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

Charles Eliot Norton to James Russell Lowell, April 10, 1865

My heart is as full as it can be. I did not know till it was lifted this morning how heavy a load we had been bearing. I think of all those who have suffered that we might rejoice. The dawn of our new day is bright.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 282

Charles Eliot Norton to Aubrey Thomas de Vere, December 27, 1864

Cambridge, Mass., December 27, 1864.

. . . Your last letter was very welcome, and should have been sooner answered had not I been too busy for letter-writing during the last month or two. A little more than a year ago Lowell and I assumed editorial charge of the “North American Review,” our oldest and most important quarterly. The weight of editing falls upon me, and at times I am fully occupied by it. I should not have undertaken it had I not believed that the “Review” might be made a powerful instrument for affecting public opinion on the great questions now at issue here, and had I not known that something might be done by its means to raise the standards of criticism and scholarship among us. I have not been wholly disappointed. We have succeeded in giving new influence to the “Review,” and have good reason for hoping to gain still more for it.

But this, with other work, keeps me very busy. A stronger man than I might do much more, but I can, in any given time, effect but so much. . . .

The last three months have done more for us than any others since the war began. The reelection of Mr. Lincoln was a greater triumph than any military victory could be over the principles of the rebellion. The eighth of November, 1864, — the election day, will stand always as one of the most memorable days in our history. . . .

Mr. Lincoln is constantly gaining in popular respect and confidence. He is not a man whose qualities are fitted to excite a personal enthusiasm, but they are of a kind to inspire trust. He is an admirable ruler for our democratic republic. He has shown many of the highest qualities of statesmanship, and I have little doubt that his course and his character will both be estimated more highly in history than they are, in the main, by his contemporaries. . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 281-2

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, Sunday Evening, September 25, 1864

Sunday evening, 25 September, 1864.

. . . We had a pleasant Club dinner yesterday.  . . . Sumner has toned down greatly since it seems certain that Lincoln is to be reelected. His opinion of Lincoln “is at least not higher than it was three years ago.” An officer, just from Atlanta, came in and told us some good stories of Sherman, — and of the transportation department of the army. There has been a corps of six thousand men detailed to keep the Rail Road from Nashville to Atlanta in order. The bridge across the Chattahoochie, — a railroad bridge seven hundred and eight feet long, and ninety-three feet high, was built in four days. The army has been well supplied, in great measure with canned food; — “Yes,” said Sherman, “I am perfectly satisfied with the transportation service, — it has given us abundance of desecrated vegetables and consecrated milk.”

This as a pendant to his recent letters. What a week this last has been for good letters! Two from Lincoln, that are worthy of the best letter-writer of the time, — so simple, manly, and direct; one from Grant, not less simple and straightforward, clearing the air with its plain frankness from rumours and innuendoes, and affording a most striking contrast to the letters which Mr. Lincoln was in the habit of receiving from a former Commander-in-Chief; and two from Sherman, masterpieces of strong sense in strong words. How his wrath swells and grows till it bursts in “Tell that to the Marines,” and with what indignant common-sense does he reject the canting appeal to God and humanity of the Southern slave-drivers. He writes as well as he fights. . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 279-80

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, October 18, 1864

Shady Hill, October 18,1864.

. . . When I got home last Wednesday night I found a telegram from Goldwin Smith to say that he had been detained by a calm, and would be with us the next day, — but it was not till Friday that he reached us, — and here he is still with us — at this instant writing at the table in the Library while I am in the little study. He is a most pleasant inmate, — and his appreciation of America and of our cause is so just, so clear, and so complete, that there are few Americans who at a time like this would be more sympathetic, or more truly genial.

He suffers in domestic life from an English education, which has enforced reserve and want of quick reciprocation of expression on a character naturally open and sensitively sympathetic. He has had no home life to bring out and develope the power of quick responsiveness. At six years old he was sent to school, and he has never lived at home since. But it would be doing him great injustice were I to imply that there is any marked defect in his manner as a mere manner of society, — it is only as an intimate domestic manner that it sometimes fails, and then, (as I have said,) rather from want of practice in the expression of feeling than from absence of the feeling itself.

We are doing a good deal during his visit, and talking as men talk when they really have something to say and something to learn from each other. He will be with us till the end of next week.

The “Review” has just passed into the hands of Ticknor & Fields. This is still a secret. I am glad of it, for I retain as absolute control as ever, and T. & F. are much better able to give the “Review” a wide circulation than Crosby was. . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 280-1

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, September 6, 1864

Home, 6 September, 1864.

