Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: October 27, 1863

Nothing from the North or West to-day. But Beauregard telegraphs that the enemy's batteries and monitors opened this morning heavily on his forts and batteries, but; as yet, there were no casualties.

The Commissary-General to-day, in a communication to the department, relating to the necessity of impressment to subsist our armies, says “the armies in Virginia muster 150,000 men.” If this be so, then let Meade come! It may be possible that instead of exaggerating, a policy may have been adopted calculated to conceal the actual strength of armies.

Nevertheless, it is understood that one of the cabinet is offering his estates, lands, and negroes for sale. Will he convert the money into European funds? If so, he should not let it be known, else it will engender the terrible idea that our affairs are in a desperate condition. The operations of the next thirty days may be decisive of our fate. Hundreds of thousands of Southern men have yet to die before subjugation can be effected; and quite that number of invaders must fall to accomplish it!

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p. 83

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: October 28, 1863

No news from the army. We have some 13,000 prisoners here, hungry; for there is not sufficient meat for them.

Mr. Memminger, Secretary of the Treasury, is said to be transporting his private fortune (very large) to Europe.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p. 83

John L. Motley to Ann Lothrop Motley, March 3, 1863

Legation of the United States,

March 3, 1863.           

My Dearest Mother: As I have now made up my mind that our war is to be protracted indefinitely, I am trying to withdraw my attention from it, and to plunge into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries again. While I am occupying myself with the events of a civil war which lasted eighty years and engaged and exhausted the energies of all the leading powers of Europe, perhaps I may grow less impatient with military operations extended over a much larger and less populated area, and which have not yet continued for two years. Attention in Europe, I am happy to say, is somewhat diverted from our affairs by the events which are taking place in Poland.

Meetings are held day by day all over England, in which the strongest sympathy is expressed for the United States government, and detestation for the slaveholders and their cause, by people belonging to the working and humbler classes, who, however, make up the mass of the nation, and whose sentiments no English ministry (Whig or Tory) dares to oppose. As for Poland, I suppose the insurrection will be crushed, although it will last for months. I don't believe in any intervention on the part of the Western powers. There will only be a great deal of remonstrating, and a great talk about liberty and free institutions on the part of that apostle of liberty and civilization, Louis Napoleon.

I feel very much grieved that our only well-wisher in Europe, the Russian government, and one which has just carried out at great risks the noblest measure of the age, the emancipation of 25,000,000 slaves, should now be contending in arms with its own subjects, and that it is impossible for us to sympathize with our only friends. The government here keeps very quiet.

Ever your most affectionate son,

J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 317-8

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: October 25, 1863

We have nothing new this morning; but letters to the department from North and South Carolina indicate that while the troops in Virginia are almost perishing for food, the farmers are anxious to deliver the tithes, but the quartermaster and commissary agents are negligent or designedly remiss in their duty. The consequence will be the loss of the greater portion of these supplies, and the enhancement of the price of the remainder in the hands of the monopolists and speculators.

The Southern Express Co. has monopolized the railroads, delivering cotton for speculators, who send it to the United States, while the Confederate States cannot place enough money in Europe to pay for the supplies needed for the army.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p. 82

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, Thursday, February 12, 1852

Boston, Thursday, Feb. 12th, 1852.

My Dear Sumner: — I have yours of the 7th, and thank you for it.

Don't think too much of my dissent from your Kossuth speech. I have with heart and hand, with conscience and reason, with warmth and affection approved and sustained every political step you ever took save two — the Coalition, and the declaration to European despots that, throttle liberty as they might and when they might, we would never interfere.

On these alone have I differed from you, but give to you the same credit for honesty and earnestness and sincere conviction of right that I claim for myself.

Bygones are not yet bygones, and the sad state of things this day here confirms me in my views of the Coalition; but for your election we should have lost everything.

You are true and earnest and persevering; you are the noble and worthy head of our party and are doing something to save its honour; but the rest of the leaders, where are they? — in office, and trying to keep possession as an end, not a means.

But enough of this! let the infinitesimal of my dissent from you disappear in the wholeness of my approval, admiration and regard.

I am in some perplexity and dismay; a check for $500 has been forged in my name and paid! my suspicion falls upon one for whom I grieve; — and, if true, will carry desolation to a widowed hearth — I am much more anxious to be found wrong than right.

Your note came too late to prevent your election as Trustee — if you are very desirous of being left off you can be — but perhaps you had better remain until I learn what I hope may be [the state of things] at the end of this year. How we change! — once I could not understand your indifference to life — now you can not understand mine.

Faithfully yours,

S. G. Howe.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 363-4

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, December 28, 1851

South Boston, Dec. 28, 1851.

My dear Sumner: — I received to-day the revised copy of your speech, and thank you for it. It is a beautiful and characteristic speech; and had you stopped where you say, “and here I might stop,” it would have had my heartiest approval. What follows does not please me; nay! it pains and grieves me. Perhaps I cannot give you any good reason for my dissent, because I am not your equal in logical power; I yield habitually to your reasoning; but where my moral instincts lead me to differ with you, you cannot shake me. They have rarely led me so to do, but in this case they rise up, and will be laid by no magic of logic; and they tell me you are wrong. I can understand that Mann and Giddings and Allen,¹ all my superiors, vastly so, in knowledge and power, should approve your sentiment, for they are lawyers, statesmen if you will, and bow themselves with what seems to me a superstitious reverence before the "Law of Nations," as expounded by Grotius, Puffendorf and others.

Do you not yourself, dear Sumner, have too much reverence of this kind? Does it not amount to blind veneration?

You talk about “that Supreme Law, the world's collected will, which overarches the Grand Commonwealth of Christian Nations!”

The world's collected will! in God's name what do you mean? The world is the people of the world; and this “Supreme Law” was not enacted by the people, nor for the people, but by the selfish few who have governed and oppressed the peoples — enacted or rather acted in the interests and for the preservation of the rulers, and not in the interests of the people.

“The Grand Commonwealth of Christian States” — where — when was there ever such a thing or anything approaching it?

It is a mockery to call the Governments of Europe Christian. They hate; they do ever to others as they would not be done to; they try to overreach and undermine and injure and destroy each other. A precious set of piratical combinations against the true interests of the people and the real progress of humanity to be dignified with the name of a “Commonwealth of Christian States!”

This is mere rhetoric, my dear Sumner, and poor rhetoric, for everything is poor that is not true.

You say “what that code forbids you, forbear to do!” and I am sorry you said it, for you may have to unsay it if you continue to be among the powers that embody the sentiment of our people in the stirring times that are coming. Many and many of the laws of your venerated code of national law will be rent asunder and trampled upon in that resurrection day of the people's rights when the principles of international communication shall be settled not with a view to the interest of the governors but the governed.

The law of nations! Why, what is a nation? Is it an entity, a principle, an enduring thing? No! but a temporary arrangement, a convenient classification for those whose motto is divide et impera: a classification which your law of nations would fain keep up, but which is fast disappearing as the sentiment [of] human brotherhood is passing from the abstract into the concrete.

