Jonathan Worth to Joseph Ulley, May 28, 1861

ASHEBORO, May 28, ’61

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I think there is no reliable date on which to base any opinion as to the continuance of the war. If Lincoln and his cabinet exhibited any marks of statesmanship, I should think there would be peace very soon. I think, however, that he and his advisers want common sense, and hence I can draw no conclusions as to what they will do. There seems to be no alternative to the South, only between independence and humiliation. I have feelings that we cannot be conquered—if Southern Democracy will permit the rest of us to co-operate with them on terms less humiliating than absolute vassalage to them. This is doubtful. Their unmanly course towards us thus far is only less galling than submission to Lincoln. The war, however, is so manifestly suicidal that I still hope that the good sense of the free States will get into the movement and arrest the war before rage and passion shall have ruined the land. I fear the incident at Alexandria will add fuel to the flame North and South.

Randolph, like myself, was slow to come to the conclusion that Abolitionism and Secession were the only Commanders in the field—both, as we believed, moved and instigated by the Devil. The moment we perceived that we had to be the followers of the one or the other we all enrolled ourselves as true and liege vassels of Secession. We now have at least 350 volunteers in fragments of companies. I think three or four companies will be made up within a few days.

B. F. Hoover, Doct. Lane, aided by others of like caliber, have lied so persistently as to make Tom. Waddell, Adgt. Genl. Hoke and other such fools believe that I was not true to the South and that Randolph concurred with me. It sometimes makes my blood boil a little when I know that men, having no connection with slaves, excepting with one sex, and that connection not that of master and slave, endeavoring to make the impression that I favor abolitionism. It is the privilege, however, of such poor devils and does me no permanent injury.

We are all well.

SOURCE: J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, Editor, The Correspondence of Jonathan Worth, Volume 1, p. 151-2

Jonathan Worth to David Gaston Worth, Juley 13, 1861

ASHEBORO, July 13th, 1861.

Lincoln's commentary on the omission, in some of our declarations of independence of the passages in the old and his (supposed) declaration, that all men are born free and equal, coupled with his whole course, inclines me to the belief that he and his party have not desired the South to become satisfied with the Union in order to permit them, under pretext of enforcing the laws, to make war upon and extinguish slavery. He can not be fool enough to expect to restore the Union now by military force. He thinks when the horrors and burthens of war are fully realized in the South that the non-slaveholders will join him to extinguish slavery, the cause of the war, as all extremists pretend. If these are his views we may all have to take arms. We are all united to fight to the death rather than be conquered, but some of us can see little that looks bright even beyond victory.

SOURCE: J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, Editor, The Correspondence of Jonathan Worth, Volume 1, p. 155

Gerrit Smith: The News From England, January 3, 1862

Alas! that this news should find us still embarrassed, and still diddling with the negro question!  Alas! That we should still have one war upon our hands, while we are threatened with another?  Had we, as we should have done, disposed of this question at the beginning of the war, then would its beginning have also been its ending.  If slavery was not, as it certainly was, the sole cause of the war, it nevertheless, was that vulnerable spot in the foe at which we should have struck without a moment’s delay.  Instead of repelling the negroes, bond and free, by insults and cruel treatment we could have brought them all to our side by simply inviting them to it.  As it is, the war has grown into a very formidable one; and the threatened one whereas, had we not acted insanely on the negro question, we could have dreaded neither.  More than this, had we, as it was so easy to do, struck instant death into the first war, we should have escaped the threat of this second one.

For what is it that the English press threatens us with war? It is for compelling the English ship to give up the rebel commissioners, so it says. This is the ostensible reason. But would not England — she who is so famous for clinging to an almost entirely unqualified and unlimited right of search — have done the same thing in like circumstances? If she would not, then she would not have been herself. Had a part of her home counties revolted and sent a couple of their rebels to America for help, would she not have caught them if she could? And in whatever circumstances they might have been found? If she says she would not, there is not on all the earth one “Jew Apella” so credulous as to believe her. If she confesses she would, then is she self-convicted, not only of trampling in her boundless dishonesty on the great and never-to-be-violated principle of doing as we would be done by, but of insulting us by claiming that we ought to be tame and base enough to forbear to do that which her self-respect and high spirit would prompt her to do.

But perhaps England would not have done as we did.  Her naval captains have taken thousands of seamen from our ships — these captains constituting themselves the sole accusers, witnesses and judges in the cases. It was chiefly for such outrages that we declared war against her in 1812. The instance of the San Jacinto and Trent is not like these. In this instance there was no question, because no doubt, of personal identity. But I repeat, perhaps England would not have done as we did.  In a case so aggravated, she would, perhaps, may, probably, have taken ship and all.  By the way, it may be that we did act illegally in not seizing the ship as well as the rebels, and subjecting her to a formal trial; but if in this we fell into a mistake, could England be so mean as to make war upon us for it? — for a mistake which was prompted by a kind and generous regard for the comfort and interests of Englishmen? Surely, if England is not noble enough to refuse to punish for any mere mistake, She is, nevertheless, not monstrous enough to punish for the mistake, which grew solely out of the desire to serve her.

But wherein have we harmed England in this matter?  We have insulted her, is the answer. We have not, however, intended to insult her: and an unintended insult is really no insult.  If, in my eagerness to overtake the man who has deeply injured me, I run rudely through my neighbor’s house he will not only not accuse me of insulting him, but he will pardon so much to my very excusable eagerness as to leave but little ground of any kind of complaint against me.  Surely, if England were but to ask her own heart how she would feel toward men in her own bosom, who, without the slightest provocation, were busy in breaking up her nation, and in plundering and slaughtering her people, she would be more disposed to shed tears of pity for us that to make war upon us.

It is not possible that England will make war on us for what we did to the Trent, and for doing which she has herself furnished us innumerable precedents.  It is not possible that she will so ignore, nay, so deny and dishonor her own history. I will not believe that England, whom I have ever loved and honored almost as if she were my own country, and who, whatever prejudiced and passionate American writers have written to the contrary, has hitherto, during our great and sore trial done nothing through her government, nor through the great body of her people, to justify the attempt by a portion (happily a very small and very unworthy portion) of our press to stir up our national feeling against her — I say I will not believe that this loved and honored England will make war upon us for a deed in which we intended her no wrong; in which, so far as her own example is authority, there is no wrong; and in which, in the light of reason, and, as it will prove in the judgment of mankind, there is no wrong. She could not make such a causeless war upon us without deeply and broadly blotting her own character and he character of modern civilization. But, after, all, what better is our modern civilization than a mere blot and blotch if the nation which is preeminently its exponent, can be guilty, and without the least real cause of provocation, and upon pretests as frivolous as they are false, of seeing to destroy a sister nation? — a sister nation, too, whose present embarrassments and distresses appeal so strongly to every good heart? Moreover, how little will it argue for the cause of human rights, and popular institutions, if the nation, which claims to be the chief champion of that cause, can wage so wicked a war upon a nation claiming no humbler relation to that precious cause?

