whole State of Virginia into wild affright, to call out all its militia, to bring Federal troops from the capital, to seize on an armory, and defend it for two days, and when it was at last stormed by an overwhelming force, 13 of these poltroons are found to have died at their posts, rifle in hand; two only came out alive, these desperately wounded and glorying in their crime. It is no wonder if the South feels that an abyss has opened at their feet.

They first resorted to physical force as a means of extending slavery in Kansas, counting confidently on Northern pusillanimity. But the fighting had not gone on very long before the crust of peaceful habits wore off the Yankees, and the old whining, praying, unconquerable Puritan burst out. The South, as we know, finding they had raised a legion of devils, quitted the field and called for peace; but, when Yankees once begin to fight, it grows on them, and they were not now disposed to cry quits so easily. So the war has been carried into the enemy's territory. The damage done is, to be sure, very trifling. Only half a dozen negroes joined Brown's enterprise, but it is acknowledged that this is mainly to be ascribed to his having chosen a bad scene of action. In that part of Virginia the negroes are few in number, and a large number of them house servants, and the farms comparatively small. Had he thrown himself into the cotton States, amongst the great plantations, where a thousand blacks often toil for a single owner, — tantalized by hard work, exposure, and the overseer's lash, — and offered them arms and bid them follow him, no man dares to say he would have been crushed without untold horrors. The panic his mad effort has spread proves in what horrible insecurity men dwell south of Mason and Dixon's line, what a flaming sword hangs suspended over the whole slave region, and how deeply the white population feels its danger.

I do not defend, and no one can defend, Brown's conduct. His attempt, had it even half succeeded, could only have bred massacre and desolation. If the Southerners had themselves failed to restore order, — and my firm belief is that if a general negro insurrection ever does take place they will fail, — the North would be compelled, if only for humanity's sake, to step in and quell the revolt. If the condition of the blacks is ever to be really improved, it must be peacefully, and gradually. But in spite of all this, no one can see a gray-headed man, who has lost five sons in the cause of freedom, step in, with the last survivor of his family by his side, between the slave and his master, and with his 13 other companions bid defiance to a whole State in the name of the Lord of Hosts, without more or less admiration. There is something grand in the old fellow's madness, and those here at the North who most condemn him, acknowledge him to be well worthy, if not of a better, of a more hopeful cause, and of a happier fate than that which now awaits him.

SOURCE: Rollo Ogden, Editor, Life and Letters of Edwin Lawrence Godkin, Volume 1, p. 190-2

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes to John L. Motley, February 3, 1862

BOSTON, February 3, 1862.

. . . We are the conquerors of nature, they¹ of nature's weaker children. We thrive on reverses and disappointments. I have never believed they could endure them. Like Prince Rupert's drop, the unannealed fabric of rebellion shuts an explosive element in its resisting shell that will rend it in pieces as soon as its tail, not its head, is fairly broken off. That is what I think — I, safe prophet of a private correspondence, free to be convinced of my own ignorance and presumption by events as they happen, and to prophesy again; for what else do we live for but to guess the future, in small things or great, that we may help to shape it or ourselves to it? Your last letter was so full of interest by the expression of your own thoughts and the transcripts of those of your English friends, especially the words of John Bright,—one of the two foreigners that I want to see and thank, the other being Count Gasparin, — that I feel entirely inadequate to make any fitting return for it. I meet a few wise persons, who for the most part know little; some who know a good deal, but are not wise. I was at a dinner at Parker's the other day, where Governor Andrew and Emerson and various unknown dingy-linened friends met to hear Mr. Conway, the not unfamous Unitarian minister of Washington, Virginia-born, with seventeen secesh cousins, fathers, and other relatives, tell of his late experiences at the seat of government. He had talked awhile with Father Abraham, who, as he thinks, is honest enough. He himself is an out-and-out immediate emancipationist, believes that is the only way to break the strength of the South, that the black man is the life of the South, that the Southerners dread work above all things, and cling to the slave as a drudge that makes life tolerable to them. He believes that the blacks know all that is said and done with reference to them in the North; that their longing for freedom is unutterable; that once assured of it under Northern protection, the institution would be doomed. I don't know whether you remember Conway's famous “One Path” sermon of six or eight years ago. It brought him immediately into notice. I think it was Judge Curtis (Ben) who commended it to my attention. He talked with a good deal of spirit. I know you would have gone with him in his leading ideas. Speaking of the communication of knowledge among the slaves, he said if he were on the Upper Mississippi and proclaimed emancipation, it would be told in New Orleans before the telegraph could carry the news there.