The only fault I have found with Kossuth (and I find the same with you), is the assumption of the innate reality, the great importance, the enduring nature of these national distinctions and divisions. A people united under one government, living within certain geographical boundaries, may do whatever they choose, may enslave, oppress and outrage in every possible way those of a certain sect or colour living within their borders; and those nations over the border, though they may hear the groans of the victims, have no right to interfere. This is not human brotherhood: we were men before we were citizens,² and though we are to look first to the interests of our immediate neighbours and countrymen, we are not [to] overlook the claims of our brethren over the border. I know what you will say — you will use all moral means, but you will never use force — you will have no wars. Against this, again, all the instincts of my nature revolt. God gives us power, force, and the instinct to use it, and though it is better never to use it in war, yet it may be the only means in our power to save the perishing. I tell you, Sumner, as I have often told you before, these instincts of ours, this combativeness and this destructiveness, though destined to die out by and by, when the moral sentiment becomes supreme, have yet their work to do in the suppression of wrong and the establishment of right. Suppose your neighbour is beating his wife and his children, and you hear their cries, and you cannot stop him by any moral means, will you not knock him down and tie him? If you would not, then ought God to wither the arm and shrivel the knuckles that will not use the strength He lent them.

And do you not hear the cries of people over the border, and say, “Oh! I must not interfere, you are not of my people, you are only men and women, not my fellow citizens; the ‘law which overarches the Grand Commonwealth of Christian States’ forbids me to employ the force which God has given me in your behalf, and what that forbids, I cannot do.”

You say that “against every purpose” you will uphold the peaceful neutrality of your country. Now, my dear Sumner, this seems to me a wrong doctrine and a selfish doctrine. Our country is growing with a giant growth; in a few years its strength may become so great, it may so command the commercial and monetary interest of the globe that no nation would dare to risk its enmity; I say this may possibly be: and yet you would so tie up our hands that we could not interfere even if another partition of Poland, or another Massacre of Parga³ or a St. Bartholomew's Eve, were to be enacted. It would be none of our business according to your doctrine, though another Herod slew all the infants over the border, or the rivers on the other side of the mountains were red with the blood of Huguenots, or another Poland shrieked as her last Kosciusko fell.

It is true you say “you would swell with indignation at the steps of tyranny;” but, Lord bless you, if you should swell until you burst, you would not do half so much good as by a kick and a lick at the tyrant.

Sumner, I know that abstractly and logically your peace principles seem sound, and I doubt not they will finally prevail; but there is a time for all things; and so long as avowed tyrants go about tying up people and flogging them, it is the business of somebody who has the power, to knock the tyrant down and let the people up.

Nobody who knows your generous sympathetic nature will ever suspect you of selfishness or of irony, but a stranger might almost suspect you of both, as you apostrophize Kossuth, and tell him “to be content with outgushing sympathy,” while you deny him any material aid; “to trust in God,” while you refuse him, and tell every other nation to refuse him, the aid of means, by which alone God ever does anything.

I have thus loosely and rapidly put down some passing thoughts for your consideration.

But the principal one is this; and this, dear Sumner, has disturbed me more than all: it seems to me that all this latter part of your speech is de trop; is uncalled for; is suggested by a desire to set forth and reiterate your peace principles, in forgetfulness of the harm it may do to the downcast, the struggling, the almost desperate patriots of Europe. Why tell the Despots that under no circumstances will we ever resort to the kind of interference which alone they fear, or care much for? What care they for our “outgushing sympathy” or our “God speed” to patriots, or our swelling bosoms — so that we will only keep quiet, and hold our hands off while they bind their victims securely — and put off, for years incalculable, the emancipation of their people?

If you will be as harmless as a dove, at least be as cunning as a serpent, and do not tell the Despot that you will show nothing but a white feather.

Kossuth has partly exposed the miserable charlatanerie of secrecy in diplomatic intercourse; I wish he had gone further and said that an honest, brave and intelligent people ought absolutely to forbid any secret negotiations, and insist upon every despatch being public. I hope you will move in this matter. I never read of a member of your Senate or of the House asking the President to communicate some information provided in his opinion the public interests do not forbid it, without a feeling that we are grossly humbugged (pardon the word).

How can truth ever do any harm but by being concealed — rotting in the dark? But methinks before throwing aside entirely the old maxims of diplomacy and statesmanship (forsooth !) I would at least use that part which allowed me to conceal from the despots of Europe the (to them comforting and encouraging) fact that never under any circumstances would we be driven by any atrocities of theirs to interfere in behalf of those our unfortunate brethren whom they hold in their grasp, and may legally hold by the “Great Law which overarches the Grand Commonwealth of Christian Nations.” Fas est ab hoste doceri; and if I am to be bound by the Devil's code, let me learn all I can of his mode of working, and counteract him where I may.

I have wanted to sit down and write something about this matter for publication — but alas! I find fast creeping over me a disinclination for any work of the kind — and my deep interest in everything that touches you or your fame, has, I fear, led me to feel more about this matter than my devotedness to the right and good.

At any rate I have done one duty of friendship and told you frankly how much in my opinion the latter part of your speech falls short of the high standard you usually maintain. This is the speech of Lawyer Sumner, Senator Sumner — not of generous, chivalrous, high-souled Charles Sumner, who went with me into the Broad Street riot,³ and who, if need had been, would have defended the women and children in the houses, by pitching their ruffianly assailants downstairs. Enough; I will not begin upon another sheet. Good night, God bless you.

Ever thine,

S. G. h.

_______________

¹ Charles Allen, then a Congressman.

² “Before man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.” — Lowell.

³ By Ali Pasha.

⁴ See ante, page 97.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 355-60

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, December 26, 1851

Boston, Dec. 26, 1851.

Dear Sumner: — . . . I told you I should give you my views touching that part of your beautiful speech from which I dissent entirely.

You are quite right in saying Kossuth is demanding more than is reasonable, if by reasonable you mean practical and feasible. If however you plant yourself upon the ground of human brotherhood, and demand of your brother man, or brother nation, all that the sacred tie of brotherhood warrants, and suppose others will do their duty — then you have a right to demand nearly, if not all, that he does.

I am not at all moved by what you (and still more others) say about a war costing us five hundred millions — of course we must first settle if it be right, and then meet the cost as we best may.

Depend upon it, Sumner, God has not yet finished his work with his instrument of combativeness and destructiveness; and though wars are as bad as you have ever depicted them; though the ordeal, the fight, is absurd and all that, still, — still, — when the lower propensities are so active in the race they must occasionally be knocked down with clubbed muskets.

It is not at all probable, still it is possible that, taking advantage of reaction, and of Louis Napoleon's treason,¹ and of the intense desire of the bourgeois class all over Europe for peaceful pursuit of business, let who may govern, and despairing of anything better, the Russians and the Prussians and the Austrians may combine to establish despotism and avert all progress in western Europe; and it is possible that England may be forced to engage single-handed with them: if so shall we be neutral? Shall we merely send a “God speed!” — and not back it up by hearty blows at the enemies of the race?

I say no! a thousand times no! and be it five hundred or five thousand millions that it will cost, let us go into the fight.

Kossuth is doing a great and glorious work; and though like all enthusiasts he overdoes his task, — and attempts more than it is possible to perform — still he will do much for us. God keep him and give him a chance to work for five years more, when he will have a chance to try a struggle with Russia.

What does George² write you? I take it Louis Nap. will have it all his own way for some time to come; not long as Nature views things, but long for us impatient mortals.

Ever thine,

s. G. H.

_______________

¹ The Coup d’Etat.

² George Sumner.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 353-5

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: September 18, 1863

Nothing new from the Rappahannock, but a battle is looked for soon. Rosecrans, who had advanced into Georgia, has fallen back on Chattanooga, which he is fortifying. If he be not driven from thence, we shall lose our mines, and the best country for commissary supplies. But Bragg had from 60,000 to 70,000 men on the 5th inst., when he had not fallen back far from Chattanooga; since then he has received more reinforcements from Mississippi, and Longstreet's corps, arrived by this time, will swell his army to 90,000 men, perhaps. Johnston will probably take command, for Bragg is becoming unpopular. But Bragg will fight!