What, then, do I hold that England should do in this case?

1st. Reprimand or more severely punish the captain of the Trent for his very gross and very guilty violation of our rights in furnishing exceedingly important facilities to our enemy. This our government should have promptly insisted on, and not have suffered England to get the start of us with her absurd counter claim.  This is a case in which not we, but England, should have been made defendant.  It is her Captain who is the real offender.  Ours is, at the most, but a nominal one.  In the conduct of her Captain were in spirit and purpose, as well as the doing, of wrong.  The conduct of ours, on the contrary, was prompted by the spirit and purpose of doing right; and if, in any respect, it was erroneous, it was simply in regard to the forms of doing right.  Moreover, the guilt of her Captain can be diminished by nothing that was seemingly or really guilty in ours. The criminality of taking the rebels into the Trent was none the less, because of any mistakes which attended the getting of them out.  Nevertheless, England takes no action against him.  Her policy is to have her guilty Captain lost sight of in her bluster about our innocent one.  To screen the thief, she cries, “Stop thief!”  Her policy is to prevent us from getting the true issue before the public mind, by occupying it with her false one.

How preposterous is the claim of England to her right to make war, because we took our rebellious subjects from her ship!  The taking of them into her ship is the only thing in the case which can possibly furnish cause of war. That, unless amply apologized for, does, in the light of international law, furnish abundant cause of war.

Did every hypocrisy and impudence go farther than in England’s putting America on trial! Was there ever a more emphatic “putting the saddle on the wrong horse”? I overtake the thief who has stolen my watch, and jerk it from his pocket.  He turns to the people, not to confess his theft, but to protest against my rudeness, and to have me, instead of himself, regarded as the criminal!

An old fable tells us that a council of animals, with the lion at their head, put an ass on trial for having “broused the bigness of his tongue.” The lion (England) was constrained to confess that he had himself eaten sheep, and shepherds too.  Nevertheless, it was the offence of the ass (America) that caused the council to shudder with horror. “What! Eat another’s grass? O shame!” and so the virtuous rascals condemned him to die, and rejoiced anew in their conscious innocence.

Moreover, England, instead of turning to her own conscience with the true case, has the brazen effrontery to appeal to our conscience with her trumped-up case.  Which of the parties in this instance needs conscience-quickening, in no less certain than in the instance of the footpad and the traveler, when he had robbed of his bags of gold.  The poor traveler meekly asked for a few coins to defray his expenses homeward. “Take them from one of the bags,” said the footpad, with an air of chivalrous magnanimity; but on seeing the traveler take half a dozen instead of two or three, he exclaimed, “Why, man, have you no conscience?”  England, through her subject and servant, entered into a conspiracy against America.  America, through her subject and servant, forbore to punish the wickedness, and simply stopped it.  And yet England bids us to our conscience!

Why Should England protect her captain?  Her Queen, in her last May’s Proclamation, warned him that, for doing what he has done, he should, “in no wise obtain any protection.” He had full knowledge of the official character of the rebles, and at least inferential knowledge of their bearing dispatches with them.  But, besides that the whole spirit of it is against what he has done, her Proclamation specifies “officers” and “dispatches” in the list of what her subjects are prohibited to carry “for the use or service of either of the contending parties.

England did not protect the Captain of her mail-steamer, Teviot, who, during our war with Mexico was guilty of carrying the Mexican General Paredez.  He was suspended.  Why does she spare the Captain of the Trent?  Is it because she has more sympathy with the Southern Confederacy than she had with Mexico? — and is, therefore, more tender toward him who serves the former, than she was toward him who served the latter?  But it will, perhaps be said, that we have not demanded satisfaction in this case as we did in that.  England, nevertheless, knows that we are entitled to it; and that she is bound to satisfy us for the wrongs she did us, before she complains of the way we took to save ourselves from the deep injury with which that great and guilty wrong threatened us.  In this connexion, I add that if, upon her own principles and precedents, the Captain of the Trent deserves punishment for what he did, she is stopped from magnifying into a grave offence our undoing what we did.

2. The next thing that England should do is to give instructions, or rather repeat those in the Queen's Proclamation, that no more rebel commissioners be received into her vessels.

3. And then she should inform us whether, in the case of a vessel that shall hereafter offend in this wise, she would have us take the vessel itself, or take but the commissioners. It is true that whatever her preference, we would probably insist on taking the vessel in every case: — for it is not probable that we shall again expose ourselves in such a case to the charge of taking too little. It is, however, also true, that, should she prefer our taking the vessel, we will certainly never take less.

But such instructions and information, although they would provide for future cases, would leave the present case unprovided for; and England might still say that she could not acquiesce in our having, in this case, taken the Commissioners instead of the vessel.  What then?  She ought to be content with the expression of our regret that we did not take the mode of her choice, and the more so as that mode could not have been followed by any different result in respect to our getting possession of the Commissioners.  But this might not satisfy her: — and what then?  She should generously wait until that unnatural and horrid war is off our hands; and if the parties could not then agree, they should submit the case to an Umpire.  If, however, she should call for an Umpire now, then, although the civilized world would think badly of her for it, and our own nation be very slow to forgive her for it, I would nevertheless, in my abhorrence of all war, have our government consent to an Umpire now. Nay, in the spirit of this abhorrence, and for the sake of peace, I would go much farther.  If no other concession we could make would satisfy England, I would have our Government propose to surrender the rebels, Mason and Slidell, in case the English Government would say, distinctly and solemnly, that it would not itself disturb neutral vessels having on board rebels who had gone out from England in quest of foreign aid to overturn the English Government.  An ineffably base Government would it prove itself to be should it refuse to say this, and yet declare war on the ground of our capture of the rebels who were on their way for foreign help to overturn our government.

I spoke of my abhorrence of all war.  Our lifelong opponents of war find themselves unexpectedly in sympathy with mighty armies.  They have to confess that they never anticipated a rebellion so fast; still less did they ever anticipate that England would be guilty of coming to the help of such a satanic rebellion.

