Diary of George Templeton Strong: January 10, 1860

House of Representatives not yet organized, no Speaker elected and government at a deadlock. Members spend their time during the interval between the ballotings in speech-making about John Brown, fugitive slaves, Hinton Rowan Helper’s Impending Crisis, and the irrepressible nigger generally. That black but comely biped is becoming a bore to me. No doubt he is a man and a brother, but his monopoly of attention is detrimental to the rest of the family; and I don’t believe he cares much about having his wrongs redressed or his rights asserted. Our politicians are playing on Northern love of justice and a more or less morbid Northern philanthropy for their own selfish ends by putting themselves forward as Cuffee’s champion. But the South is so utterly barbaric and absurd that I’m constantly tempted to ally myself with Cheever and George Curtis.²

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² The Rev. George B. Cheever, author of God Against Slavery (1857); George William Curtis, now attacking slavery in his speeches and writings.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 3-4

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, July 4, 1852

Boston, July 4th, 1852.

Dearest Sumner: — I got your note yesterday, and read most of it to Carter;¹ afterwards I sent it to Parker, to be used with care. I have done what I could in a quiet way to inspire others with the confidence I feel in the final success of your plan. I received this morning a note from Parker (written of course before I sent yours) which I think it best to send you. A wise man likes to know how the wind blows, though he may have determined not to vary his course, even for a tempest. I wrote to Parker saying that he was lacking faith, and I feared beginning to lack charity — things in which he had abounded towards you.

I think the crying sin, and the great disturbing force in the path of our politicians is approbativeness; they let public opinion be to them in lieu of a conscience. So will not you do.

I want you to raise your voice and enter your protest, not because it is for your interest to do so, but for the sake of the cause, and of the good it will surely do. The present is yours, the future may not be; you may never go back to Washington even should you be spared in life and health. Again, it may be imprudent to wait till the last opportunity, for when that comes you may be prostrated by illness. Mann made a remark in one of his late letters about you, which I think I have more than once made to you, viz: that you yield obedience to all God's laws of morality, but think you are exempt from any obligation to obey his laws of physiology. You will have a breakdown some time that will make you realize that to ruin the mental powers by destroying that on which they depend is about as bad as neglecting to cultivate them.

However, what I mean to say is this: that though you would not heed all the world's urging you to speak if you thought it your duty to be silent, yet believing with all your friends that you ought to speak, you must not vista everything, in the hope of doing so at a particular moment, when you may be disabled by sickness.

Downer said to-day: “I don't see how it is to be, yet I have great faith that Sumner will come off with flying colours.” He would say so, even if you were prevented from speaking at all this session, and so should I, but so would few others.

Julia has returned and is well; so are all my beautiful and dear children. We go to Newport next Monday to stay awhile in the house with Longfellow, Appleton, etc.² No news here. Daniel [Webster] is determined to show fight; he has much blood, and it is very black. . . .

S. G. H.

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¹ Robert Carter

² At Cliff House. The party consisted of my father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow and their children, George William Curtis, Thomas G. Appleton, and two or three others.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 382-3

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, February 1859

Worcester, February, 1859

George Curtis lectured here last week. With the most delicious elocution we have — except perhaps Wendell Phillips's — and a fascinating rhetoric and an uncorrupted moral integrity, he showed yet a want of intellectual vigor and training which will always prevent him from being a great man. Yet he perfectly fascinated everybody.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 72

Thomas Wentworth Higginson to George William Curtis, January 23, 1857

Do you remember, on your last visit to Worcester, that I said that there was but one thing wanting to your position — that you should become an abolitionist? I rejoiced in your brave action and fine speeches. But anti-slavery has to you been a summer sea, and you riding nobly on the advancing waves. What is to be your future? We do not ask you to join us, till time be ripe.

Make Sumner your star, till time has taught you to see the greater greatness of Phillips. . . . Remember that with or without Frémont, slaves are carried from Philadelphia, and to lift a finger is Treason. Colored men are thrust illegally out of cars in New York, and to take their part is Fanaticism. In presence of these things, with your upright and unspoiled nature, the end is sure, you will be more than a Republican orator, and God may grant you the privilege of being an Abo.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 71-2

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, November 1852

Brooklyn, N.Y., November, 1852

. . . We reached Norwich at nine and took the steamer; and here, better still, appeared Henry Ward Beecher. I sat by him and read “Bleak House” in the cabin, and at last, when he moved to go to bed, I introduced or recalled myself to him. “Oh, yes,” said he heartily, “bless your soul, I remember you”; and so we talked until twelve o'clock: chiefly about Wasson and churches generally. He defended pews (to be rented, not owned) and said some very sensible things in their defence, of which I had never thought before. He was very cordial — wished me to know Reverend Mr. Storrs of Brooklyn, his associate in the “Independent,” and said I must come to tea with him on Monday and Mr. S. should come also. . . .

