Congressman Horace Mann, September 17, 1850

There is a great rush here of the Tariff party. Mr. Webster has held out the idea all summer, that, if we would surrender liberty, the South would withhold their opposition to a tariff. This is the idea that has worked such a wonderful change in Boston, and in those parts of the State connected by business with it; and almost all parts of the State are so connected. It is the pecuniary sensorium, and the nerves reach to all the extremities; for it is within twelve hours of every part of the State by railroads, &c. This idea, therefore, that money is to be made by a settlement of the difficulties in favor of slavery, has been the corrupting idea of the year, and it has worked its way with prodigious efficacy. Several attempts have been made to get a tariff measure through; but, as yet, all have failed. I suppose this to be the reason why there is such a flocking here now from Lowell and Boston. How disgraceful it is! and yet, if these motives were exposed, they would first be denied, and then the author of the charge would be sacrificed. It is a corrupt state of affairs; but I think not all who are engaged in it either see or feel how base it is.

It is this class of people who are making the outcry against me.

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 331

Diary of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, April 24, 1851

A pleasant dinner, at the close of which we heard the news of Sumner's election. In the evening came Lowell and Gurowski and Palfrey, and Sumner himself to escape from the triumph and be quiet from all the noise in the streets of Boston. He is no more elated by his success than he has been depressed by the failure heretofore, and evidently does not desire the office. Не says he would resign now if any one of the same sentiments as himself could be put in his place.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 245

John L. Motley to the Duchess of Argyll, February 7, 1864

Vienna,

February 7, 1864.

Dear Duchess Of Argyll: We get on very well in Vienna. We have an extremely pleasant house with a large garden. Many of our colleagues are very kind and agreeable; your ambassador most especially so — high-minded, honorable, sympathetic, good-tempered, amiable. Everybody respects and loves him for his fine qualities of mind and character. Lady Bloomfield is very charming and accomplished, and has but one fault in the world: she has been away from us three or four months, and we all miss her very much.

I have purposely avoided speaking of the one topic of which my mind is always full, because when I once begin I can never stop, and I become an intolerable bore.

I am glad you spoke of Colonel Shaw. His father and mother are intimate friends of ours, and I have had a touching letter from Mr. Shaw since his son's death. I knew the son, too, a beautiful, fair-haired youth, with everything surrounding him to make life easy and gay. When I was at home in 1861 I saw him in camp. He was in the same tent with one of my own nephews, both being lieutenants in what has since become a very famous regiment — the Massachusetts Second. I had the honor of presenting their colors to that regiment, and saw them march out of Boston 1040 strong. Since that day they have been in countless actions, some of the bloodiest of the war. A large proportion of its officers, all of them young men of well-known Boston families, have been killed or severely wounded; and in the last papers received I read that the regiment, reduced to about two hundred, has returned on a few weeks' furlough and to recruit its numbers, having reenlisted — like most of the other regiments whose term expires this year — for three years longer, or for the duration of the war. I believe that they would serve for twenty years rather than that our glorious Republic should be destroyed. But be assured that the government of the United States is firm as the mountains.

Young Robert Shaw is a noble type of the young American. Did you see the poem to his memory in the January number of the "Atlantic"? It is called "Memorise Positum," and is, I think, very beautiful. The last verse is especially touching. It is by Russell Lowell, one of our first poets, as you know. The allusion is to his two nephews who were killed in Virginia. A third nephew (he has no sons), Colonel Lowell of the Second Massachusetts Cavalry, is in active service in Meade's army. He lately married a sister of Colonel Shaw, and she is with him now. Shaw fought all through the campaigns of Virginia, in the Massachusetts Second, until he took the command of the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth (colored). His was a beautiful life and a beautiful death.