I have said that England will not go to war with us in the case of the Trent. Nevertheless I am not without fear that her government will be driven to declare war against us. The Government of no other nation (and this is honorable to England) is more influenced by the people.  By such an affair as the capture of Mason and Slidell, the patriotism of the least-informed and superficial and excitable part of her people is easily and extensively wrought upon. With this part of her people the inviolability of the British flag is more than all earth besides.  But it is not by that capture, nor by those classes to whom it appeals with such peculiar power that the Government will be moved. If an irresistible pressure comes upon the government, it will come from those portions of the people who long for the cotton and free trade of the South, and who have allowed themselves to get angry with the North by foolishly misconstruing our high tariff (which is simply a war measure) into a hostile commercial measure. The capture of Mason and Slidell will be only the pretext, not the provocation; only the occasion, not the cause of war.

If England wishes to go to war with us for any wrongs we have done her, she shall not have the chance—for we will promptly repair the wrongs, at whatever sacrifices of property or pride. But if, as I still honor and love her too much to believe, she wishes to go to war with us at any rate, and chooses this our time of trouble as her time to make us an easy prey, then will she be gratified.  It will be but fair, however, to advertise her that she must not take our fighting in the war with the rebels as a sample of what will be our fighting in the war with herself.  The former is fooling.  The latter will be fighting.  On all subjects connected with slavery, and therefore in a war about slavery, we Americans are fools.  We cannot help it.  We have worshipped the idol so long and so devoutly, that when in its all-influential presence, we cannot be men. The powers of our moral nature are, however, not destroyed; they are but perverted.  And such an outrage as the English press threatens us with will restore their legitimate use.  Our manhood is not dead; it but sleeps.  And as it was when the Philistines fell upon the bound Samson, that the Spirit of the Lord came to his help, so, when the English shall fall upon the worse-bound Americans, this sleeping manhood will awake.  And it will awake to assert itself, not merely against the English, but against the rebels also.  And It will do this mightily, because it will, and the same time, be asserting itself against its own life-long degradations, and the hateful cause of them.  Let us but know that England, to whom we have done no wrong, has resolved to come to the help of the Pro-Slavery Rebellion, and our deep indignations against her, combining with our deeper indignation against ourselves, will arm us with the spirit of the power to snap the “cords,” and “green withs,” and “new ropes,” with which slavery has bound us to dash to dust the foul idol whose worship has so demented and debased us.  Yes, let us hear this month that England has declared war against us, and this month will witness our Proclamation of Liberty to every slave in the land.  No thanks will be due her for the happy effect upon us of her Declaration of war.  No thanks will be due her that the Declaration will have the effect to save us — to save us by making us anti-slavery.  No more half-way measures, and no more nonsense on the Subject of slavery, shall we then propose.  There will be no more talk then of freeing one sort of slaves, and continuing the other in slavery; but we shall then invite every negro in the land, bond and free, to identify himself, “arm and soul,” with our cause.  And then there will be no more talk of swapping off taxes for negroes, and no more talk of colonizing and apprenticing them.  Then we shall be eager to lift up the negroes into the enjoyment of all the rights of manhood, that so we may have in them men to stand by our side, and help us make short work with the present war, and with that with which we are threatened.

Owing to the bewitching and debauching influence of slavery upon our whole nation, there are, even in the Free States, divisions among us in regard to the present war.  But should England so causelessly, cruelly and meanly force a war upon us, there will be no divisions among us in regard to that war: — nor, indeed, will there then be in regard to the other. And so deep and abiding will be our sense of her boundless injustice, that there will never be any boundless injustice, that there will never be any among us to welcome propositions of peace with England, until her war with us shall have reached the result of our subjugation, or of her expulsion from every part of the Continent of North America.  Moreover, we shall rejoice to hear of the crushing of her power every where — for we shall feel that the nation which can be guilty of such a war is fit to govern no where — in the Eastern no more than in the Western hemisphere.

SOURCES: “News from England by Geritt Smith,” The Liberator, Boston, Massachusetts, Friday, January 3, 1862, p. 4; An abstract of thes article appears in Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography, p. 262-3

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to John L. Motley, August 29, 1862

Boston, 21 Charles Street,

August 29, 1862.

My Dear Motley: I don't know how I can employ the evening of my birthday better than by sitting down and beginning a letter to you. I have heard of your receiving my last, and that you meant to reply to it soon. But this was not in the bond, and whether you write or not, I must let you hear from me from time to time. I know what you must endure with a non-conductor of a thousand leagues between you and this great battery, which is sending its thrill through us every night and morning. I know that every different handwriting on an envelop, if it comes from a friend, has its special interest, for it will give an impression in some way differing from that of all others. My own thoughts have been turned aside for a while from those lesser occurrences of the day which would occupy them at other times by a domestic sorrow, which, though coming in the course of nature, and at a period when it must have been very soon inevitable, has yet left sadness in mine and other households. My mother died on the 19th of this month, at the age of ninety-three, keeping her lively sensibilities and sweet intelligence to the last. My brother John had long cared for her in the most tender way, and it almost broke his heart to part with her. She was a daughter to him, she said, and he had fondly thought that love and care could keep her frail life to the filling up of a century or beyond it. It was a pity to look on him in his first grief; but time, the great consoler, is busy with his anodyne, and he is coming back to himself. My mother remembered the Revolution well, and she was scared by the story of the redcoats coming along and killing everybody as they went, she having been carried from Boston to Newburyport. Why should I tell you this? Our hearts lie between two forces — the near ones of home and family, and those that belong to the rest of the universe. A little magnet holds its armature against the dragging of our own planet and all the spheres.

I had hoped that my mother might have lived through this second national convulsion. It was ordered otherwise, and with the present prospects I can hardly lament that she was spared the period of trial that remains. How long that is to be no one can predict with confidence. There is a class of men one meets with who seem to consider it due to their antecedents to make the worst of everything. I suppose —— —— may be one of these. I met him a day or two since, and lost ten minutes in talk with him on the sidewalk — lost them, because I do not wish to talk with any man who looks at this matter empirically as an unlucky accident, which a little prudence might have avoided, and not a theoretical necessity. However, he said to me that the wisest man he knew — somebody whose name I did not know — said to him long ago that this war would outlast him, an old man, and his companion also, very probably. You meet another man, and he begins cursing the government as the most tyrannical one that ever existed. “That is not the question,” I answer. “How much money have you given for this war? How many of your boys have gone to it? How much of your own body and soul have you given to it?” I think Mr. —— —— is the most forlorn of all the Jeremiahs I meet with. Faith, faith is the only thing that keeps a man up in times like these; and those persons who, by temperament or underfeeding of the soul, are in a state of spiritual anemia, are the persons I like least to meet, and try hardest not to talk with.