The equinoctial storm has commenced, and the monitors are not in view of Charleston, having sought quiet waters.

The Enquirer has again assailed Mr. Benjamin, particularly on account of the retention of Mr. Spence, financial agent in England (appointed by Mr. Memminger), an anti-slavery author, whose books advocate Southern independence. To-day a letter was sent to the Secretary of War, from Mr. Benjamin, stating the fact that the President had changed the whole financial programme for Europe. Frazer, Trenholm, & Co., Liverpool, are to be the custodians of the treasure in England, and Mr. McRae, in France, etc., and they would keep all the accounts of disbursements by the agents of departments, thus superseding Mr. Spence. I think this arrangement will somewhat affect the operations of Major Huse (who is a little censured in the letter, purporting to be dictated by the President, but really written by the President) and Col. Gorgas.

If Wilmington continues in our possession, the transactions in Europe will be large, and the government will derive more of its supplies from thence.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p. 46-7

George D. Phillips to Howell Cobb, December 30, 1845

Clarksville [ga.], Decr. 30th, 1845.

Dear Sir: Enclosed you will receive a letter from our friend Col. Lumpkin to me apprising me he had collected a certain amot. of money which was held subject to my order. . . . Will you do me the kindness to speak to the Col. on the subject, or if you choose shew him his letter, which will refresh his recollection, and receive the amot., and likewise do me the farther favor to hand it to Thomas Ritchie with whom I am in arrears. No doubt you sometimes call on the venerable old gentleman whose grey head and tremulous hand is more formidable to the Whigs than an army with banners. This will give you some trouble perhaps, but we cannot live without troubling one another, and you do not know how much trouble I may have on your account yet. Be it however much or little I shall not make out my bill. I could send the statement of Maj. Walker if I thought it were necessary, but the Col. might think I questioned his honor, or some such thing; and I have a great disinclination to be called out in Cold Weather. I will however drop him a line. The President's Message has set all our mountain folks to thinking and talking. Every one understands, or thinks he understands, all about the Oregon question; and I heard a crowd on Christmas, not one of whom knew on which side of the Rocky Mountains Oregon was, swear they would support and fight for Polk all over the world, that he was right, and we would have Oregon and thrash the British into the bargain. As to the tariff, they despised it — they never liked it — and Polk had shewn it was not the poor man's friend. But about locking up the public money, they were not so sure he was right, — it had better circulate from hand to hand, as people could then get money for their work. After the Message had been elaborately [execrated?] by the meeting, my summing up was that our mountain population (save a few rabid Whigs) were sound to the core, and let peace or war betide they would do their duty. Bagatelle aside, this Oregon affair must prove a rough customer to us and England. I am no advocate of quarrels, much less protracted ones, and decidedly prefer a fight, though it results in a bloody nose, to the latter, and therefore feel anxious that the question should be settled; but I must be permitted to doubt if either England or the U. S. has pursued the most politic course, and think if negotiations could be resumed the controversy would be settled with scarcely a shade's variation from the terms previously offered and rejected. But how can the confab be reopened? Neither power will make the first advance; each to a great extent have taken their position, and pride prompts to its maintenance. That our old ally and best transatlantic friend in bye-gone days begins to look on us with green eyes there can be no doubt. Her conduct in relation to Texas, her notions of a balance of power, etc., prove it, and war with England will demonstrate it fully. We should therefore not precipitate a conflict, but with energy prepare for it by increasing our navy and fortifying the most assailable points. The opinion expressed by many distinguished men that England cannot war with us, is a strange delusion. With her stock of cotton on hand and the supplies she can get from Brazil, Egypt and the E. Indies, not one of her spindles would stop for two or three years; and as to her want of breadstuffs, she can feed her suffering thousands on the water and in Canada as cheaply as at home. Her press gangs are now superseded by the necessities of the people, and the difficulty would be to restrain enlistments. And has she ever had such a time to carry out those objects which she so anxiously desires, as the present? She is at peace with all Christendom, her population redundant, the Catholic fanatics of Ireland would forget repeal to join the crusade against slavery; and France, colonizing France, not at all relishing our declarations as to European powers interfering with the affairs of N. America, would stand aloof and feel no desire that the strife should cease until both were whipped.

But if Oregon is ours, although I regret it is not under instead of on the Pacific, we must have it unless we voluntarily yield a part; and I think the President has immortalised himself in taking the stand he has. I hope Congress will act on the subject with caution, prudence, and firmness. Let us ever be in the right and trust to our valor and the God of battles for the issue.

The winter has been excessively cold and has kept me at home, but shall leave in a few days for Ala. The vote on the adm. of Texas was nobly done. Write to Tom Rush to go to Congress. He has talents of a high order, and the people wish him to go, but he is disinclined. Do write to him at Nacogdoches.

SOURCE: Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, Editor, The Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911, Volume 2: The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb, p. 69-71

Horace Mann: Letter Accepting the Nomination for the Thirtieth Congress, Made by the Whig Convention of the 8th District of Massachusetts, March 21, 1848.

Gentlemen;

Your communication of the 16th inst., being directed to Newton, (instead of West Newton, where I reside,) did not reach me until this morning. I thank you cordially for the kind expressions of personal regard with which you have been pleased to accompany it. You inform me that at a convention of delegates assembled in Dedham, on Wednesday, the 15th inst., I was nominated as a candidate to fill the vacancy in Congress occasioned by the death of the great and good man whose irreparable loss we, his constituents, with a nation for our fellow-mourners, deplore.

At first thought, the idea of being the immediate successor of John Quincy Adams in the councils of the nation might well cause any man to shrink back from the inevitable contrast. But it is obvious, on a moment's reflection, that the difference is so trivial between all the men whom he has left, compared with the disparity between them and him, as to render it of little consequence, in this respect, who shall succeed him; and the people in the Eighth District, in their descent from Mr. Adams to any successor, must break and bear the shock of the fall, as best they can.

I most heartily concur with you in that estimate of the services, and veneration for the character, of our late representative, which your resolutions so eloquently express. To be fired by his example, to imitate his diligence and fidelity in the discharge of every trust, to emulate his moral intrepidity, which always preferred to stand alone by the right, rather than to join the retinue and receive the plaudits of millions, as a champion of the wrong, — this would be, in the beautiful language of the Roman historian, “to ascend to glory by the path of virtue.”

One of the resolutions adopted by your convention declares the three following things: —

1. That the successor of Mr. Adams, on the floor of Congress, should be a man “whose principles shall be in consonance with those of his predecessor.”

2. That his fidelity to the great principles of human freedom shall be unwavering. And, —

3. That his “voice and vote shall on all occasions be exercised in extending and securing liberty to the human race.”

Permit me to reaffirm these sentiments with my whole heart. Should the responsibilities of that successorship ever be devolved upon me, I shall endeavor so to fulfil them, that these dead words should become a living soul. I should deem it not only an object of duty, but of the highest ambition, to contend for the noble principles you have here expressed, as Mr. Adams contended for them; though, unhappily, it would be only as a David in Saul's armor. Bear with me for a moment while I enlarge upon these sentiments.