I shall say no more. My wife and daughters join me in sincerest remembrances and best wishes for the duke and yourself and all your household. I beg to remain, dear Duchess of Argyll,

Most truly yours,

J. L. M.

I wish you would whisper to the duke that he owes me a letter, and that if he should ever find time to write I will write a short letter in return.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, Volume III, p. 4-6

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Perhaps you expect a full account of last Saturday's “Atlantic” dinner; but really it was hardly worth it, except for Holmes, who was really very agreeable and even delightful, far more so than James Lowell, the other principal interlocutor, who was bright and witty as always, but dogmatic and impatient of contradiction more than he used to be, though he always had that tendency; whereas Holmes was very genial and sweet and allowed Lowell to be almost rude to him. The other guests were Edmund Quincy, Dr. J. W. Palmer (author of your favorite Miss Wimple), Charles W. Storey (a lazy, witty lawyer), Charles Norton, Underwood, John Wyman, formerly of Worcester, and myself. . . . Most of the serious talk turned on theology (which Underwood said they often fell upon), Holmes taking the radical side and Lowell rather the conservative. Holmes said some things that were as eloquent as anything in the “Autocrat” about the absurdity of studying doctrines in books and supposing that we got much from that source, when each person is the net result of a myriad influences from all nature and society which mould him from his birth and before it.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 112

Thomas Wentworth Higginson to Louisa Storrow Higginson, July 1861

You ask about the “Atlantic” — Fields will edit it, which is a great thing for the magazine; he having the promptness and business qualities which Lowell signally wanted; for instance, my piece about Theodore Parker lay nearly two months under a pile of anonymous manuscripts in his study while he was wondering that it did not arrive. Fields's taste is very good and far less crotchety than Lowell's, who strained at gnats and swallowed camels, and Fields is always casting about for good things, while Lowell is rather disposed to sit still and let them come. It was a torment to deal with Lowell and it is a real pleasure with Fields. For instance, the other day Antoinette Brown Blackwell sent me a very pleasing paper on the proper treatment of old age — called “A Plea for the Afternoon.” I sent it to Fields by express and it reached him after twelve one noon (I don't know how many hours after). At seven that night I received it again by express, with Approval and excellent suggestions as to some modifications. . . . Such promptness never was known in a magazine; it would have been weeks or months before L. would have got to it.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 111-2

Thomas Wentworth Higginson to Harriet Prescott

Dr. Holmes — whom you evidently did not fancy, though you describe his talk so well — is really superior, at every point I can think of, to Lowell, whom you liked so much; I should except personal appearances, for Lowell's brow and eyes are Apollo-like, while all Holmes's face is small in outline and expression, though mobile and vivacious. . . .

Maria Lowell was a living poem. She was his inspiration and his moral tonic beside, and he has been living on her memory ever since, in both respects. . . .

The chief editor [Lowell of the “Atlantic”] reads every article without knowing the author's name, so as to be perfectly impartial.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 110-1

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, about 1858

Mr. Emerson is bounteous and gracious, but thin, dry, angular, in intercourse as in person. Garrison is the only solid moral reality I have ever seen incarnate, the only man who would do to tie to, as they say out West; and he is fresher and firmer every day, but wanting in intellectual culture and variety. Wendell Phillips is always graceful and gay, but inwardly sad, under that bright surface. Whittier is the simplest and truest of men, beautiful at home, but without fluency of expression, and with rather an excess of restraint. Thoreau is pure and wonderfully learned in nature's things and deeply wise, and yet tedious in his monologues and cross-questionings. Theodore Parker is as wonderfully learned in books, and as much given to monologue, though very agreeable and various it is, still egotistical, dogmatic, bitter often, and showing marked intellectual limitations. Mr. Alcott is an innocent charlatan, full of inspired absurdities and deep strokes, maunders about nature, and when outdoors has neither eyes, ears, nor limbs. Lowell is infinitely entertaining, but childishly egotistical and monopolizing.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 93-4

Diary of Gideon Welles: Tuesday, January 5, 1864

Congress reassembled after a fortnight's vacation, or rather were to have assembled but there was not a quorum in either house. At the Cabinet council only a portion were present. The President in discussion narrated some stories, very apt, exhibiting wisdom and sense. He requested me to read an article in the North American Review,¹ just received, on the policy of the Administration, which he thought very excellent, except that it gave him over-much credit.

_______________

¹ An article by James Russell Lowell which was widely quoted.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30, 1864, p. 504

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

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

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

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

Cambridge, Mass., December 27, 1864.

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

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

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

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

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

Charles Eliot Norton to 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. . . .

_______________

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 James Russell Lowell July 7, 1864

ASHFIELD, July 7,1864.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_______________

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

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

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

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

_______________

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

George William Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, August 28, 1864

North Shore, 28th August, '64.