I am busy with my lectures at the college, and don't see much of the world, but I will tell you what I see and hear from time to time, if you like to have me. I gave your message to the club, who always listen with enthusiasm when your name is mentioned. My boy is here still, detailed on recruiting duty, quite well. I hope you are all well, and free from all endemic irritations such as Sir Thomas Browne refers to when he says that “colical persons will find little comfort in Austria or Vienna.”

With kindest remembrances to you all,

Yours always,

O. W. H.

_______________

¹ The Confederates.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 232-4

William Barton Rogers to Henry Darwin Rogers, November 29, 1859

Boston, November 29, 1859.

. . . The doings at Harper's Ferry have made an impression which will long be felt. The execution of Brown, to take place on Friday, will sadden and embitter the hearts of the great majority north of the Potomac. The conduct of Wise has been, I think, weak and absurd; the course of the Court of Appeals, harsh if not iniquitous. I know well the horrors of an apprehended insurrection,¹ and I can make large allowance for those who are affected by them, for I remember the morbid fears which prevailed after the Southampton tragedy. But it amazes me to find Governor Wise surrounding the helpless prisoner by a cordon of more than one thousand soldiers, and forbidding, as he has done, all approach to the place of execution.

I shall write you, dear Henry, by the steamer of Saturday. We are all well. Mr. Savage, who has been slightly lamed, now walks out. Hillard, since his return, has been suffering the effects of his very boisterous passage. Charles Sumner looks well, but I think his disease is rather healed over than eradicated. . . .

Congress is about to organize, and I fear with the prospect of a session of extraordinary turbulence. Already Mason and other extreme men of the South are applying the match to the magazine of combustibles gathered in Washington, by calling for an investigation by Congress of the Harper's Ferry invasion, as they call it. Throughout the Northern States, especially New England and the Northwest, the effect of Brown's mistaken enterprise, with the revelation of heroic self-renunciation which has accompanied it, has been to deepen and extend the hostility to the slave power. The contrast between the trembling fears of a whole State and the resolute bravery, for principle's sake, of one man is most impressive. The purpose of Brown seems to have been to liberate a large number of the slaves and assist them in escaping from the State. But he forgot the horrors and crimes of a servile revolt, to which his effort, if successful, would surely have led, and he must have been strangely ignorant, or deceived, to believe that he could aid the general emancipation of the slaves by such an attempt. He might have given occasion to an appalling loss of life, perhaps almost to the extermination of the blacks in Virginia. Perhaps the impression he has made in the South may hasten in Virginia, at least, the adoption of some prospective cure for this most perilous evil. The whole matter is full of sad suggestions to me. . . .

_______________

¹ Of the slaves.

SOURCE: Emma Savage Rogers & William T. Sedgwick, Life and Letters of William Barton Rogers, Volume 2, p. 16-7

Charles Eliot Norton to Meta Gaskell, October 2, 1865

Ashfield, October 2, 1865.