1. “In consonance with his principles.” — I believe it was the sovereign rule of Mr. Adams's life to act in obedience to his convictions of duty. Truth was his guide. His conscience was non-elastic. He did not strain at a gnat before company, on account of its size, and then, privately, swallow a camel. His patriotism was coextensive with his country; it could not be crushed and squeezed in between party lines. Though liable to err, — and what human being is not? — yet his principles were believed by him to be in accordance with the great moral laws of the universe. They were thought out from duty and religion, and not carved out of expediency. When invested with patronage, he never dismissed a man from office because he was a political opponent, and never appointed one to office merely because he was a political friend. Hence he drew from Mr. Holmes, of South Carolina, this noble eulogium, — a eulogium, considering the part of the country from which it came, as honorable to its author as to its object, — that “he crushed no heart beneath the rude grasp of proscription; he left no heritage of widows' cries or orphans' tears.” Could all the honors which Mr. Adams ever won from offices held under the first five Presidents of the United States, and from a public service, which, commencing more than fifty years ago, continued to the day of his death, be concentrated in one effulgent blaze, they would be less far-shining and inextinguishable than the honor of sacrificing his election for a second presidential term, because he would not, in order to obtain it, prostitute the patronage and power which the constitution had placed in his hands. I regard this as the sublimest spectacle in his long and varied career. He stood within reach of an object of ambition doubtless dearer to him than life. He could have laid his hands upon it. The “still, small voice” said, No! Without a murmur, he saw it taken and borne away in triumph by another. Compared with this, the block of many a martyr has been an easy resting-place.

2. “Unwavering fidelity to the great principles of human freedom.”—The Declaration of American Independence, in 1776, was the first complete assertion of human rights, on an extensive scale, ever made by mankind. Less than three quarters of a century have elapsed, and already the greatest portion of the civilized world has felt the influence of that Declaration. France, for years, has had a constitutional monarchy; perhaps, to-day, her government is republican. Holland and Belgium are comparatively free. Almost all the states of the Germanic Confederation have a written constitution, and a legislature with a popular branch. Prussia has lately commenced a representative system. The iron rule of Austria is relaxed under the fervent heat which liberty reflects from surrounding nations. Naples and Sicily have just burst the bonds of tyranny. In Rome and the States of the Church, where, under the influence of religious and political despotism, the heart of Freedom was supposed to be petrified into insoluble hardness, that heart is now beginning to pulsate with a new life, and to throb with sympathy for humanity. Great Britain and Denmark have emancipated their slaves in the West Indies. Measures are now in progress to ameliorate the condition of Russian serfs. Even half-barbarous, Mahometan Tunis has yielded to the tide of free principles. To what bar of judgment will our own posterity bring us, what doom of infamy will history pronounce upon us, if the United States shall hereafter be found the only portion of Christendom where the principles of our own Declaration of Independence are violated in the persons of millions of our people?

3. “The exercise, on all occasions, of voice and vote, in extending and securing liberty to the human race.” — There is a crisis in our affairs. A territory, in extent far exceeding that of the thirteen original states, when they repelled the power of Great Britain, has lately been added, or is, doubtless, about to be added, to our national domain. The expanse of this territory is so vast, that it may be divided into a dozen sections, and these sections may be erected into separate states, each one of which shall be so large that Massachusetts would seem but an inconsiderable court-yard, if placed in front of it. Parts of this territory are fertile and salubrious. It is capable of supporting millions and millions of human beings, of the same generation. The numbers of the successive generations, which in the providence of God are to inhabit it, will be as the leaves of the forest, or the sands on the sea-shore. Each one of these is to be a living soul, with its joys and sorrows, its hopes and fears, its susceptibilities of exaltation or of abasement. Each one will be capable of being formed into the image of God, or of being deformed into the image of all that is anti-godlike.

These countless millions are to be our kindred; many of them, perhaps, our own descendants; at any rate, our brethren of the human family; for has not God “made of one blood all nations of men to dwell upon all the face of the earth”? In rights, in character, in happiness; in freedom or in vassalage; in the glorious immunities and prerogatives of knowledge, or in the debasement and superstitions of ignorance; in their upward-looking aspiration and love of moral excellence, or in their downward-looking, prone-rushing, and brutish appetites and passions, what shall these millions of our fellow-creatures be? I put it as a practical question, What shall these millions of our fellow-creatures be? — for it is more than probable that this very generation, — nay, that the actors in public affairs, before the sands of the present year shall have run out, — will prescribe and foreordain their doom. That doom will be what our present conduct predestines.

If we enact laws and establish institutions, under whose benign influences that vast tract of territory shall at length teem with myriads of human beings, each one a free-born man; each one enjoying the inalienable right of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” each one free for the cultivation of his capacities, and free in the choice and in the rewards of his labor; —if we do this, although the grand results may not manifest themselves for a thousand years, yet when the fulness of time shall come, the equity and the honor of framing these laws and institutions will belong to us, as much as though the glorious consummation could be realized to-morrow. On the other hand, if we so shape the mould in which their fortunes are to be cast, that, for them or for any portion of them, there shall be servitude instead of liberty, ignorance instead of education, debasement instead of dignity, the indulgence of bestial appetites instead of the sanctities and securities of domestic life, — then, until the mountains shall crumble away by age, until the arches of the skies shall fall in rottenness, these mountains and these arches will never cease to echo back the execrations upon our memory of all the great and good men of the world. And this retribution, I believe, will come suddenly, as well as last forever.

In one of the South-western States a vast subterranean cave has been discovered, deep down in whose chambers there is a pool of water, on which no beam of sunlight ever shines. A sightless fish is said to inhabit this rayless pool. In this animal, indeed, the rudiments of a visual organ are supposed to be dimly discernible; but of an orb to refract the rays of light, or of a retina to receive them, there is no trace. Naturalists suppose that the progenitors of these animals, in ages long gone by, possessed the power of vision; but that, being buried in these depths by some convulsion of nature, long disuse at first impaired, at length extinguished, and has at last obliterated the visual organ itself. The animal has sunk in the scale of being, until its senses are accommodated to the blackness of darkness in which it dwells. Were this account wholly fabulous, it has the strongest verisimilitude, and doubtless describes what would actually occur under the circumstances supposed.

Thus will it be with faculties above the surface of the earth, as well as below it. Thus will it be with human beings, as well as with the lower orders of creation. Thus will it be with our own brethren or children, should we shut up from them the book of knowledge, or seal their senses so that they could not read it. Thus will it be with all our God-given faculties, just so far as they are debarred from legitimate exercise upon their appropriate objects. The love of knowledge will die out, when it ceases to be stimulated by the means of knowledge. Self-respect will die out, under the ever-present sense of inferiority. The sentiments of truth and duty will die out, when cunning and falsehood can obtain more gratifications than frankness and honesty. The noblest impulses of the human soul, the most sacred affections of the human heart, will die out, when every sphere is closed against their exercise. When such a dreadful work is doing, or threatens to be done, can any one stand listlessly by, see it perpetrated, and then expect to excuse himself, under the false, impious pretext of Cain, “Am I my brother's keeper?”

Fully, then, do I agree with you and the delegates of the convention you represent, in saying that the successor of Mr. Adams should be one “whose voice and vote shall, on all occasions, be exercised in extending and securing liberty to the human race.” Of course I do not understand you to imply any violation of the constitution of the United States, which every representative swears to support.

Permit me to say a word personal to myself. For eleven years, I have been estranged from all political excitements. During this whole period, I have attended no political meeting of any kind whatever. I have contented myself with the right of private judgment and the right of voting, though it has usually so happened that my official duties have demanded my absence from home at the time of the fall elections. I have deemed this abstinence from actively mingling in political contests both a matter of duty towards opposing political parties, and a proper means of subserving the best interests of the cause in which I had embarked. I hoped too, by so doing, to assist in rearing men even better than those now belonging to any party.