Frank wrote me, or printed rather, in large and remarkable capitals, a letter the other day. I enlivened the tranquil circle here by calling it a Capital letter, — a little work of mine which I dedicate to Jane. Probably you are not aware that I am myself the latest little work of Madison University. Blushes forbid me to write that that discriminating institution has done for the least of your friends what Harvard did for that other celebrated scholar, Andrew Jackson. Yesterday I received a letter with a very large green seal, addressed “G. W. C, LL. D.!” Oh my prophetic soul! I have long called Frank and Zib Doctor.

I say not a word about the war, but did people ever deserve success at the polls less than the Union party? Two years ago I was the only Lincoln man I knew hereabouts, and I have come round to the same position. Yet he will be elected, or we are dreary humbugs.

Good-by, dear boy. I am more cheerful than ever, for within two months we shall see the whole force of treason North and South, and if we sink 't is to see what we shall see! I shall not be able to write on Peace — luckily for you. It will be a good text for J. R. L. Give him my love, if he is with you, and to all the dear ones.

Your friend the doctor sends his benediction.

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 181-2

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, December 31, 1861

Shady Hill, 31 December, 1861.

. . . Lowell has been spending the evening with us, and brought up to read to us his new Biglow Paper. It is one of the best things that he ever did, — it is a true Yankee pastoral and lyric; — not another letter of B. Sawin, but a poem or rather two poems of Hosea's own, — the first a dialogue between Concord Bridge and Bunker Hill monument, — the last a lyric about Jonathan and John, with the most spirited refrain. I am sure that you will be as delighted with it as I am. There is no doubt but that it will touch the popular heart.

I entirely agree with you as to the masterly manner in which Seward has treated the Trent case. If his paper has too much the character of a legal plea for strict diplomatic usage, it is to be remembered that it is to be in reality addressed to the American people and not to Lord Lyons. Shall we yet have to fight England? With all my heart I hope not, — but if need be, I am ready. . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 250

Charles Eliot Norton to James Russell Lowell, December 19, 1861

The Albemarle, New York, December 19,1861.

. . . This is a wonderful city. It has greatly changed since you and I were here eighteen years ago. There is a special fitness in the first syllable of its name, for it is essentially New, and seems likely always to remain so. It is all of the New World, and what Villemain says of Joinville is true in another sense of the impression that a stranger receives from New York “On dirait que les objets sont nés dans le monde le jour où il les a vus.” The only old things here are yesterday's newspapers. People do not seem to live here, — they pass the nights and spend the days in the city, — that is all. The persons whom I meet in the street do not have, to my eyes, the air of belonging here, or of being at home. They look restless, and even the children have tired faces as if they had been seeing sights too long.

The New Yorkers have got Aladdin's lamp, and build palaces in a night. The city is gay, entertaining, full of costly things, — but its lavish spending does not result in magnificence, it is showy rather than fine, and its houses and churches and shops and carriages are expensive rather than beautiful. Architecture is not practised as a fine art, it is known here only as a name for the building trade.

Boston is farther off than it used to be from New York. We are provincials, with a very little city of our own. This is really metropolitan, and has great advantages. A few years hence and Boston will be a place of the past, with a good history no doubt, but New York will be alive. It seems to be getting what Paris has so much of,—a confidence in the immortality of the present moment. It does not care for past or future.

My windows look out on the junction of Broadway and Fifth Avenue, and there is not a livelier place in the world.

The news from England, I trust, is not so bad as it seems. The manner in which the country has received it is most satisfactory, — and there is apparently no reason to fear war as the result of any popular excitement here, or of any want of temper or discretion on the part of the Administration. It is a fortunate thing for us that Seward has regained so much of the public confidence. He will feel himself strong enough not to be passionate or violent. I cannot believe that the English ministry mean war, — if they do they will get it and its consequences.