[Charles] Dana was at his office, much changed from his former brown and robust self, pale, thin, and bearded; but seemed very content, though rather tired; said he could endure much more labor in that way than any other. He had a good deal of his old dogmatism. . . . Mr. Ripley was there, fat and uninteresting.

George Curtis pleased me far better. He seemed very cordial and not at all foppish. His voice and manner are extremely like Mr. Bowen (Reverend C. J.). . . . The likeness kept recurring to me as I sat in his pretty study, full of books and engravings. . . . He has written two perfectly charming essays on Emerson and Hawthorne for the lovely illustrated “Homes of American Authors”; a most racy and charming picture of Concord and its peculiar life. I read these at the bookstore afterward with great delight.

. . . I learned one good fact; that the arms of the Wentworths are three cats' heads, which explains my tendencies [fondness for milk].

This evening I have been to H. W. Beecher's church. It is wonderful — an immense church and every seat crowded — far beyond Theodore Parker's. Double rows of chairs in the aisles and such attention. He preached almost entirely extempore and it was like his lectures; no eloquence of thought, or little, but much eloquence of feeling; intense, simple earnestness; no grace, no condensation; no moderation or taste in delivery; and very little to remember. I do not think I should go to hear him often, or it would be more for the magnetism of the congregation than anything else. I think him far less impressive intellectually than Mr. Parker, with whom one naturally compares him.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 45-6

John M. Forbes to William Curtis Noyes, August 12, 1862

Naushon Island, August 12,1862.

My Dear Sir, — Your favor of the 7th has been sent me here, where I am established for a month or two, with a chance to visit Boston only occasionally. I am very glad that my plan strikes you favorably. Governor Andrew made me a flying visit yesterday, and seems to like the idea much; he had already made use of the slips I sent him of the “aristocracy vs. popular government” by sending them to the recruiting stations.

I sincerely hope a thorough system may be inaugurated under your personal oversight in such a manner as will shut off any attempt to use it either for personal ambition (i. e. for lauding political or military aspirants), or even for pushing the views of our most extreme Republicans. To do its best work, it needs to be broader than any one set of men, even the best, belonging to our wing of the Republican party. In other words, its aim should not be anti-slavery, except incidentally, but should be “the vigorous prosecution of the war.” How would it do to style it “the committee of correspondence upon the vigorous prosecution of the war”?

Mr. George W. Curtis, who is here, and has considerable experience with the press, thinks there is some danger of jealousy from the press at the appearance of dictation there would be in my original plan of sending with each article a circular from the committee, suggesting its republication. If this be so, perhaps the best mode would be to have our organization complete, but informal; that is to say, not appearing before the public as a committee. The articles we wish to have republished would, in most cases, if well selected, be adopted in each State, either at the individual suggestion of our committeeman for that point, or they might be sent anonymously with a printed or written line, saying, for instance, that a “fellow-countryman calls your attention to the inclosed important article as valuable for circulation.”

One of the most important ends that could be gained by a judicious organization would be to sink and obliterate the old party names and prejudices, especially those connected with the name of democrat.

You and I have fought under the Whig banner; one of our strongest allies is Mr. Bryant, the leader of the only really Democratic party which ever existed. Yet we constantly find our best Republican journals even now fighting “Democracy.” It seems to me of vast importance to sink these old distinctions, and to put before the voting and fighting masses, in the strongest light, the real issue — of the war-Democratic or Republican [government], (whichever we may call the government of the people) vs. Aristocratic government; in other words, the people vs. a class. . . .

I give you a rough sketch of an organization, and am very truly yours,

J. M. Forbes

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 326-7

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

Bayard Taylor to George William Curtis, October 31, 1861

Cedarcroft, Kennett Square, Pa., October 31,1861.

I hoped to have fallen in with you when I was in New York t'other day, but my stay was so short that I could not go down to the Island.

How are you, and how are wife and children? I am living here in comparative seclusion, and know the world only by the newspapers. But I see that you are to lecture in Philadelphia, which is a great satisfaction to me, and I presume it is a greater to you. Who could have foreseen the changes of this year? I do not despair of lecturing in Richmond before I die.