The nature of my duties also, and all my intercourse and associations, have attracted me towards whatever is worthy and beneficent in all parties, rather than towards what is peculiar to any one. Not believing in political pledges, I should have had the honor to decline giving any to you, had you not had the first and greater honor of asking none from me. After what I have said above in favor of liberty for all mankind, it would be a strange contradiction did I consent to be myself a slave of party. The hands which you raised in behalf of yourselves and your constituents, when you voted for the noble sentiments contained in the resolution I have quoted, could never degrade themselves by forging a fetter for the free mind of another, or fastening one upon it; and the hand with which I have penned my hearty response to those sentiments can never stretch itself out to take a fetter on. Should your nomination, therefore, be accepted and be successful, it must be with the explicit understanding between us that I shall always be open to receive the advice of my constituents, shall always welcome their counsel, always be most grateful for their suggestions, but that, in the last resort, my own sense of duty must be the only arbiter. Should differences arise, the law opens an honorable escape for both parties, — declination on my part, substitution on yours.

I must add, in closing, that so far as personal preferences are concerned, I infinitely prefer remaining in my present position, with all its labor and its thanklessness, to any office in the gift of the people. I had hoped and intended, either in a public or private capacity, to spend my life in advancing the great cause of the people's education. Two considerations alone could tempt me to abandon this purpose. The first is important. The enactment of laws which shall cover waste territory, to be applied to the myriads of human beings who are hereafter to occupy that territory, is a work which seems to precede and outrank even education itself. Whether a wide expanse of country shall be filled with beings to whom education is permitted, or with those to whom it is denied, — with those whom humanity and the law make it a duty to teach, or with those whom inhumanity and the law make it a legal duty not to teach, seems preliminary to all questions respecting the best systems and methods for rendering education effective.

The other consideration is comparatively unimportant; though, for the time being, it has embarrassed me greatly. I now learn that expectations were excited at your convention, that if a nomination were tendered me, it would not be declined. Had I anticipated the favorable regards of the convention, or foreseen that such expectations would be raised, I should not have hearkened to the proposition for a moment; and I may be permitted to add, that when I saw my name announced in the papers, my first act was to prepare a letter of declination. It was only when I went to deliver the letter that I learnt what had been done, and that, in the opinion of persons whose judgment I am bound to respect, I had been so far committed by my too partial friends, as that no option remained.

Yielding to these considerations, I submit myself to the decision of my fellow-citizens.

With sentiments of high personal regard,

I am, gentlemen,

Your friend and servant,

HORACE MANN.

Hon. Thomas French, President; Samuel C. Mann, John K. Coebett, Edward Crehore, Esqs., Secretaries.

West Newton, March 21, 1848.

SOURCE: Horace Mann, Slavery: Letters and Speeches, p. 1-9 

Lieutenant-General Ulysses S. Grant to Edwin M. Stanton, November 10, 1865 – 10:30 p.m.

CITY POINT, November 10, 1864 — 10.30 p.m.

Hon. E. M. STANTON,

Secretary of War, Washington:

Enough now seems to be known to say who is to hold the reins of Government for the next four years. Congratulate the President for me for the double victory. The election having passed off quietly, no bloodshed or riot throughout the land, is a victory worth more to the country than a battle won. Rebeldom and Europe will so construe it.

U.S. GRANT,

Lieutenant-General.

SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 42, Part 3 (Serial No. 89), p. 581

Major-General Henry W. Halleck to Edwin M. Stanton, April 22, 1865 – Received 12:10 p.m.

RICHMOND, VA., April 22, 1865.   

(Received 12.10 p.m.)

Hon. E. M. STANTON:

It is stated here by respectable parties that the amount of specie taken South by Jeff. Davis and his partisans is very large, including not only the plunder of the Richmond banks, but previous accumulations. They hope, it is said, to make terms with General Sherman or some other Southern commander by which they will be permitted with their effects, including this gold plunder, to go to Mexico or Europe. Johnston's negotiations look to this end. Would it not be well to put Sherman and all other commanding generals on their guard in this respect.

H. W. HALLECK,    

Major-General.

SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I Volume 46, Part 3 (Serial No. 97), p. 277

Simon Cameron to Abraham Lincoln, June 26, 1862

St Petersburg

June 26, 1862.

My dear Sir,

I must begin this my first letter from Russia, by thanking you for your message to Congress, in relation to the N. York agencies. It was a good act, bravely done. Right, in itself, as it was, very many men, in your situation, would have permitted an innocent man to suffer rather than incur responsibility. I am glad to see that the leading presses of Europe speak of it, in high terms, as an act of “nobleness”; and if I can believe what I hear from home, you will lose nothing there. At all events, I can assure you, that I will never cease to be grateful for it.

Yesterday, I had the honor of being introduced to the Emperor, of which I shall send an official account to-day to the State Dept. The interview was a long one, and his majesty was more than cordial. He asked me many questions shewing his interest in our affairs, and when I thanked him, in your name, for his prompt sympathy in our cause, the expression of his eyes, and his subsequent remarks, shewed me very clearly that he was particularly well pleased for he soon after turned the conversation to England.

The whole Court is at present out of the city, and all the high officials will remain absent, for some months. The Emperor came to town only to receive me. There is never much to be done here by an American Minister, and now there is really nothing for me to do. I more than ever regret that Mr Seward did not give me authority to travel, as you said I might have.

Feeling sure that no harm can come to the Government, by the absence of its minister at this time, I am induced now to ask you for a forlough to go home, as was given I think to Mr. Schurze, to look after my private affairs I make this request with more confidence in the assurance that the Legation will be well conducted, during my absence by Mr Taylor. I certainly would not have left home when the attack was made on me in the House of Reps strengthened as I was by your repeated assurances that I might take my own time for leaving, only that all my arrangements had been made for sailing, my passage taken and paid for, to which I had been urged by the belief that wrong was being done to Mr Clay by my delay, = but when I came here I found he was entirely content, and would have been satisfied if my arrival had been still later.

I should like to leave here by the middle of September, as then the lease of the house which I took from Mr. Clay to relieve him, will expire. The rent is a heavy item in the expenditures of a Minister, being over $3000 & more than one fourth of his yearly pay. Going at that time too, will enable me to reach home in time before the Pennsa. election to be of some service to my country, for I think your troubles will soon be removed from the Army to Congress. I shall make this application to the State Department officially – but I ask it now, from your friendship

I have been gratified all over Europe to find the high reputation you are making, and from home, too, there are indications of a growing belief that you will have to be your own successor. While it is, in my judgment, the last place to find happiness, I think you will have to make up your mind to endure it.

This is a great city and Russia is a mighty nation, and I have many things to say of them, which will be deferred till we meet. The climate I regret to say does not suit the health of my family, and they wish to leave it.

Please give to Mrs. Lincoln, the kindest regards of my wife, and believe me

Your friend Truly

Simon Cameron

Hon. A. Lincoln

Your prompt reply to my request, will especially oblige me.

SOURCE: The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.

Diary of William Howard Russell: June 21, 1861

Verily I would be sooner in the Coptic Cairo, narrow streeted, dark bazaared, many flied, much vexed by donkeys and by overland route passengers, than the horrid tongue of land which licks the muddy margin of the Ohio and the Mississippi. The thermometer at 100° in the shade before noon indicates nowhere else such an amount of heat and suffering, and yet prostrate as I was, it was my fate to argue that England was justified in conceding belligerent, rights to the South, and that the attitude of neutrality we had assumed in this terrible quarrel is not in effect an aggression on the United States; and here is a difference to be perceived between the North and the South.