How good the new number of the “Atlantic” is! I have read and re-read your letters in it, always with a fuller sense of the overflowing humour, wit and cleverness of them. You are as young, my boy, as you were in the old time. It seems to me indeed (you will take what I say for what it is worth, and of this you are a better judge than I am), that there is some risk from the very abundance of your power lest the popularity and effect of this new series of the "Biglow Papers" should not be as great as it ought to be. This letter of B. Sawin's is too full, and contains too much. I know that the necessity of the case forced you into details in order to place your characters on the stage in an intelligible way. But I am afraid that the public will be impatient of detail, and will complain of divided interest. It was this that prevented common readers from appreciating the delightful fun and humour of “Our Own.” The truth is that for popularity — that is, for wide, genuine, national popularity — there is need of unity of effect. One blow must be struck, not ten. Moreover our people are more in earnest now than they ever have been before, they are not in the vein for being amused by the most humorous touches of satire unless there be a simple, perfectly direct moral underneath. The conclusion to which I want to come is this, — that you must interrupt the series of Birdofredum's letters, by some shorter pieces of Hosea's own, the shorter the better if so be that they give expression and form to any one of the popular emotions or sentiments of the moment; — and more than this, that you should make them as lyrical and as strong as possible, binding the verses together with a taking refrain. The pieces in the old “Biglow Papers” that have become immortal are the lyrics; — the John P. Robinson; the Gen. Cass says some one's an ass; the Apostles rigged out in their swallow-tail coats, and so on.

Am I right? I believe so. And if I am, I am sure that you can do what I think should be done. You have a fine chance (me judice) at this moment to put the popular feeling toward England into verse which shall ring from one end of the country to the other. Do let Hosea do it, and send it with one of his brief old-fashioned letters to the publishers for the next number, — and keep back Birdofredum till March. If you hit the nail of the minute such a ringing blow on the head as you can hit it, all the people will cheer and laugh, and throw up their hats in your honour. I am so proud of you, and love you so well that I not only want you to do the best for the country but am sure that you can do it. And love gives me the precious right to write thus freely to you. . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 247-50

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to John Lothrop Motley, April 29, 1860

Boston, April 29, 1860.

It was so pleasant, my dear Lothrop, to get a letter from you. I have kept it a week or two so as to have something more to tell you, yet I fear it will not be much after all. Yesterday the Saturday Club had its meeting. I carried your letter in my pocket, not to show to anybody, but to read a sentence or two which I knew would interest them all, and especially your kind message of remembrance. All were delighted with it; and on my proposing your health, all of them would rise and drink it standing. We then, at my suggestion, gave three times three in silence, on account of the public character of the place and the gravity and position of the high assisting personages. Be assured that you were heartily and affectionately, not to say proudly, remembered. Your honors are our honors, and when we heard you had received that superior tribute, which stamps any foreigner's reputation as planetary, at the hands of the French Institute, it was as if each of us had had a ribbon tied in his own buttonhole. I hoped very much to pick up something which might interest you from some of our friends who know more of the political movements of the season than I do.

I vote with the Republican party. I cannot hesitate between them and the Democrats. Yet what the Republican party is now doing it would puzzle me to tell you. What its prospects are for the next campaign, perhaps I ought to know, but I do not. I am struck with the fact that we talk very little politics of late at the club. Whether or not it is disgust at the aspect of the present political parties, and especially at the people who represent them, I cannot say; but the subject seems to have been dropped for the present in such society as I move about in, and especially in the club. We discuss first principles, enunciate axioms, tell stories, make our harmless jokes, reveal ourselves in confidence to our next neighbors after the Chateau Margaux has reached the emotional center, and enjoy ourselves mightily. But we do not talk politics. After the President's campaign is begun, it is very likely that we may, and then I shall have something more to say about Mr. Seward and his prospects than I have now.

How much pleasure your praise gave me I hardly dare to say. I know that I can trust it. You would not bestow it unless you liked what I had done, but you would like the same thing better if I had done it than coming from a stranger. That is right and kind and good, and notwithstanding you said so many things to please me, there were none too many. I love praise too well always, and I have had a surfeit of some forms of it. Yours is of the kind that is treasured and remembered. I have written in every number of the “Atlantic” since it began. I should think myself industrious if I did not remember the labors you have gone through, which simply astonish me. What delight it would be to have you back here in our own circle of men — I think we can truly say, whom you would find worthy companions: Agassiz, organizing the science of a hemisphere; Longfellow, writing its songs; Lowell, than whom a larger, fresher, nobler, and more fertile nature does not move among us; Emerson, with his strange, familiar remoteness of character, I do not know what else to call it; and Hawthorne and Dana, when he gets back from his voyage round the world, and all the rest of us thrown in gratis. But you must not stay too long; if all the blood gets out of your veins, I am afraid you will transfer your allegiance.

I am just going to Cambridge to an “exhibition,” in which Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks a translation (expectatur versio in lingua vernacula), the Apology for Socrates; Master O. W. Holmes, Jun., being now a tall youth, almost six feet high, and lover of Plato and of art.