Now, my object in writing is twofold: first, and most important, to ask you to come out here for a day or two, if you possibly can, when you lecture in Philadelphia; you shall have pen, ink, and silence, if you need 'em. Secondly, what is to be the state of our business this winter? I get precious few invitations, and from widely scattered places. What is your experience? Am I, the individual, passed over, or has the institution “suspended”? As I have no other dependence for this winter, I am curious to know what calculations to make. (Tribune dividends and copyrights silent inter arma.)

I am writing a lecture on the “American People, in their Social and Political Aspects,” being sufficiently cosmopolitan in my experience to judge objectively, — at least, I so flatter myself. What is your subject? I wish you could give us a lecture here, but the place is rather too small in these times. Our young men are all away fighting. My wife sends love to you. . . .

SOURCE: Marie Hansen-Taylor and Horace E. Scudder, Editors, Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, Volume 1, p. 382

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

Colonel Charles Russell Lowell to Josephine Shaw Lowell, August 30, 1864 – 8 a.m.

Summit Point, Aug. 30, 8 A. M.

If we ever do have any money to help the Government with, I would rather put it in the 5-20 Bonds than in those 7-30 fellows, — I don't believe in the policy or wisdom of the latter, and prefer not to encourage them by my support! Before I got your letter, I had already written Charley Perkins to sell my land at $200 (?), though that is too cheap for such a pretty place. By the way, I am literally a “penniless colonel,” — I have not a single cent left, except a silver dime-piece which an officer gave me a day or two ago for luck. The Rebs will be disgusted if they ever have occasion to “go through me.” I do wish George,¹ or somebody, would write a candid article showing that the great weakness of this Administration has been from first to last in every department a want of confidence in the people, in their earnestness, their steadfastness, their superiority to low motives and to dodges, their clear-sightedness, &c. I think the whole Cabinet have been more or less tricky, — or rather have had faith in the necessity of trickiness, — and the people are certainly tired of this.

I was interrupted here and sent out to drive in the enemy 's picket in front of us. We have brought back five prisoners, killed two lieutenants and three privates, — Captain Rumery and two privates very slightly wounded, and two men of Second Maryland killed. Successful, but not pleasant, — the only object being to get prisoners, and from them to get information. We now have orders to move camp at once. Good-bye, I don't think it's pleasant telling you about our work, and I think I shan't tell any more, — it doesn't give you any better idea of my whereabouts or my whatabouts.

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¹ George William Curtis

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 330-2, 460

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

Colonel Charles Russell Lowell to Josephine Shaw, October 13, 1863

Oct. 13, 1863.

I am sorry to disturb George, — but Mosby is an honourable foe, and should be treated as such. S. and I had various tilts on that subject two years ago. I have not changed my opinion in spite of the falsehoods of Beauregard and the perfidy of Davis or his War Department. We have acknowledged them as belligerents, and we must treat them accordingly; we gain more by it in our State questions than we lose by it in military respects.¹

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¹ Mr. George William Curtis, Colonel Shaw's brother-in-law, had evidently had his patience overtaxed by the recent outcrop of barbarity at Fort Wagner, and had little left for guerrillas and their methods. Colonel Lowell had something of the trait which his uncle, in the poem about Blondel, gave to Richard Cœur de Lion : —

“To foes benign, in friendship stern.”

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 313, 444-5

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

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: July 3, 1862

Mem says she feels like sitting down, as an Irishwoman does at a wake, and howling night and day. Why did Huger let McClellan slip through his fingers? Arrived at Mrs. McMahan's at the wrong moment. Mrs. Bartow was reading to the stricken mother an account of the death of her son. The letter was written by a man who was standing by him when he was shot through the head. “My God!” he said; that was all, and he fell dead. James Taylor was color-bearer. He was shot three times before he gave in. Then he said, as he handed the colors to the man next him, “You see I can't stand it any longer,” and dropped stone dead. He was only seventeen years old.

If anything can reconcile me to the idea of a horrid failure after all efforts to make good our independence of Yankees, it is Lincoln's proclamation freeing the negroes. Especially yours, Messieurs, who write insults to your Governor and Council, dated from Clarendon. Three hundred of Mr. Walter Blake's negroes have gone to the Yankees. Remember, that recalcitrant patriot's property on two legs may walk off without an order from the Council to work on fortifications.

Have been reading The Potiphar Papers by Curtis. Can this be a picture of New York socially? If it were not for this horrid war, how nice it would be here. We might lead such a pleasant life. This is the most perfectly appointed establishment — such beautiful grounds, flowers, and fruits; indeed, all that heart could wish; such delightful dinners, such pleasant drives, such jolly talks, such charming people; but this horrid war poisons everything.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 199-200

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