I have just read your paper on Hawthorne, and am greatly pleased with it. Your analysis of his mental and moral character, and of its intellectual results, seems to me eminently subtile, delicate, and tender. I regret only that it is so short, — for there is much suggested in what you have written that might well be developed, and there are some traits of Hawthorne's genius which scarcely have justice done them in the brevity of your essay. The one point which I should like to have had more fully brought out is the opposition that existed between his heart and his intellect. His genius continually, as it seems to me, overmastered himself, and the depth and fulness of his feelings were forced into channels of expression in which they were confined and against which they struggled in vain. He was always hurting himself, till he became a strange compound of callousness and sensitiveness. But I do not mean to analyze. Your paper is a delightful one and I am very glad to have it.

And now let us rejoice together over the great good news. It lifts the cloud, and the prospect clears. We really see now the beginning of the end. The party that went for peace at Chicago¹ has gone to pieces at Atlanta. The want of practical good sense in our own ranks pains me. The real question at issue is so simple, and the importance of solving it correctly so immense, that I am surprised alike at the confusion of mind and the failure of appreciation of the stake among those who are most deeply interested in the result. Even if Mr. Lincoln were not, as you and I believe, the best candidate, he is now the only possible one for the Union party, and surely, such being the case, personal preferences should be sunk in consideration of the unspeakable evil to which their indulgence may lead. I have little patience with Wade, and Sumner, and Chase, letting their silly vexation at not having a chance for the Presidency thus cloud their patriotism and weaken the strength of the party. . . .

I am glad you were to meet Goldwin Smith at dinner.² He spent his first day on shore with us, — and we had much interesting talk. He is as good at least as his books. I gave him a note to you, and begged him to send it to you in advance of his going to New York that you might meet him there on his arrival, and secure him the right entrance to the big city. Will you give him a note to Seward and to Mr. Lincoln? He does not wish to go to Washington without formal introductions, — and he has now only a letter from Colonel Lawrence (T. Bigelow) which is not the right one for him to carry. . . .

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¹ The Democratic National Convention, which nominated McClellan for the Presidency. It met at Chicago, August 29.

² Goldwin Smith in his Reminiscences writes of his first visit to America: “In 1864, when the war was drawing to a close, I paid a visit to the United States charged with the sympathy of Bright, Cobden, and other British friends of the North as a little antidote to the venom of the too powerful Times.  . . . My friendships are, saving my marriage, the great events of my life; and of my friendships none is more dear than that with Charles Eliot Norton, who was my host, more than hospitable, in Cambridge. He combined the highest European culture with the most fervent love of his own country.”

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 277-9

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

Ashfield, 10 August, 1864.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, July 24, 1864

Ashfield, Mass., 24 July, 1864.

. . . This week, let us hope, we shall hear that Sherman is in Atlanta, and that he is breaking up the army opposed to him. His work is not better done than Grant will do his. But I do not want peace till there is certainty of our carrying the Amendment to the Constitution. We must have that to make peace sure.

The Rebel self-appointed peacemakers took nothing by their move, and Lincoln showed as usual his straightforward good sense. What a contrast between him and the politicians who fancy themselves his superiors in insight and shrewdness! What does Raymond¹ mean by his Saturday's article on Lincoln's statement of terms? Is he hedging for a reconstruction with slavery? If so, he is more shortsighted and more unprincipled than I believed. I never fancied, indeed, that he had principles, and I thought he had learned enough not to confess such bad ones. . . .

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¹ Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 274

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, July 14, 1864

Ashfield, 14 July, 1864.

Your notes are so pleasant and add to the worth of our evening mail so much that I wish you would write to me every day. Last night, just at sunset, when Jane and Dora¹ and I came back from renewing our youth in gathering the wild raspberries on a beautiful hillside half a mile away, Susan met us just as we came in sight of home, with your note and the other letters and papers which the coach from Deerfield had just brought in. I looked first to see what had become of the world during the day before, to find out whether the raiders had yet reached their fate after scaring Pennsylvania out of its senses and trampling “My Maryland” in the dust, — and finding that we were still cut off from Washington and still the victims of rumors, — I opened your note and was contented.

Ashfield has neither telegraph nor railroad, and but one mail a day, — and it is a good, patriotic, happy little village, that does not believe in being excited, but holds firm to its faith in the country and is quiet in the assurance that the rebels are soon to be on their knees. It is so pleasant a place that I hope you will come up to see it and us while we are here. The scenery all around us is delightful, with the mingled charms of fresh wild nature and the cultivation of cheerful farms. It is prettier than any other scenery I know in Massachusetts, — and is like the tamer parts of the English lake country. The village is as quiet as if every day were Sunday. The people are all well off. There are no poor in the town. The air is cool and fresh, the hills have a fine wind blowing across their tops, the little brooks run singing and leaping down their sides, the fields are gardens of wild fruit, the woods are thick and dark and beautiful as the forest of Broceliande, the glades look like the openings in a park, — one could write Massachusetts idylls or a New England “Arcadia” in this happy, tranquil region of the world. . . .