The people of the seceding States, aware in their consciences that they have been most active in their hostility to Great Britain, and whilst they were in power were mainly responsible for the defiant, irritating, and insulting tone commonly used to us by American statesmen, are anxious at the present moment when so much depends on the action of foreign countries, to remove all unfavorable impressions from our minds by declarations of good will, respect, and admiration, not quite compatible with the language of their leaders in times not long gone by. The North, as yet unconscious of the loss of power, and reared in a school of menace and violent assertion of their rights, regarding themselves as the whole of the United States, and animated by their own feeling of commercial and political opposition to Great Britain, maintain the high tone of a people who have never known let or hindrance in their passions, and consider it an outrage that

the whole world does not join in active sympathy for a government which in its brief career has contrived to affront every nation in Europe with which it had any dealings.

If the United States have astonished France by their ingratitude, they have certainly accustomed England to their petulance, and one can fancy the satisfaction with which the Austrian Statesmen who remember Mr. Webster's despatch to Mr. Hulsemann, contemplate the present condition of the United States in the face of an insurrection of these sovereign and independent States which the Cabinet at Washington stigmatizes as an outbreak of rebels and traitors to the royalty of the Union.

During my short sojourn in this country I have never yet met any person who could show me where the sovereignty of the Union resides. General Prentiss, however, and his Illinois volunteers, are quite ready to fight for it.

In the afternoon the General drove me round the camps in company with Mr. Washburne, Member of Congress, from Illinois, his staff and a party of officers, among whom was Mr. Oglesby, colonel of a regiment of State Volunteers, who struck me by his shrewdness, simple honesty, and zeal,* He told me that he had begun life in the utmost obscurity, but that somehow or other he got into a lawyer's office and there, by hard drudgery, by mother wit, and industry, notwithstanding a defective education, he had raised himself not only to independence, but to such a position that 1000 men had gathered at his call and selected one who had never led a company in his life to be their colonel; in fact, he is an excellent orator of the western school, and made good homely, telling speeches to his men.

“I'm not as good as your Frenchmen of the schools of Paris, nor am I equal to the Russian colonels I met at St. Petersburg, who sketched me out how they had beaten you Britishers at Sebastopol,” said he; “but I know I can do good straight fighting with my boys when I get a chance. There is a good deal in training, to be sure, but nature tells too. Why I believe I would make a good artillery officer if I was put to it. General, you heard how I laid one of them guns the other day and touched her off with my own hand and sent the ball right into a tree half-a-mile away.” The Colonel evidently thought he had by that feat proved his fitness for the command of a field battery. One of the German officers who was listening to the lively old man's talk, whispered to me, “Dere is a good many of tese colonels in dis camp.”

At each station the officers came out of their tents, shook hands all round, and gave an unfailing invitation to get down and take a drink, and the guns on the General's approach fired salutes, as though it was a time of profoundest peace. Powder was certainly more plentiful than in the Confederate camps, where salutes are not permitted unless by special order on great occasions.

The General remained for some time in the camp of the Chicago light artillery, which was commanded by a fine young Scotchman of the Saxon genus Smith, who told me that the privates of his company represented a million and a half of dollars in property. Their guns, horses, carriages, and accoutrements were all in the most creditable order, and there was an air about the men and about their camp which showed they did not belong to the same class as the better disciplined Hungarians of Milotzky close at hand.

Whilst we were seated in Captain Smith's tent, a number of the privates came forward, and sang the “Star-spangled banner,” and a patriotic song, to the air of “God save the Queen!” and the rest of the artillery-men, and a number of stragglers from the other camps, assembled and then formed line behind the singers. When the chorus was over there arose a great shout for Washburne, and the honorable congressman was fain to come forward and make a speech, in which he assured his hearers of a very speedy victory and the advent of liberty all over the land. Then “General Prentiss” was called for; and as citizen soldiers command their Generals on such occasions, he too was obliged to speak, and to tell his audience "the world had never seen any men more devoted, gallant, or patriotic than themselves.” “Oglesby” was next summoned, and the tall, portly, good-humored old man stepped to the front, and with excellent tact and good sense, dished up in the Buncombe style, told them the time for making speeches had passed, indeed it had lasted too long; and although it was said there was very little fighting when there was much talking, he believed too much talking was likely to lead to a great deal more fighting than any one desired to see between citizens of the United States of America, except their enemies, who, no doubt, were much better pleased to see Americans fighting each other than to find them engaged in any other employment. Great as the mischief of too much talking had been, too much writing had far more of the mischief to answer for. The pen was keener than the tongue, hit harder, and left a more incurable wound; but the pen was better than the tongue, because it was able to cure the mischief it had inflicted,” And so by a series of sentences the Colonel got round to me, and to my consternation, remembering how I had fared with my speech at the little private dinner on St. Patrick's Day in New York, I was called upon by stentorian lungs, and hustled to the stump by a friendly circle, till I escaped by uttering a few sentences as to “mighty struggle,” “Europe gazing,” “the world anxious,” “the virtues of discipline,” “the admirable lessons of a soldier's life,” and the “aspiration that in a quarrel wherein a British subject was ordered, by an authority he was bound to respect, to remain neutral, God might preserve the right.”

Colonel, General, and all addressed the soldiers as “gentlemen,” and their auditory did not on their part refrain from expressing their sentiments in the most unmistakable manner. “Bully for you, General!” “Bravo, Washburne!” “That's so, Colonel!” and the like, interrupted the harangues; and when the oratorical exercises were over the men crowded round the staff, cheered and hurrahed, and tossed up their caps in the greatest delight.

With the exception of the foreign officers, and some of the Staff, there are very few of the colonels, majors, captains, or lieutenants who know anything of their business. The men do not care for them, and never think of saluting them. A regiment of Germans was sent across from Bird's Point this evening for plundering and robbing the houses in the district in which they were quartered.

It may be readily imagined that the scoundrels who had to fly from every city in Europe before the face of the police will not stay their hands when they find themselves masters of the situation in the so-called country of an enemy. In such matters the officers have little or no control, and discipline is exceedingly lax, and punishments but sparingly inflicted, the use of the lash being forbidden altogether. Fine as the men are, incomparably better armed, clad — and doubtless better fed — than the Southern troops, they will scarcely meet them man to man in the field with any chance of success. Among the officers are bar-room keepers, persons little above the position of potmen in England, grocers' apprentices, and such like — often inferior socially, and in every other respect, to the men whom they are supposed to command. General Prentiss has seen service, I believe, in Mexico; but he appears to me to be rather an ardent politician, embittered against slaveholders and the South, than a judicious or skilful military leader.

The principles on which these isolated commanders carry on the war are eminently defective. They apply their whole minds to petty expeditions, which go out from the camps, attack some Secessionist gathering, and then return, plundering, as they go and come, exasperating enemies, converting neutrals into opponents, disgusting friends, and leaving it to the Secessionists to boast that they have repulsed them. Instead of encouraging the men and improving their discipline these ill-conducted expeditions have an opposite result.

_______________

* Since died of wounds received in action.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, Vol. 1, p. 337-41

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: July 21, 1863

We have intelligence to-day, derived from a New York paper of the 18th inst., that the “insurrection” in New York had subsided, under the menacing attitude of the military authority, and that Lincoln had ordered the conscription law to be enforced. This gives promise of a long war.