For myself, I do not profess to have any political wisdom. I read, I listen, I judge to the best of my ability. The best talk I have heard from any of our home politicians was that of Banks, more than a year and a half ago. In a conversation I had with him, he foreshadowed more clearly the plans and prospects and estimated more truly the resources of the South than any one else with whom I had met. But prophets in America and Europe have been at a very heavy discount of late. Count Gasparin seems to me to have the broadest and keenest understanding of the aims and ends of this armed controversy. If we could be sure of no intermeddling, I should have no anxiety except for individuals and for temporary interests. If we have grown unmanly and degenerate in the north wind, I am willing that the sirocco should sweep us off from the soil. If the course of nature must be reversed for us, and the Southern Goths must march to the “beggarly land of ice” to overrun and recolonize us, I have nothing to object. But I have a most solid and robust faith in the sterling manhood of the North, in its endurance, its capacity for a military training, its plasticity for every need, in education, in political equality, in respect for man as man in peaceful development, which is our law, in distinction from aggressive colonization; in human qualities as against bestial and diabolical ones; in the Lord as against the devil. If I never see peace and freedom in this land, I shall have faith that my children will see it. If they do not live long enough to see it, I believe their children will. The revelations we have had from the Old World have shed a new light for us on feudal barbarism. We know now where we are not to look for sympathy. But oh, it would have done your heart good to see the processions of day before yesterday and to-day, the air all aflame with flags, the streets shaking with the tramp of long-stretched lines, and only one feeling showing itself, the passion of the first great uprising, only the full flower of which that was the opening bud.

There is a defense of blubber about the arctic creatures through which the harpoon must be driven before the vital parts are touched. Perhaps the Northern sensibility is protected by some such incasing shield. The harpoon is, I think, at last through the blubber. In the meanwhile I feel no doubt in my own mind that the spirit of hostility to slavery as the cause of this war is speedily and certainly increasing. They were talking in the cars to-day of Fremont's speech at the Tremont Temple last evening. His allusions to slavery — you know what they must have been — were received with an applause which they would never have gained a little while ago. Nay, I think a miscellaneous Boston audience would be more like to cheer any denunciation of slavery now than almost any other sentiment.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 267-71

John L. Motley to Mary Lothrop Motley, January 13, 1862

Vienna, January 13, 1862.

Dearest Little Mary: The cloud has blown over for the present, at least, and the war with England has been averted by the firmness, tact, prudence, and sense of right displayed by our government. I have been thinking, talking, writing so much of this Trent affair that I am determined not to fill my letters with it any longer, now that it is settled. I will, however, make one observation in regard to England. We must not confound the efforts of the war faction in that country with the whole nation. By so doing we commit a great injustice, and do ourselves an immense injury. There is a strong pro-slavery party in England, which has almost thrown off all disguise in their fury in regard to the Trent affair. This party seized upon the first plausible pretext that had been offered to them since our Civil War began, and used it with all their energy to bring about the instant recognition of the Southern Confederacy, the raising of the blockade, and a destructive war against us. There has been a daily manifestation of pro-slavery sympathy in the Tory party in England, shared to a considerable extent by a certain portion of the Whigs. The course of the government of England has been courteous and proper, and we make a mistake in attributing too much importance to the manifestations of the press. As a member of the English cabinet says to me in a letter written so soon as the news of peace came, in order to express his joy and sympathize with mine: “What mischief the press of both countries has been doing! Your people quote our ‘Times,’ we quote the New York ‘Herald,’ and mutual exasperation is natural enough.” This is the Duke of Argyll, as sincere and warm a friend to America and to everything good in it as any one of our own countrymen. I had a letter from Layard, Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs, written in the same spirit.

There is no doubt that there is a large and strong party, probably a majority, that hates the idea of a war with America, and is much relieved by the pacific termination to this quarrel. On the other hand, no doubt, the pro-slavery faction is very active and noisy, and we shall have no end of efforts in the coming session of Parliament to procure the recognition of the slave Confederacy. One thing is perfectly certain: if we continue to dally with the subject of emancipation much longer, and continue our efforts to suppress the rebellion without daring to lay a finger on its cause, we shall have the slave Confederacy recognized by all the governments of Europe before midsummer. The proslavery party in England dare not avow itself in favor of slavery, for that institution is so odious to the great mass of the English nation as to consign any party openly supporting it to destruction; but it contents itself with persuading the public that slavery has nothing to do with secession, that the North is no more antislavery than the South, and that therefore all the sympathies of liberal Englishmen ought to be given to the weaker of the two sections, which is striving by a war of self-defense to relieve itself from a tyrannical oppression, and so on. An answer to this insidious reasoning will, I hope, be soon furnished by the action of Congress.

My dear child, I have been writing to you as if you were Mr. Seward or Abraham Lincoln, and I have half a mind to scratch your name from the top of the letter and substitute that of one of these worthies. However, you have become such a furious politician that I dare say you will excuse such a long political letter. Your last letter, of December 23, gave us much pleasure, as do all your letters. You cannot give us too many details, or write too much or too often. We think of nothing but America now.

I cannot tell you much about Vienna. Yesterday your mother and I went to a great diplomatic dinner at Prince Liechtenstein's. About thirty people, mostly dips. The prince is kind-hearted, genial, with charming manners; the princess very much the same. In the absence of the court, on account of the illness of the empress, they do a little entertaining in a kind of vice-regal way. Last week we all turned out in cocked hats and laced coats to make an evening call, in order to express New Year's wishes and ask after the health of the emperor and empress. We had an extremely pleasant dinner at Prince Esterhazy's, and we dine occasionally with our colleagues of the diplomatic corps, many of whom are very agreeable. To-morrow night is the first ball of the season. It is the first of a set called picnics, the Vienna Almack's subscription balls for the crèmè de la crèmè. Lily will give you an account of it when she writes next week. The winter is not likely to be gay, but I feel already a little better disposed to look for blue sky, now that our government, and especially our much-abused Secretary of State, have manifested so much magnanimity and real statesmanship. I never felt so much confidence as I do now in the Washington authorities.

I do not yet begin to enjoy society. Much English society, I regret almost to say, is very spoiling for any other kind. Yet there is a great charm of manner about the Austrians. The great distinction between Vienna and London company is that here the fine world is composed exclusively of folks of rank and title; there, every illustration from the world of science, art, letters, politics, and finance mingles in full proportion with the patricians, and on equal terms. Society so constituted must be entertaining and instructive.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 228-31

John Lothrop Motley to his Family, June 14, 1861

Woodland Hill,

June 14, 1861.