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¹ Mrs. Norton's youngest sister, Miss Theodora Sedgwick.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 273-4

Charles Eliot Norton to James Russell Lowell July 7, 1864

ASHFIELD, July 7,1864.

My Dearest James, — We are having such a pleasant quiet time that I wish you were with us. The house we are in is a good old-fashioned farmhouse, with a stretch of outhouses and barns such as one likes to see. There are no modern conveniences,  — unless a bell for the front door be considered so, — and we fall inevitably into primitive ways of life. . . .

The little village itself where we are has an air of rural comfort and pleasantness that is really delightful. It is embosomed in the hills, not crowded upon by them, but seeming to have a sweet natural sufficient shelter from them. We are within a stone's throw of the tavern, of the meeting houses, the three shops, and the post-office, — and on the other side we are as near two hills between which the road runs, and from either of which there is a wide and beautiful view.  . . . Yesterday we took a drive over hills, through hemlock and beech woods, over an upland moor, through Bear Swamp, and “Little Switzerland,” that we all agreed we must take again when you are with us. I am sure this country will delight you. To my taste it is far more attractive, and more beautiful, than the scenery in the parts of the Berkshires that I know. Many of the views remind me of scenes among the English lakes, on a smaller scale. Joined with the picturesqueness of nature, there is a charm from the evident comfort of the people. Wherever you see a habitation you see what looks like a good home. There are but three town poor, and they are very old. There is but one Irish family, they say, in the township. The little village of Tin Pot, two miles away, does, however, look as if its name were characteristic. There is a good deal of loafing and drinking there, but the loafers and drunkards are not permitted by public opinion to come up here. The line is one of positive separation between the two villages.

The air has a fine bracing quality, — 1300 feet above the sea. To-day we have a little rain. I lounge and invite my soul. The newspapers come regularly but late. We seem out of the world. Still we were glad last night at the news of the destruction of the Alabama, and not sorry for the mode of Semmes's escape. He would have been an unpleasant prisoner on our hands. We could not properly have hung him as a pirate, and to leave him unhung would not have suited our vindictive commercial classes.

I find it hard to be patient in these days, — it would be much easier were you here, but now I have no one to talk over affairs with.

I wish Mr. Quincy¹ could have lived happily a year or two longer to carry the news of the suppression of the rebellion and the extinction of slavery to the other world, so as to be able to remind Hamilton of their conversation the year before his death and convert him to trust in the people, and to confidence in the permanence of the Constitution. But now that public honours will be paid to the memory of Mr. Quincy, cannot we get the sum raised for the Statue? About $4000 is needed. $5000 would be better to cover expenses.

What a kind old man he was! ... A judicious person might make a brief memoir of him that should be full of interest, — but save us from these big Parker 8vos, these elegant Prescott 4tos.²

The July “North American” seems to me good but too heavy. How can we make it lighter? People will write on the heavy subjects; and all our authors are destitute of humour. Nobody but you knows how to say weighty things lightly; nobody but you has the art of light writing. And have you written to Motley? If not please do so before replying to this note. We really need to get him on to our staff of contributors. . . .

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¹ Josiah Quincy, president of Harvard when Norton was in college, died July 1, 1864, in his ninety-third year.

² Weiss's Theodore Parker and Ticknor's Prescott each appeared in 1864

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 269-72

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis January 24, 1864

Shady Hill, Class Day, 24 June, 1864.

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

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

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

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

Charles Eliot Norton to Frederick Law Olmstead, January 24, 1864

Cambridge, Mass., 24 January, 1864.

My Dear Olmsted, — . . . Mr. Lincoln continues to gain the confidence of the people, and it looks now as if there would be little opposition to his reelection. You will find an able article by Lowell on the President's Policy in the “North American” for January, a copy of which I have sent to you. Lowell and I have undertaken the editing of this old Review.  . . . I trust that you will help us by writing for us, — and in asking you to do so I do not feel that I am asking as for a contribution for the amusement of the readers of a magazine, —but rather for a patriotic work. We must use the advantages which the times give us. There is an opportunity now to make the “North American” one of the means of developing the nation, of stimulating its better sense, of setting before it and holding up to it its own ideal, — at least of securing expression for its clearest thought and most accurate scholarship. I hope you will feel that it is an opportunity not to be thrown away. Whatever you may like to write we shall be glad to print. If you have anything to tell or say concerning life in California or the relations of the Pacific to the Atlantic States, or of the state of society in Bear Valley, or of the habits and characters of the miners, — pray put it into the form of an article, and send it to me. I wish you would send something of this kind to me before the summer. . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 267-8

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, December 10, 1863

Shady Hill, Thursday, 10 December, 1863.