Mr. Mallory sent a note to the Secretary of War to-day (which of course the Secretary did not see, and will never hear of) by a young man named Juan Boyle, asking permission for B. to pass into Maryland as an agent of the Navy Department. Judge Campbell indorsed on the back of it (to Brig.-Gen. Winder) that permission was “allowed” by “order.” But what is this “agent” to procure in the United States which could not be had by our steamers plying regularly between Wilmington and Europe?

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 384-5

Brigadier-General William F. Bartlett to Edwin M. Stanton, August 9, 1865

(Confidential.)

16 Broad Street, Boston, August 9, 1865.

Hon. E. M. Stanton: —

Dear Sir,— You were kind enough to say to me a few weeks ago, when I called to pay my respects to you before leaving Washington, that you would be glad to do anything for me at any time. I take you at your word, and ask you frankly for advice on a subject which has been suggested by some of my friends, in the army and out.

They are desirous that I should visit Europe before I leave the army, — that I should be there while an officer of the U. S. Volunteers, — and wish me to apply for a six months’ leave of absence. You are aware that I lost my leg in the first year of the war, and have been in the service (active) ever since, being badly wounded again at the assault on Port Hudson in the arm and other foot (where my conduct caused you to offer me a brigadier-general's commission), and again in the Wilderness. My health was very much impaired by my imprisonment last summer, and I have not been well since, although on duty in command of the First Division, Ninth Corps, until within a few weeks, after I was fit for any duty. I have not sought for assignment to any duty since the muster-out of the troops, for I knew there were a hundred applicants for every one place, and I did not care to swell the number. I am at home, awaiting orders. I thought I would take you at your word, sir, and instead of sending a formal application for this leave, backed by such influence as I might command, I would simply ask you what favor such a request would meet with from you.

Colonel Conolly, Adjutant-general (late) of forces in Canada, is desirous that I should visit England while I am still in the army.

Will you be kind enough to tell me your views on the subject, and whether you will grant such a request?

I should expect to be mustered out at the expiration of the leave unless my services were required, which is not probable.

Even if the leave were to be on half or without pay, from the time when I should otherwise be mustered out, it would meet the wishes of my friends, as far as still being in the service is concerned. Hoping for an answer as frank as my statement to you is, I remain, very respectfully and sincerely,

Your obedient servant,

W. F. Bartlett, Brigadier-general.

SOURCE: Francis Winthrop Palfrey, Memoir of William Francis Bartlett, p. 152-4

Diary of Gideon Welles: March 31, 1863

For a fortnight I have been ill and really unfit for duty, yet have been absent from the Department but a single day, the only day I have lost in Washington since March 4,1861. But for the illness of Mr. Faxon, Chief Clerk, I should have abstained a day or two from labor. Fatigued and exhausted, I have not felt able to jot down current events from day to day.

With some effort, though with indifferent health, I have drawn up a communication to Mr. Seward on the subject of letters of marque. But after the council to-day he read a dispatch from Mr. Adams, communicating two letters from Earl Russell, which are insolent, contemptuous, and mean aggression if not war. It is pretty evident that a devastating and villainous war is to be waged on our commerce by English capital and English men under the Rebel flag with the connivance of the English Government, which will, and is intended to, sweep our commerce from the ocean. Only by a decided, firm, and resolute tone can the country be rescued, and I am by no means certain that will be sufficient. We are in no condition for a foreign war. Torn by dissensions, an exhausting civil war on our hands, we have a gloomy prospect, but a righteous cause that will ultimately succeed. God alone knows through what trials, darkness, and suffering we are to pass. There is a disinclination to look these troubles which threaten us boldly in the face. I felt oppressed, as did the others. A long vista of direful calamities opens before us. Mr. Seward is earnest to get out privateers to catch the Alabama and the blockade-runners. The President thinks they should try that policy. Chase has lately favored it. I have no faith in it as against the Rebels, who have no commerce to be injured, but if we are to have a conflict with England, letters of marque and every means in our power must be put in requisition against that faithless nation. I have, therefore, doubts about sending the letter which I have prepared.

Earl Russell gives us to understand the English Government do not intend to interpose to prevent the Rebels from building, buying, and sending out from England cruisers, semi-pirates, to prey upon our commerce. In plain language, English capital is to be employed in destroying our shipping interests. If we are silent and submissive, they will succeed, and we shall waken to our condition when our vessels and merchant seamen are gone.

The condition of affairs opens a vast field. Should a commercial war commence, it will affect the whole world. The police of the seas will be broken up, and the peaceful intercourse of nations destroyed. Those governments and peoples that have encouraged and are fostering our dissensions will themselves reap the bitter fruits of their malicious intrigues. In this great conflict, thus wickedly begun, there will be likely to ensue an uprising of the nations that will shatter existing governments and overthrow the aristocracies and dynasties not only of England but of Europe.

I close my book and this month of March with sad and painful forebodings. The conduct and attitude of Great Britain, if persisted in, foreshadow years of desolation, of dissolution, of suffering and blood.

Should April open, as we hope, with success at Charleston and Vicksburg, there will be a change in the deportment and conduct of England. Her arrogance and subtle aggression will be checked by our successes, and by that alone. She has no magnanimity, no sense of honor or of right. She is cowardly, treacherous, and mean, and hates and fears our strength. In that alone is our security.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30, 1864, p. 249-51

Diary of William Howard Russell: Friday, June 14, 1861

Last night with my good host from his plantation to the great two-storied steamer General Quitman, at Natchez. She was crowded with planters, soldiers and their families, and as the lights shone out of her windows, looked like a walled castle blazing from double lines of embrasures.

The Mississippi is assuredly the most uninteresting river in the world, and I can only describe it hereabout by referring to the account of its appearance which I have already given — not a particle of romance, in spite of oratorical patriots and prophets, can ever shine from its depths, sacred to cat and buffalo fish, or vivify its turbid waters.

Before noon we were in sight of Vicksburg, which is situated on a high bank or bluff on the left bank of the river, about 400 miles above New Orleans and some 120 miles from Natchez.

Mr. MacMeekan, the proprietor of the "Washington," declares himself to have been the pioneer of hotels in the far west; but he has now built himself this huge caravansary, and rests from his wanderings. We entered the dining saloon, and found the tables closely packed with a numerous company of every condition in life, from generals and planters down to soldiers in the uniform of privates. At the end of the room there was a long table on which the joints and dishes were brought hot from the kitchen to be carved by the negro waiters, male and female, and as each was brought in the proprietor, standing in the centre of the room, shouted out with a loud voice, "Now, then, here is a splendid goose! ladies and gentlemen, don't neglect the goose and apple-sauce! Here's a piece of beef that I can recommend! upon my honor you will never regret taking a slice of the beef. Oyster-pie! oyster-pie! never was better oyster-pie seen in Vicksburg. Run about, boys, and take orders. Ladies and gentlemen, just look at that turkey! who's for turkey?" — and so on, wiping the perspiration from his forehead and combating with the flies.

Altogether it was a semi-barbarous scene, but the host was active and attentive; and after all, his recommendations were very much like those which it was the habit of the taverners in old London to call out in the streets to the passers-by when the joints were ready. The little negroes who ran about to take orders were smart, but now and then came into violent collision, and were cuffed incontinently. One mild-looking little fellow stood by my chair and appeared so sad that I asked him "Are you happy, my boy?" He looked quite frightened. "Why don't you answer me?" "I'se afeered, sir; I can't tell that to Massa." "Is not your master kind to you?" "Massa very kind man, sir; very good man when he is not angry with me," and his eyes filled with tears to the brim.

The war fever is rife in Vicksburg, and the Irish and German laborers, to the extent of several hundreds, have all gone off to the war.