My Dear Meta, — . . . After a long silence occasioned by the war I have lately had one or two notes from Ruskin, — the last came in the same mail with your letter, and was in very striking contrast to it. He writes very sadly, and his letters bring sadness to me especially as indications of his failure to understand and sympathize with the ideal side of America. “The war,” he says, “has put a gulph between all Americans and me so that I do not care to hear what they think or tell them what I think on any matter.” It is in vain to try to bring him to comprehend that in spite of all that is wrong and base in our present conditions, in spite of all the evil passions which war has worked, in spite of all the selfishness and conceited over-confidence generated by our marvellous material prosperity, — there is in our national life a counterbalance of devotion to principle, of readiness to sacrifice whatever is required for the maintenance of liberty and human rights, and a real advance toward the fulfilment of the best hopes of man for men. He fancies that our happiness is a delusion, our efforts vanity, and our confidence folly. I believe that we have really made an advance in civilization, that the principles on which our political and social order rest are in harmony with the moral laws of the universe, that we have set up an ideal which may never be perfectly attained, but which is of such a nature that the mere effort to attain it makes progress in virtue and in genuine happiness certain. The character and principles of Mr. Lincoln were essentially typical of the character and principles of the people. The proposition that all men are created equal, — equal that is in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, — equal as moral and responsible beings, — has sunk deep into the very hearts of this people, and is moulding them in accordance with the conclusions that proceed from it. It is the inspiration and the explanation of our progress and our content. To embody it continually more and more completely in our institutions of government and of society is the conscious or unconscious desire and effort of all good men among us. It is as Mr. Lincoln admirably said, — “A standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly laboured for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colours everywhere.” The war has given us a right, such as we had not before, to trust in the fidelity of the people to the principles of justice, liberty and fair play. And it is because of this just confidence that one need not be disheartened when, as now, there are signs of moral slackness and decline. After the exertions and excitements of the last four years one need not be surprised at a reaction of feeling; and if the high standard of effort is somewhat lowered. The millennium will not come in our time; and peace will not bring rest to those who fight for “the cause” and not for victory.

It seems probable from Mr. Johnson's course that we shall lose some of the best results which might have sprung from the war. Under his scheme of reorganization of the Union it now looks as if the Southern States would come back into the Union with no provision for the securing of any political rights or privileges to the Negro, and no provision for his good-treatment by the former slave-holding and slave-despising class. I fear lest the very freedom which the freedmen have gained, be so limited by state laws and local enactments, that they may be kept in a condition very little superior to slavery. It would take too long to explain and set forth all the grounds for this fear. But on the other hand I have hope that the great social and moral changes that have taken place in the Southern States, the establishment of free speech and a free press in them, the extraordinary demand for labour, the education which the blacks have received in the army and in schools, and above all the future action of political parties in the Northern States, — may all tend gradually but irresistibly to gain for the Negro the full rights of independent and equal citizenship. The discussions and the actions of the few next years on this subject will be of the highest interest and importance.

For the past three or four months the point which has been most discussed in connection with “reconstruction” is that of suffrage for the Negro. The reasons for giving the right of suffrage to the freedmen are as strong as they are numerous, are reasons based upon policy as well as upon principle. I think Negro suffrage could have been easily secured at the end of the war by wise and foreseeing statesmanship. I think it would have been secured had Mr. Lincoln lived; and that it would have been found the most powerful instrument for elevating and educating the blacks, for making them helpful and advancing citizens of the republic, and for introducing a better civilization, and a truer social order than has hitherto existed at the South. But the hour favourable for this has passed, and Negro sufrage will have to be won by a long and hard struggle.

President Johnson has been a slave-holder; he is a theoretical democrat so far as white men are concerned, but his democracy does not extend to the black. He hates, or perhaps I should say hated, slavery because it developed an aristocratic class, not because it was intrinsically wrong. I doubt if he has any strong moral aversion to it, — but he has an immoral distrust of (I will not call it aversion to) the Negro. He holds that he is inferior to the white man, that the white man is to govern, the black to be governed. His influence, is at present, practically thrown against Negro suffrage.  . . . I must bring my political letter to a close before the subject is half exhausted. I will send you the “Nation,” a weekly paper in the establishment of which I have been greatly interested and which will keep you informed of our affairs. You may, I think, rely on the fairness of its statements and the soundness of its opinions. . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 284-8

Diary of Salmon P. Chase: Wednesday, September 24, 1862

The President called a special meeting of the Cabinet to-day, and asked our judgments on two questions:

First, as to the expediency of Treaties with Governments desiring their immigration, for voluntary colonization of blacks.