My Dearest Mary And Dearest Darlings: My note from Halifax, with the announcement which you must have seen in the papers, will have told you enough of my voyage.¹ It was a singularly favorable one, and we reached Boston Wednesday morning at eight o'clock. I found my dear mother looking not worse than I had anticipated, but very feeble. She had had an attack of neuralgic pain the day before, and was not able to come out of her room. She was, however, pretty well the next day, and is not very much changed in the face, although she has evidently become more infirm.

My father seems a good deal older, but is very active and in vigorous health. All the various members of the family are very well. I walked out about eleven o'clock, and went first to the State House to see Governor Andrew. He received me with the greatest cordiality, I may say distinction, and thanked me very warmly for my papers in the “Times.” I may as well mention once for all that not a single person of the numbers with whom I have already spoken has omitted to say the same thing. You know how enthusiastic our people are when pleased, and you can therefore imagine the earnest and perhaps somewhat exaggerated commendations which I receive.²

The paper was at once copied bodily into the Boston and New York papers, with expressions of approbation, and I make a point of stating this to you, both because I was myself surprised at the deep impression which the article seems to have made here, and in order that you may let any of our English friends who are interested know that the position taken in the article is precisely that which is recognized by all men throughout the free States as the impregnable one in this momentous conflict.

The reason why I am saying so much about it now is simply because it is the text, as it were, to all I have, or probably shall have, to say on the subject of American politics in my letter to you. Any one who supposes that this civil war is caused by anything else than by an outrageous and unprovoked insurrection against a constituted government, because that government had manifested its unequivocal intention to circumscribe slavery and prevent forever its further extension on this continent, is incapable of discussing the question at all, and is not worth listening to. Therefore it is (and with deep regret I say it) that there is so deep and intense a feeling of bitterness and resentment toward England just now in Boston. Of course I only speak of Boston, because, having been here but two days, I have as yet taken no wider views, and I intend, when I write, to speak only of that “which I do know.” The most warm-hearted, England-loving men in this England-loving part of the country are full of sorrow at the attitude taken up by England. It would be difficult to exaggerate the poisonous effects produced by the long-continued, stinging, hostile articles in the “Times.” The declaration of Lord John Russell that the Southern privateers were to be considered belligerents was received, as I knew and said it would be, with great indignation, especially the precedent cited of Greece struggling against Turkey, to justify, as it were, before England and the world, the South struggling against the United States government. This, then, is the value, men say to me every moment, of the antislavery sentiment of England, of which she has boasted so much to mankind. This is the end of all the taunts and reproaches which she has flung at the United States government for being perpetually controlled by the slavery power, and for allowing its policy to be constantly directed toward extending that institution. Now that we have overthrown that party, and now that we are struggling to maintain our national existence, and, with it, liberty, law, and civilization, against the insurrection which that overthrow has excited, we are treated to the cold shoulder of the mother-country, quite as decidedly as if she had never had an opinion or a sentiment on the subject of slavery, and as if the greatest war of principle which has been waged, in this generation at least, was of no more interest to her, except as it bore on the cotton question, than the wretched squabbles of Mexico or South America. The ignorance, assumed or actual, of the nature of our Constitution, and the coolness with which public speakers and writers have talked about the Southern States and the Northern States, as if all were equally wrong, or equally right, and as if there had never been such a state in existence as the one which the queen on her throne not long ago designated as the “great Republic,” have been the source of surprise, disappointment, and mortification to all. Men say to me, We did not wish England to lift a little finger to help us, we are not Austria calling in Russia to put down our insurrections for us, but we have looked in vain for any noble words of encouragement and sympathy. We thought that some voice, even of men in office, or of men in opposition, might have been heard to say, We are sorry for you, you are passing through a terrible ordeal; but we feel that you are risking your fortunes and your lives for a noble cause, that the conflict has been forced upon you, that you could not recede without becoming a byword of scorn among the nations. Our hands are tied; we must be neutral in action: you must fight the fight yourself, and you would be ashamed to accept assistance; but our hearts are with yon, and God defend the right. But of all this there is not a word.

. . . Now, it is superfluous for me to say to you that I am not expressing my own opinions in what I am writing. In my character of your own correspondent, I am chronicling accurately my first impressions on arriving here. You see that the language I hear does not vary so much in character as in intensity from that which I have used myself on all occasions in England to our friends there. But the intensity makes a great difference, and I am doing my best, making use of whatever influence and whatever eloquence I possess, to combat this irritation toward England, and to bring about, if I can, a restoration of the old kindliness.

You cannot suppose that I am yet in condition to give you much information as to facts. One thing, however, is certain, there is no difference of opinion here. There is no such thing as party. Nobody asks or cares whether his neighbor was a Republican, or Democrat, or abolitionist. There is no very great excitement now, simply because it is considered a settled thing, which it has entered into no man's head to doubt, that this great rebellion is to be put down, whatever may be the cost of life and treasure it may entail. We do not know what General Scott's plan is, but every one has implicit confidence in his capacity, and it is known that he has matured a scheme on a most extensive scale. There are now in Washington and Maryland, or within twelve hours' march of them, about 80,000 Union troops. There are, including these, 240,000 enrolled and drilling and soon to be ready. The idea seems to be that a firm grasp will be kept upon Maryland, Washington, Western Virginia, and that Harper's Ferry, Richmond, and Norfolk will be captured this summer; that after the frosts of October vast columns of men will be sent down the Mississippi, and along it, cooperating with others to be sent by sea; that New Orleans will be occupied, and that thus with all the ports blockaded, and a cordon of men hemming them in along the border of the Middle States, the rebellion will be suffocated with the least possible effusion of blood. Of course there will be terrible fighting in Virginia this summer, and I am by no means confident that we shall not sustain reverses at first, for the rebels have had longer time to prepare than we, and they are desperate. General Scott promises to finish the war triumphantly before the second frost, unless England interferes. This was his language to the man who told me.

You see that it was no nightmare of mine, this possibility of a war with England. General Scott loves and admires England, but there is a feeling in Washington that she intends to recognize the Southern Confederacy. This would be considered by our government, under the present circumstances, as a declaration of war; and war we should have, even if it brought disaster and destruction upon us. But I have little fear of such a result. I tell every one what is my profound conviction, that England will never recognize the “Confederacy” until the de facto question is placed beyond all doubt, and until her recognition is a matter of absolute necessity. I have much reliance on Forster. I know that his speech will do infinite good, and I doubt not that Buxton will be warm and zealous. I hope that Milnes and Stirling will keep their promise. But what nonsense it is for me to tell of what you know already, and what I shall know in a few days!