When dinner was over, the mayor and several gentlemen of the city were good enough to request that I would attend a meeting at a room in the railway-station, where some of the inhabitants of the town had assembled. Accordingly I went to the terminus and found a room filled with gentlemen. Large china bowls, blocks of ice, bottles of wine and spirits, and boxes of cigars were on the table, and all the materials for a symposium.

The company discussed recent events, some of which I learned for the first time. Dislike was expressed to the course of the authorities in demanding negro labor for the fortifications along the river, and uneasiness was expressed respecting a negro plot in Arkansas; but the most interesting matter was Judge Taney's protest against the legality of the President's course in suspending the writ of habeas corpus in the case of Merriman. The lawyers who were present at this meeting were delighted with his argument, which insists that Congress alone can suspend the writ, and that the President cannot legally do so.

The news of the defeat of an expedition from Fortress Monroe against a Confederate post at Great Bethel, has caused great rejoicing. The accounts show that there was the grossest mismanagement on the part of the Federal officers. The Northern papers particularly regret the loss of Major Winthrop, aide-de-camp to General Butler, a writer of promise. At four o'clock, P. M., I bade the company farewell, and the train started for Jackson. The line runs through a poor clay country, cut up with gulleys and watercourses made by violent rain.

There were a number of volunteer soldiers in the train; and their presence no doubt attracted the girls and women who waved flags and cheered for Jeff Davis and States' Rights. Well, as I travel on through such scenes, with a fine critical nose in the air, I ask myself, "Is any Englishman better than these publicans and sinners in regard to this question of slavery?" It was not on moral or religious grounds that our ancestors abolished serfdom. And if to-morrow our good farmers, deprived of mowers, reapers, ploughmen, hedgers and ditchers, were to find substitutes in certain people of a dark skin assigned to their use by Act of Parliament, I fear they would be almost as ingenious as the Rev. Dr. Seabury in discovering arguments physiological, ethnological, and biblical, for the retention of their property. And an evil day would it be for them if they were so tempted; for assuredly, without any derogation to the intellect of the Southern men, it may be said that a large proportion of the population is in a state of very great moral degradation compared with civilized Anglo-Saxon communities.

The man is more natural, and more reckless; he has more of the qualities of the Arab than are to be reconciled with civilization; and it is only among the upper classes that the influences of the aristocratic condition which is generated by the subjection of masses of men to their fellow-man are to be found.

At six o'clock, the train stopped in the country at a railway crossing by the side of a large platform. On the right was a common, bounded by a few detached wooden houses, separated by palings from each other, and surrounded by rows of trees. In front of the station were two long wooden sheds, which, as the signboard indicates, were exchanges or drinking saloons; and beyond these again were visible some rudimentary streets of straggling houses, above which rose three pretentious spires and domes, resolved into insignificance by nearer approach. This was Jackson.

Our host was at the station in his carriage, and drove us to his residence, which consisted of some detached houses shaded by trees in a small enclosure, and bounded by a kitchen garden. He was one of the men who had been filled with the afflatus of 1848, and joined the Young Ireland party before it had seriously committed itself to an unfortunate outbreak; and when all hope of success had vanished, he sought, like many others of his countrymen, a shelter under the stars and stripes, which, like most of the Irish settled in the Southern States, he was now bent on tearing asunder. He has the honor of being mayor of Jackson, and of enjoying a competitive examination with his medical rivals for the honor of attending the citizens.

In the evening I walked out with him to the adjacent city, which has no title to the name, except as being the State capital. The mushroom growth of these States, using that phrase merely as to their rapid development, raises hamlets in a small space to the dignity of cities. It is in such outlying expansion of the great republic that the influence of the foreign emigration is most forcibly displayed. It would be curious to inquire, for example, how many men there are in the city of Jackson exercising mechanical arts or engaged in small commerce, in skilled or manual labor, who are really Americans in the proper sense of the word. I was struck by the names over the doors of the shops, which were German, Irish, Italian, French, and by foreign tongues and accents in the streets ; but, on the other hand, it is the native-born American who obtains the highest political stations and arrogates to himself the largest share of governmental emoluments.

Jackson proper consists of strings of wooden houses, with white porticoes and pillars a world too wide for their shrunk rooms, and various religious and other public edifices, of the hydrocephalic order of architecture, where vulgar cupola and exaggerated steeple tower above little bodies far too feeble to support them. There are of course a monster hotel and blazing bar-rooms — the former celebrated as the scene of many a serious difficulty, out of some of which the participators never escaped alive. The streets consist of rows of houses such as I have seen at Macon, Montgomery, and Baton Rouge; and as we walked towards the capital or State-house there were many more invitations "to take a drink" addressed to my friend and me than we were able to comply with. Our steps were bent to the State-house, which is a pile of stone, with open colonnades, and an air of importance at a distance which a nearer examination of its dilapidated condition does not confirm. Mr. Pettus, the Governor of the State of Mississippi, was in the Capitol; and on sending in our cards, we were introduced to his room, which certainly was of more than republican simplicity. The apartment was surrounded with some common glass cases, containing papers and old volumes of books; the furniture, a table or desk, and a few chairs and a ragged carpet; the glass in the windows cracked and broken; the walls and ceiling discolored by mildew.

The Governor is a silent man, of abrupt speech, but easy of access; and, indeed, whilst we were speaking, strangers and soldiers walked in and out of his room, looked around them, and acted in all respects as if they were in a public-house, except in ordering drinks. This grim, tall, angular man seemed to me such a development of public institutions in the South as Mr. Seward was in a higher phase in the North. For years he hunted deer and trapped in the forest of the far west, and lived in a Natty Bumpo or David Crocket state of life; and he was not ashamed of the fact when taunted with it during his election contest, but very rightly made the most of his independence and his hard work.

The pecuniary honors of his position are not very great as Governor of the enormous State of Mississippi. He has simply an income of £800 a year and a house provided for his use; he is not only quite contented with what he has but believes that the society in which he lives is the highest development of civilized life, notwithstanding the fact that there are more outrages on the person in his State, nay, more murders perpetrated in the very capital, than were known in the worst days of mediaeval Venice or Florence; — indeed, as a citizen said to me, "Well, I think our average in Jackson is a murder a month;" but he used a milder name for the crime.

The Governor conversed on the aspect of affairs, and evinced that wonderful confidence in his own people which, whether it arises from ignorance of the power of the North, or a conviction of greater resources, is to me so remarkable. "Well, sir," said he, dropping a portentous plug of tobacco just outside the spittoon, with the air of a man who wished to show he could have hit the centre if he liked, "England is no doubt a great country, and has got fleets and the like of that, and may have a good deal to do in Europe; but the sovereign State of Mississippi can do a great deal better without England than England can do without her." Having some slight recollection of Mississippi repudiation, in which Mr. Jefferson Davis was so actively engaged, I thought it possible that the Governor might be right; and after a time his Excellency shook me by the hand, and I left, much wondering within myself what manner of men they must be in the State of Mississippi when Mr. Pettus is their chosen Governor; and yet, after all, he is honest and fierce; and perhaps he is so far qualified as well as any other man to be Governor of the State. There are newspapers, electric telegraphs, and railways; there are many educated families, even much good society, I am told, in the State; but the larger masses of the people struck me as being in a condition not much elevated from that of the original backwoodsman. On my return to the Doctor's house I found some letters which had been forwarded to me from New Orleans had gone astray, and I was obliged, therefore, to make arrangements for my departure on the following evening.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 295-300