I ought to have said something about your grand new book, but I have not had time to do more than read some passages from it. My impression is that of all your critics, that you have given us one of the noble historical pictures of our time, instinct with life and glowing with the light of a poetical imagination, which by itself would give pleasure, but which, shed over a great epoch in the records of our race, is at once brilliant and permanent. In the midst of so much that renders the very existence of a civilization amongst us problematical to the scholars of the Old World, it is a great pleasure to have the cause of letters so represented by one of our own countrymen, citizens, friends. Your honors belong to us all, but most to those who have watched your upward course from the first, who have shared many of the influences which have formed your own mind and character, and who now regard you as the plenipotentiary of the true Republic accredited to every court in Europe.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 87-90

Charles Eliot Norton to James Russell Lowell, July 21, 1861

Newport, 21 July, 1861.

Dearest James, —  . . . Newport is very pleasant, or perhaps I should better say, would be very pleasant were it not so far from you! It is quieter than usual this year, and the gay people are less extravagant in their display. As for the sea and the sky nothing new is to be said of them, — they are the same as ever. The hearts of the town's people are in the war. Nearly two hundred Newporters have gone to it, and Colonel Burnside is a Newport man. To-day everyone is anxious about the expected battle, — for the Newport troops are in the advance. I heard a story of the departure of the company which pleased me. It may not be literally correct, but this is what was told me. When Governor Sprague received from Washington the answer that his offer of a regiment was accepted, he at once sent out his requisitions to the captains of the various companies to assemble with their commands at Providence. The requisition reached Newport at six in the morning. Captain Tew, a fisherman, sent word to Providence that he would be there at two o'clock with fifty men. The news ran through the town, and when the company marched down to the boat there were not fifty but one hundred and fifty men in the ranks. Mr. Thayer of the Orthodox Church made a prayer upon the wharf; the whole town was there, silent and uncovered, but when the boat started the cheers broke out one after another. The company went without a flag, and it was resolved to send one to them. In a day or two it was made and sent to Providence, and presented with a speech and the usual formalities. When Captain Tew took it he said, “I thank you for this flag. I don't know how to make a speech. Let us pray.” So he made a prayer ending with words like these, “If we are successful, give us, O Lord, the spirit of moderation; if we be beaten, help us to stand firm unto death.”

And these are the men who are called names by the Southerners; who are supposed to be marching with Booty and Beauty on their banners; whom “la jeunesse doree” of Virginia and South Carolina would hardly touch with the points of their swords!

How well our Massachusetts First have done! It is a fine thing that Massachusetts men should again be foremost in the post of danger, and that Massachusetts blood should be the first shed in the advance of this great army of Freedom. Can we be too glad to belong to New England, to be her children, and to be living in these days?

Surely you will write some poem to give expression to the feeling and thought which is in the souls of the people. You wrote “Italy — 1859”! do write “America — 1861.” . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 235-7

Charles Eliot Norton to James Russell Lowell, June 3, 1860

Newport, 3 June, 1860.

. . . Are you pleased that Mr. Everett has consented to take the nomination for the Vice Presidency? His letter reminds me of the advertisement of “the retired Doctor whose sands of life have nearly run out.” We have patriots left. In the view of the Union party it would seem that the Union itself were in a similar condition to the English gunboats, planks rotted, sham copper bolts not driven half through, and a general condition of unsoundness making them wholly unsafe in a sea.

Yet if the Vengeur should go down under the waves, Bell and Everett will be seen upon the upper deck waving their hands in a graceful oratorical way, and crying with melancholy voice, Vive la République....

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 208-9

James Russell Lowell to Charles Eliot Norton, April 13, 1865

. . . The news, my dear Charles, is from Heaven. I felt a strange and tender exaltation. I wanted to laugh and I wanted to cry, and ended by holding my peace and feeling devoutly thankful. There is something magnificent in having a country to love. It is almost like what one feels for a woman. Not so tender, perhaps, but to the full as self-forgetful. I worry a little about reconstruction, but am inclined to think that matters will very much settle themselves. But I must run to my tread-mill. Love and joy to all!

Ever yours,

J. R. L.

SOURCE: Charles Eliot Norton, Editor, Letters of James Russell Lowell, Volume 1, p. 385-6