Yesterday afternoon I came out here to stop for a couple of nights. My first object was to visit Camp Andrew. This is the old Brook Farm, the scene of Hawthorne's “Blithedale Romance,” and his original and subtle genius might, I should think, devise a new romance out of the wonderful transformation effected now in that locality.

Five regiments, in capital condition, have already gone from Massachusetts to the seat of war, being, as you know, the very first to respond to the President's summons. We have more enlisted for the war, which are nearly ready to move, and will have their marching orders within a fortnight. Of these the crack one is Gordon's regiment—the Massachusetts Second. Lawrence Motley is one of the first lieutenants in this corps, and you would be as pleased as I was to see what a handsome, soldierly fellow he is. And there is no boy's play before his regiment, for it is the favorite one. All the officers are of the jeunesse doree of Boston —Wilder Dwight, young Quincy, Harry Russell, Bob Shaw, Harry Higginson of Dresden memory, and others whose names would be familiar to you, are there, and their souls are in their work. No one doubts that the cause is a noble and a holy one; and it is certainly my deliberate opinion that there was never a war more justifiable and more inevitable in history.

We went to the camp to see the parade. To my unsophisticated eye there was little difference between these young volunteers and regular soldiers. But of course my opinion is of little worth in such matters. I had a good deal of talk with Colonel Gordon. He is about thirty, I should think. He graduated first in his class at West Point, served through the Mexican War, and is, I should think, an excellent soldier. He is very handsome, very calm and gentle in manner, with a determined eye. You will watch, after this, with especial interest the career of the Massachusetts Second.

. . . Gordon's regiment will, it is hoped, be taken into the permanent service after the war, as the regular army must always be on a much larger scale than before. In that case these officers will have a profession, which has been one of the great wants for young men of rich families in our part of the country.

I am now going into town, when I shall post this letter and order your Boston newspaper. No event has taken place, of any very great moment, since I left you. General Scott, I am very glad to say, is in no hurry. He is too old a campaigner and strategist to wish to go unprepared into petty conflicts to furnish food for telegrams. The thing is to be done on a great scale. There is no thought of peace, and there is a settled conviction in the minds of the most pacific by nature that, even had the United States government been base enough to acknowledge the Southern Confederacy, it would necessarily have been involved in war with it. There are at least half a dozen casus belli, which, as between two belligerent nations, could only be settled by the sword, unless the North chose to go on its knees and accept the dictation of the South. There is no need of saying more. The Mississippi alone speaks war out of its many mouths. The Union hardly intended, when it bought Louisiana and the Mississippi valley, in order to take it from the control of one enemy, to make a present of it to another and more bitter foe.

The girls here are all pretty and nice. N____ sings very well, with a fine, fresh, ringing voice, and gave me “The Star-Spangled Banner” last night with great spirit. God bless you all, dearest ones. I will write from Washington.

Ever most affectionately,

J. L. M.

I shall go to see Mrs. Greene³ to-day, who is in town and in good health. It was impossible for me to do so yesterday, as I was detained by many visitors. Amory came almost the first. He is delightful as ever, and sends his love to you.

_______________

¹ Mr. Motley's anxiety in this crisis of American affairs led to a sudden visit to Boston, his family then expecting to follow him. His appointment to the post of United States minister to Austria, which became vacant after his return, changed the plan.

² At the beginning of the Civil War Mr. Motley wrote an elaborate letter to the London "Times," explaining clearly and comprehensively the nature of the Union and the actual causes of the struggle. There was so much misunderstanding upon the subject that the letter was of the greatest service. It was republished in the United States, and universally read and approved.

³ Sister to Lord Lyndhurst

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 128-36

Diary of Judith W. McGuire: June 15, 1861

Yesterday was set apart by the President as a day of prayer and fasting, and I trust that throughout the Confederacy the blessing of God was invoked upon the army and country. We went to church at Millwood, and heard Bishop Meade. His sermon was full of wisdom and love; he urged us to individual piety in all things, particularly to love and charity to our enemies. He is full of enthusiasm and zeal for our cause. His whole heart is in it, and from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, for he talks most delightfully and encouragingly on the subject. He says that if our ancestors had good reason for taking up arms in 1775, surely we had much better, for the oppression they suffered from the mother-country was not a tithe of the provocation we have received from the Government at Washington.

SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee, During the War, p. 29-30

Rutherford B. Hayes to Sardis Birchard, April 20, 1861

CINCINNATI, April 20, [1861].

DEAR UNCLE:— . . . I have joined a volunteer home company to learn drill. It is chiefly composed of the Literary Club. Includes Stephenson, Meline, John Groesbeck, Judge James, McLaughlin, Beard, and most of my cronies. We wish to learn how to “eyes right and left,” if nothing more.

A great state of things for Christian people, and then to have old gentlemen say, as you do, “I am glad we have got to fighting at last” Judge Swan and Mr. Andrews and the whole Methodist clergy all say the same. Shocking! One thing: Don't spend much on your house or furniture henceforth. Save, save, is the motto now. People who furnish for the war will make money, but others will have a time of it.

Mother thinks it is a judgment on us for our sins. Henry Ward Beecher, who is now here, says it is divine work, that the Almighty is visibly in it.

Sincerely,

R. B. HAYES.

S. BIRCHARD.

 SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 10

John A. Gilmer, of North Carolina, recently said . . .

. . . in the Convention for revising the Constitution in that State, that Slavery had caused the war – had caused all the blood-shed and devastation, and ought to pay the expense.  Acting upon this suggestion the Convention levied a tax from $5 to $25 each upon slaves.  How very different Mr. Gilmer’s teaching from that of the Vallandinghamers.  They say the Abolitionists caused the war and ought to be hung.  Mr. Gilmer also expressed the further opinion that there will be no peace in the country until a system of emancipation is adopted and this jarring element of slavery put into liquidation.  The Vallandighammers recognized the same idea by promulgating the theory that there can be no peace in the country until the friends of slavery are restored to power.  The reason for this conflict of opinion is explained by Mr. Gilmer when he says that he was always opposed to secession from the first – is now and all along has been a staunch friend of the union.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, June 7, 1862, p. 2

The other day we said . . .

. . . we did not know of a single loyal Democratic paper in Iowa.  Since we wrote that paragraph we have received a number of the Cass County Gazette from which we cut out the following article.  We are satisfied the writer is loyal and as long as he utters such sentiments we shall hail him as a loyal and true man.  If there are any others we shall rejoice to know it.