. . . Last night we went to hear Beecher. He spoke admirably, and it was a great pleasure to hear him. It was not great oratory, but it was a fine, large, broad, sensible, human, sympathetic performance. To-morrow we have a dinner of our Dozen Club for him.

Once more we may rejoice that Abraham Lincoln is President. How wise and how admirably timed is his Proclamation.¹ As a state paper its naiveté is wonderful. Lincoln will introduce a new style into state papers; he will make them sincere, and his honesty will compel even politicians to like virtue. I conceive his character to be on the whole the great net gain from the war. . . .

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¹ This proclamation, transmitted to Congress with Lincoln's Third Annual Message, Dec. 8, 1863, provided both for the renewal of allegiance by persons in rebellion and the restoration of state governments under the Union.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 266

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, October 16, 1863

Shady Hill, 16 October, 1863.

I heartily and with all my heart rejoice with you in the result of Tuesday's elections. All our confidence in the intelligence and patriotism of our people is justified. The victory is the moral Waterloo of the rebellion. The end is in view, — with Union and freedom and peace. . . .

I have just undertaken, in company with Lowell, the editorship of the “North American Review.” The arrangement with the publishers is a tolerably liberal one, and I think we can put some life into the old dry bones of the Quarterly. Will you sometimes write an article? Will you in the course of the next six weeks write one, — on any national question you choose, or on any other subject if you are tired of politics, — letting us have it for the January number? Do if you can do it. We can pay you two dollars and fifty cents a page. . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 265-6

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, Monday Evening, September 21, 1863

Shady Hill

Monday evening, 21 September, 1863.

. . . I was glad to see Olmsted,¹ but I wish I had known him before he was just going to leave this quarter of the world. It is hard that he should have to give up the civilization that he likes for the barbarism that he does not like. All the lines of his face imply refinement and sensibility to such a degree that it is not till one has looked through them to what is underneath, that the force of his will and the reserved power of his character become evident. It is a pity that we cannot keep him here. Our society needs organizers almost as much as the Mariposa settlers, miners and squatters need one. However, thanks to the war, the Atlantic and the Pacific States have been bound far closer together than of old, and are every day drawn nearer and nearer. — A ring at the door bell is the occasion of that [ink spot], — and I hear William James's pleasant and manly voice in the other room from which the sound of my Mother's voice has been coming to me as she read aloud the Consular Experiences of the most original of consuls. To-night I am half annoyed, half amused at Hawthorne. He is nearly as bad as Carlyle. His dedication to F. Pierce, — the correspondent of Jefferson Davis, the flatterer of traitors, and the emissary of treason, — reads like the bitterest of satires; and in that I have my satisfaction. The public will laugh. “Praise undeserved” (say the copybooks) “is satire in disguise,” — and what a blow his friend has dealt to the weakest of ex-Presidents. . . .

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¹ Frederick Law Olmsted, whose books on the South had already interested Norton deeply. Their immediate sympathy led to enduring bonds of friendship and cooperation in work for public good.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 264-5

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, September 3, 1863

Shady Hill, 3 September, 1863.

It is pleasant to think of you as so near us. It would be much pleasanter to have you with us, — especially this morning, that we might congratulate each other on the extraordinary excellence of the President's letter.¹ He rises with each new effort, and his letters are successive victories. Indeed the series of his letters since and including the one to the Albany Committee are, as he says to General Grant of Vicksburg, “of almost inestimable value to the country,” — for they are of the rarest class of political documents, arguments seriously addressed by one in power to the conscience and reason of the citizens of the commonwealth. They are of the more value to us as permanent precedents — examples of the possibility of the coexistence of a strong government with entire and immediate dependence upon and direct appeal to the people. There is in them the clearest tone of uprightness of character, purity of intention, and goodness of heart. . . .

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¹ Presumably Lincoln's letter of August 26, 1863, to J. C. Conkling, in answer to an invitation to attend a mass-meeting of unconditional Union men at Springfield, Illinois, on September 3.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 263

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, March 9, 1863

Shady Hill, 9 March, 1863.