Second, As to the proper answer to be returned to the letter from John Ross, excusing the Treaty of the Cherokees with the Rebels, and asking the protection of the United States and the fulfilment of old Treaties.

On the first question, there was the usual diversity of opinion. I not thinking Colonization in its self desirable, except as a means of getting a foothold in Central America,¹ thought no Treaties expedient; but simple arrangements, under the legislation of Congress by which any person who might choose to emigrate, would be secured in such advantages as might be offered them by other States or Governments. Seward rather favored Treaties, but evidently did not think much of the wisdom of any measures for sending out of the country laborers needed here. The President asked us to think of the subject, and be ready to express our opinions when we next come together.

As to the Cherokee question there seemed to be a general concurrence that no new pledges should be given them but that, at the end of the war, their condition and relation to the United States should have just consideration.

After Cabinet, went with Stanton to War Department, and laid before him sundry applications for positions, with such verbal support as I thought due to them. Returning to the Department, I found there young Mr. Walley, and gave him an earnest recommendation to Stanton; and was surprised, an hour or so after, to receive a note from him thanking me for my kindness, but saying that Mr. Stanton told him there was no likelihood of his receiving an appointment; and that he was going to enlist as a private. Wrote note to Mr. Walley (his father) expressing my regret.

Nothing at Department but routine — except direction to Cisco to receive deposits of gold, and a call from Eli Thayer about his project for colonizing East Florida, with which I sympathize.

Had proposed to Genl. Garfield to take him over and call on Genl. Hooker, but it rained and he did not come. After dinner, however, the sky cleared some what, and Katie and I rode out and called on him. He was still improving.

An hour or two after our return, a band of music, which had just serenaded the President by way of congratulation on the Proclamation, came to my house and demanded a speech — with which demand I complied briefly. Gen. Clay, who was with me, responded more at length. After the crowd had passed on, Gen. Clay, Mr. Clark, of Mercer, Penna., Genl. Robinson, of Pittsburgh, and Mr. Wm. D. Lewis, of Philadelphia, came in and spent a little time with me.

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¹ Chase, like Seward, contemplated the expansion of the United States southward to the Isthmus. See his letter to James H. Smith, May 8, 1849.

SOURCE: Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1902, Vol. 2, p. 92-4

Colonel Charles Russell Lowell to Josephine Shaw Lowell, September 27, 1864 – 7 a.m.

Staunton, 7 A. M., Sept. 27, 1864.

I didn't tell you what a magnificent spring-wagon I have now, — four stylish white horses and driver to manoeuvre them, — it beats Tyler's red turnout, I think: it's for you to ride out in next winter. In this army (and in the Army of the Potomac) some such affair is a recognized part of a brigade commander's equipment, — general orders always mention a spring-wagon for each headquarters, &c, — so you see we are likely to be very magnificent this winter, — as commanding the Regular Brigade I am expected to indulge in even more luxe than my neighbours, — we shall quite disappoint the world,— shan't we,— with our republican simplicity! I haven't told you either that, the day before yesterday at Luray, I organized a small black boy, bright enough and well brought up; his name is James, but as we have already two of that name about here, I call him Luray, which is quite aristocratic. You can teach him to read and to write this winter, if you have time. The Doctor thinks you would find more satisfaction in him than in your pupils of Vienna.

I wish you could see the splendid country we are in, — we are about one mile beyond Staunton, facing towards the Blue Ridge — we have found out pretty well where the Rebs are, and I have a notion that we shall be getting back pretty soon toward the infantry.

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 350-1