AUTHORS OF THE WAR. – The attempt to saddle the whole responsibility of the rebellion upon the Abolitionists of the North is destined to prove a complete failure   It can’t be done without obliterating the memory and records of stubborn facts.  Abolitionists it is undeniable, did much to create disaffection toward the Union in the Southern States and to excite jealousy and hostile feelings between the people of the North and South.  But they did not cause the War.  Secessionists, the extreme opposites of Abolitionists, conceived and matured the plan of disunion, and they deliberately went to work to execute that plan.  They took up arms and began the War for the destruction of the Union, hence, they are directly responsible for it.  Another fact – the secessionist can stop this War as suddenly as they began it.  The moment they lay down their arms and submit to the laws, they will have peace and enjoy all the rights which they possessed from the foundation of the Government to the time they seceded.  Then, what cause have they for fighting?  None at all.  They have been deprived of no right which the Constitution grants them.  Although they have shed the blood of thousands of our fellow citizens in their wicked efforts to overthrow the Government of the United States.  That very government is ready to extend its mercy and protection to them the moment they return to their allegiance.  Then who is to blame for the continuance of this War?  Not the Abolitionists for they have not the power to stop the war.  It is the Secessionists who are whole to blame for they alone have the power to stop fighting against the Union.  When they do this we shall at once have peace.  As long as they continue to fight in their unholy cause, so long will the war last.  If they will not submit they must be conquered, if necessary, subjugated, and all parties in the North as well as the South may as well settle their policy with a view to this great fact.  The Union, it must be preserved, said Jackson in 1832.  “AMEN!” say the people in 1862.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, June 7, 1862, p. 1

A Good Notice

The Gate City makes the following flattering mention of BAUSMAN, of the Des Moines Times:

Bausman says that slavery is not the cause of the rebellion and the war.  Yes, Bausman says so. – J. B. Bausman writes and publishes that recondite truth for the benefit of Governor Kirkwood and Colonel Crocker and the rest of mankind.  Bausman gives his readers to understand too, in his peculiarly chaste style of writing, that Governor Kirkwood and all who agree with him, are “unloyal,” and that Col. Crocker is a coward.

Who is Bausman? – “Aye, there’s the rub!”  Who and what is J. B. Bausman?  The fellow has a record but the world has not kept it.  His record is in the papers, but the public are not cognizant of it.

Brusman [sic] is a political bastard, “a hermaphrodite, the ‘spawn’ of the unloyal” embraces of certain weak-kneed Republicans, with the weaker backed fraction of the Mahony Democracy of last summer.  Bausman was the conductor of the Commonwealth, the organ of the said Republicans, and as a result of the aforesaid “unloyal” embraces between the Journal and the Commonwealth, the organs of said weak fractions of the old political parties, the Des Moines Times was “spawned” upon the public and the Journal and Commonwealth died in the effort.

Bausman survives to certify that slavery was not the cause of the rebellion and the war.  If we had a blind pup for whom there was little hope of vision, we would drown him incontinently.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 1, 1862, p. 3

XXXVIIth Congress -- First Session

WASHINGTON, March 26.

SENATE. – The Senate to-day in executive session, confirmed the nomination of Col. Gordon Granger, of the 20^th Michigan cavalry, to be a Brig. Gen. of volunteers and Noah L. Jeffries, to be Assistant Adjt. Gen. in the volunteer service.  They also confirmed the following nominations:

Henry W. Reed, of Iowa, to be Agent of the Indians of the upper Missouri; John Evans, of Illinois, to be Governor of the Territory of Colorado; Wm. H. Evans of Ohio, Consul at Maranham; Edward H. Perkins, of Pa., Consul to Santa Cruz; J. Y. McMoth, of Ohio, Consul to Tangiers.

WASHINGTON, March 27.

SENATE. – Mr. Sumner presented several petitions in favor of the emancipation of slaves.

Mr. Hale offered a resolution asking the Secretary of the interior to transmit to the Senate all correspondence in relation to the bark Augusta.

Mr. Hale also offered a resolution that the committee on naval affairs be instructed to inquire whether there was not any laxity on the part of officers of the blockading squadron on the coast, specially at Charleston, and whether there was any foundation for the statement of the British Consul at that part of the armed troops on ships of the Confederate States have been allowed to go in and out of the port of Charleston, and no attempt made to stop them.  Adopted.

The joint resolution giving pecuniary aid o the States, in case they should emancipate their slaves was taken up.

Mr. Henderson said he felt disposed to vote for the resolution.  There was a strong objection to it in the Border States, and they believed that this was an attempt to abolish slavery in those States, and then in other States.  He was sure there was no such intention on the part of the President, and he thought there was no such intentions on the part of the members of the Senate.  Although the subject of slavery was the cause of the rebellion, yet there were other interests.  His State (Mo.) were deeply interested in having the Mississippi river kept open to its mouth.  He had opposed all agitations.  He had also opposed the bill for the abolition of slavery in the Disctrict of Columbia, not because he considered it unconstitutional, but because it was inexpedient to bring the subject up for discussion.  The south had been occasionally frightened by some story of an abolition monster, yet if Congress should abolish the petty amount of slavery in the District of Columbia, he did not believe that his State would secede, but hoped that if the Senators were determined to do this thing, they would be quick, for the great State of Delaware, by getting a peep behind the curtains and discovering the awful plot to emancipate the few slaves she has – already nearly free – might go south for her constitutional rights, where certainly her constitutional rights will be preserved in full force.  The two Senators from Kentucky are getting excited, and the Senators from Virginia and Maryland are getting suspicious of some dreadful thing to happen.  He had been opposed to the bill for the cultivation of the cotton lands, though he supposed it harmless, for the reason that it might have a bad effect upon the Border States.  Yet if the statement is true that slavery should by the corner stone of the government, he was willing to fight to the last with the North against such government.  Nothing would tempt him to raise his hand against the government.  All the revolution he would want was the ballot box.  He did not think there were fifty thousand slaves left in Missouri, as large numbers of them had been taken South, the people in that State had lost property equal in value to the whole amount of her slaves, at the commencement of this war; he regarded the President’s message not as a threat, but as a prophecy, which he felt would be fulfilled everywhere.  If the war continued , he for his part was perfectly willing that the proposition should go to the people of his State, and the matter left entirely to the States.  Ninety-six days of the war expenses would have paid for all the slaves in Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland and the District of Columbia, ant the expenses of the war for two years, will pay for all the slaves in the country.

Mr. Pearce, from the finance committee reported a bill to allow arms ordered by States, to aid the suppression of the rebellion, to come free of duty.