. . . The Democrats seem to me to have come to a consciousness of their danger. They are now setting themselves right and securing power in the future. If we can fairly kill slavery during the next two years, make it really and truly powerless as a political institution, then I have no objection to the Democrats coming back to their old and familiar places of power. The Republican party has not proved itself able in administration; it is better on the whole for the progress of the country and for the improvement of public opinion that the party founded on the essential principles of right and justice should be in the opposition. Moreover there are questions to be settled after the war is over which can be better settled by the unprincipled party in power, than by one bound by its timidities, and unaccustomed to impose restraints. We shall probably require some “conservatism” at the close of the war, and the Democratic party in power is likely to be conservative in some matters on which the Republicans would be weak and divided. I do not think that there is much chance of the formation of a real Union party. The Democrats will keep their organization, will exclude their too open peace members, and will reject all union with the honest men of our side. The odium of the war, of taxes, of disregard of personal liberty, of a violated constitution will be thrown on the Republicans, or the Unionists if that be their name, and the glory of securing victory and peace, and of reestablishing the Union, will be claimed by the Democrats. With which I shall not grumble. The Millennium is not at hand, but there is a good time coming, — and the country, with a thousand evils remaining, will be the better for the war, and Democrats like you and me may rejoice at the triumph of popular government and the essential soundness of the people.

Is this inveterate optimism? Are we at the beginning, on the contrary, of the epoch of the Lower Republic? . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 261-3

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, February 26, 1863

Shady Hill, 26 February, 1863.

. . . It was pleasant to hear from you of your visit to Philadelphia, and to hear from John,¹ on the same day, his glowing account of it. What a loyal place Philadelphia has become! We should be as loyal here if we had a few more out-and-out secessionists. Our Union Club — we have dropped the offensive word “League” — promises well: two hundred members already, and Mr. Everett and his followers pledged to principles which suit you and me. We are proposing to take the Abbott Lawrence house on Park Street, and to be strong by position as well as by numbers. But nothing will do for the country, — neither Clubs nor pamphlets nor lectures, nor Conscription Bills (three cheers for the despotism necessary to secure freedom), nor Banking Bills, nor Tom Thumb, nor Institutes, — nothing will do us much good but victories. If we take Charleston and Vicksburg we conquer and trample out the Copperheads, — but if not?

I confess to the most longing hope, the most anxious desire to know of our success. I try to be ready for news of failure, indeed I shall be ready for such news if it comes, and we must all only draw a few quick breaths and form a sterner resolve, and fight a harder fight.

Where is the best statement, in a clear and quiet way, of the political necessity of the preservation of the Union, its vital necessity to our national existence? Seward has done harm by keeping up the notion of the old Union, — but who has seen clearest the nature of the new Union for which we are fighting? . . .

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¹ Their common friend, John W. Field of Philadelphia, with whom Norton had travelled in Sicily.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 260-1

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, February 1, 1863

Shady Hill, 1 February, 1863.

Here is our prospectus. If at any time you want to secure a still wider circulation for any one of your articles than their appearance in "Harper" affords, please send me from one hundred to five hundred slips, which can be cheaply enough struck off if done before the form for the paper is broken up.

McClellan is still here, and has been causing people to break the Sabbath to-day. Agassiz is a devoted admirer of his, and said yesterday that “he was a great but not a towering man.” Dr. Holmes studying him physiologically talks of “broad base of brain,” “threshing floor of ideas,” no invention or original force of intellect, but compact, strong, executive nature, “with a neck such as not one man in ten thousand possesses,” “muscular as a prize-fighter,” etc., etc....

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 260

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, January 30, 1863

Shady Hill, 30 January, 1863.

One busy day has succeeded another since you were here till I am at last reduced to a condition in which I am fit for no work, and so set about writing a note and sending my love to you.

The Hero of one hundred ungained Victories, — the conqueror in his own bulletins, is at present in Boston, and but a few people remain calm. Some are excited with enthusiastic admiration of their own imagination of McClellan; some busy with wire-pulling; some active to prevent others, “without distinction” of party, gaining any advantage out of relations with the disgraced Captain and candidate for the next Presidency; and some very much disquieted by all this folly. So you see those who keep quiet and innocent minds are in a despicable minority. . . .

We are making arrangements here to secure the circulation of good telling articles from foreign and our own newspapers, to influence and direct public opinion. We propose to secure from one hundred thousand to five hundred thousand readers for two articles per week, and perhaps more. I shall be the “editor,” so to say, with John Forbes and Sam Ward¹ as advisers. Please bear this in mind and send to me, marked, articles which you think should be thus circulated. I shall have frequent occasion to borrow from “Harper,” — or rather from you in “Harper.” . . .

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¹ Samuel [Gray] Ward, later an active correspondent of Norton's.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 259-60