On motion of Mr. Fessenden the naval appropriation bill was taken up.

A long discussion ensued on the completion of Steven’s battery.  No action was taken on it, and the Senate went into executive session.

HOUSE. – Mr. Fenton asked, but failed to obtain leave to introduce a resolution instructing the committee on the conduct of the war to inquire into the cause of the exposure of large bodies of our troops belonging to the army of the Potomac, consisting of regiments, brigades, and in some instances of whole divisions, who have been deprived of shelter for days and weeks in consequence of having their orders to march countermanded, then be again ordered to march, and again countermanded, without adequate food, and as to who is responsible for this needless exposure and suffering of our troops.

The House went into a committee of the whole, on the tax bill.  Among other amendments adopted was a proposition that a tax on goods and wares and merchandise manufactured pursuant to contract under this act, shall be paid by purchasers before the delivery thereof.  Several sections of the bill were then acted upon, when the committee rose.

Mr. Rice, of Mass., from the committee on naval affairs, reported a joint resolution appropriating $40,000, to enable the Secretary of Treasury to test the pans and material for rendering ships and floating batteries invulnerable.

The House, in committee of the whole on a state of the Union, resumed the consideration of the tax bill.

Mr. Sheffield offered an amendment that upon all sales of goods, wares, merchandise and other property and estates, which shall be used for consumption or for investment, (excluding jobbers or middle men,) a tax of one per cent. on the amount of such sales shall be paid.

After discussion, the amendment was temporarily withdrawn.  An amendment was adopted taxing candles of any material, valued at not over 15 cents per pound, half per cent per pound; between 15 and 20 per cent, 1 cent per pound; and above 25 one half cent per pound.  An amendment was adopted taxing anthracite coal, 15 cents per ton and bituminous 8 cents per bushel; adopted with the proviso not to go into effect until the termination of the reciprocity treaty.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, March 28, 1862, p. 1

Postmaster General Blair on the Cause of the War

In reply to a committee, who invited among others, Hon. M. Blair, Postmaster Gen., to participate in a meeting to be held at Cooper Institute, New York, to congratulate the country on the stand taken by President Lincoln in his special message, the Secretary says, that he does not concur in the proposition that certain States have “been recently overturned and wholly subverted as members of the Federal Union,” upon which the call is based.  His reason for not doing so is because “That is, in substance, what the Confederates themselves claim.”  This declaration is seized upon with avidity by the proslavery press and distorted into a position analogous to that which they themselves occupy.  The Democrat of yesterday morning does this with great gusto.  That Mr. Blair does not wholly agree with these Democratic slave drivers is evident from the following remarks which follow the above avowal:

“There are two distinct interests in slavery, the political and property interests, held by distinct classes.  The rebellion originated with the political class.  The property class, which generally belonged to the Whig organization, had lost no property in the region where the rebellion broke out, and were prosperous.  It was the Democratic organization, which did not represent the slaveholders as a class, which hatched the rebellion.  Their defeat in the late political struggle, and in the present rebellion, extinguishes at once and forever the political interest of slavery.  The election of Mr. Lincoln put an end to the hopes of Jeff. Davis, Wise, et id omne genus, for the Presidency of the Union, and hence the rebellion.  It extinguished slavery as a power to control the Federal Government, and it was the capacity of slavery to subserve this purpose alone which has given it vitality, for morally and economically it is indefensible.  With the extension of its political power there is no motive to induce any politician to uphold it.  No man ever defended such an institution except for pay, and nothing short of the power of the Government should provide sufficient gratification or ambition to pay for such service; and therefore Mr. Toombs said, with perfect truth, that the institution could only be maintained in the Union by the possession of the Government.”

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, March 18, 1862, p. 2

Slavery

There are just three propositions that we wish to submit to our pro-slavery friends – to those gentlemen who are advocating the return of the rebel States to the Union, possessed of all the rights they enjoyed before they rebelled against the parent Government; and until they are refuted we must consider these persons as sympathizers with the South and actuated more by partisan zeal than love of country.  They are these: 1. Slavery caused this war.  2. Had it not been for slavery the war would not have occurred.  3. Remove slavery and there will be no cause for war.  Admit the truth of these propositions and the man cannot be regarded as the true friend of his country who advocates the retention of slavery among us.

That slavery caused this war, is acknowledged even by Jeff. Davis in his melancholy inaugural address of the 22d of February, and admitted by every well informed man in the North, of which we have any knowledge, who has expressed any opinion upon the subject.  Had slavery not existed in our country, the unhappy differences between the North and the South, which have at length culminated in war, would have had no foundation.  The tendency of slavery is to produce a state of society antagonistic to a republican form of government, by depressing one class of community and elevating another.  While it reduces the poor to the most abject condition of any creatures on the face of the earth, (vide Bayard Taylor’s comparative statement of the wretched condition of the poor whites of the South,) it makes an aristocracy of the rich, haughty, overbearing and exacting, who regard the law of force as paramount to the plain republican rule of their country.  Remove slavery, and society would settle down on a firm basis, and the distinction of wealth, which fosters aristocracy, would soon disappear.

Wealth is the distinctive feature of aristocracies, talent that of republican forms of government.  A fool can obtain a seat in the British parliament, if he have the rank and the money to command the influence of his dependents.  In a republic “rank is but the guinea’s stamp,” money is no recommendation to station, talent alone commands respect, and through its powerful influence a man may rise from the lowly paths of a day-laborer, from that of a rail-splitter, to the proudest position in the gift of the people.  Everything, then, that has a tendency to encourage a marked distinction in society should be banished from a republican form of government.  This is one of the least of the many evils that slavery entails upon our country.  Remove it at once and a “nation would be born in a day,” that would rival the history of the world to exhibit its equal for all the elements of greatness, happiness and perpetuity.

Yet for mere partisan purposes, with a knowledge of these facts before them, men are so degraded intellectually as to wish to retain slavery among us.  Men too, who live in that portion of our country that has never reaped one iota of benefit from it – if it possess any benefit – and that, too, at a time when the first fair opening in the history of our country is presented, that slavery can be legally, constitutionally, and rightfully removed.  We have known partisan zeal to carry men to great lengths, but never to a point so remote as this from all that tends to aggrandize us as a nation.  It seems sometimes in view of their course as if indeed ‘judgment had flown to beasts and men had lost their reason.’  But let us live in hope, hope that the dark cloud which seems to be settling down upon our country will yet emit flashes of light that will enable the helmsmen of our nation to steer the goodly bark through the rocks and shoals that menace it.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, March 7, 1862, p. 2