John L. Motley to Baron von Bismarck, August 29, 1862

Legation of the United States of America, Vienna,

August 29, 1862.

My Dear Bismarck: I have been at this point now about eight months, and ever since I came here I have been most desirous of opening communications with you. But for a long time you seemed to be so much on the move between Berlin, Petersburg, and Paris that even if I should succeed in getting a letter to you, it appears doubtful whether I should be lucky enough to receive a reply.

Perhaps I shall be more successful now, for the newspapers inform me that you are in some watering-place in the south of France. So I shall write but a very brief note, merely to express my great desire to hear from you again, and my hope that in an idle moment, if you ever have such, you will send me a line to tell me of yourself, your prosperity, and of your wife and children.

Pray give my sincerest regards to Madame de Bismarck, and allow me to add those of my wife, although personally still unknown to you both, alas!

I don't know whether you have observed in any newspapers that I was appointed about a year ago minister plenipotentiary, etc., to this court. I arrived here from America about the beginning of November. I much fear that this is the very last place in Europe where I shall ever have the good luck of seeing you. Nevertheless, whether you remain in Paris or go — as seems most likely from all I can gather from private and public sources — to Berlin this autumn to form a ministry, in either case there is some chance of our meeting some time or other, while there would have been none so long as you remained in St. Petersburg. Pray let me have a private line from you; you can't imagine how much pleasure it will give me. My meeting with you in Frankfort, and thus renewing the friendship of our youth, will remain one of the most agreeable and brightest chapters in my life. And it is painful to think that already that renewed friendship is beginning to belong to the past, and that year after year is adding a fold to the curtain.

However, you must write to me, and tell me where we can all meet next summer, if no sooner. I wish you would let me know whether and how soon you are to make a cabinet in Berlin. Remember that when you write to me it is as if you wrote to some one in the planet Jupiter. Personally, I am always deeply interested in what concerns you. But, publicly, I am a mere spectator of European affairs, and wherever and whatever my sympathies in other times than these might be, I am too entirely engrossed with the portentous events now transacting in my own country to be likely to intermeddle or make mischief in the doings of this hemisphere, save in so far as they may have bearing on our own politics. You can say anything you like to me, then, as freely as when you were talking to me in your own house.

The cardinal principle of American diplomacy has always been to abstain from all intervention or participation in European affairs. This has always seemed to me the most enlightened view to take of our exceptional, and therefore fortunate, political and geographical position. I need not say how earnest we are in maintaining that principle at this moment, when we are all determined to resist to the death any interference on the part of Europe in our affairs.

I wish, by the way, you would let me know anything you can pick up in regard to the French emperor's intentions or intrigues in regard to our civil war.

Of course I don't suggest to you for an instant any violation of confidence, but many things might be said with great openness to you that would not, from reserve or politeness or a hundred other reasons, be said to an American diplomatist.

I suppose there is no doubt whatever that L. N. has been perpetually, during the last six months, provoking, soliciting, and teasing the English cabinet to unite with him in some kind of intervention, and that the English ministers have steadily refused to participate in the contemplated crime. Of course they know and we know that intervention means war with the United States government and people on behalf of the rebel slaveholders; but I have very good reason to know that the English government refuse, and that Lord Palmerston even ridicules the idea as preposterous. Not that the English love us. On the contrary, they hate us, but they can't understand how it will help the condition of their starving populations in the manufacturing districts to put up the price of cotton five hundred per cent., which a war with America would do, and to cause an advance in corn in the same proportion. There is no doubt whatever that the harvest in England is a very bad one, and that they must buy some thirty million sterling worth of foreign corn. On the other hand, the harvest in America is the most fruitful ever known since that continent was discovered.

Unless lunatics were at the head of affairs in England, they would not seize the opportunity of going to war with the granary of corn and cotton without a cause.

But it may be different with France. She is fond of la Gloire. And she is sending out an expedition to Mexico, although she seems likely to have her hands full in Italy just now. Moreover, L. N. is the heaven appointed arbiter of all sublunary affairs, and he doubtless considers it his mission to “save civilization” in our continent, as he has so often been good enough to do in the rest of the world.

What do you think is his real design? How far do you believe he has gone in holding out definite encouragement to the secessionist agents in France? Do you think he has any secret plot with them to assist them against us in the Gulf of Mexico? Will he attempt anything of this kind without the knowledge and connivance of England? I say no more except to repeat that you may give me, perhaps, a useful hint or two, from time to time, of what you hear and know. It is unnecessary for me to say that I shall keep sacredly confidential anything you may say to me as such.

I shall not go into the subject of our war at all, save to say that it is to me an inconceivable idea that any man of average intellect or love of right can possibly justify this insurrection of the slaveholders. The attempt to destroy a prosperous, powerful, and happy commonwealth like ours, merely that on its ruin might be constructed a slave-breeding, slave-holding confederacy, is one of the greatest crimes that history has recorded. In regard to the issue of the war I don't entertain the slightest doubt, if foreign interference is kept off. If the slaveholders obtain the alliance of France, the war will of course be indefinitely protracted. If we are left to ourselves, I think with the million of men that we shall have in the field in the course of the month of October, and with a fleet of twelve or fifteen first-class iron-clad frigates, which will be ready by that time, that the insurrection cannot hold out a great while longer. However, of that I am not sure. Time is nothing to God — nor to the devil either, as to that matter. We mortals, creatures of a day, are very impatient. The United States government is now fighting with the devil, for the spirit of this slave Confederacy is nothing less. How long it will take us to vanquish it I know not. But that it will be vanquished completely I entertain no doubt whatever. I don't expect you to accept my views, but I thought it as well to state them. I am more anxious about the next three months than about anything that can happen afterward. Let me, however, warn you — in case you take an interest in the progress of our affairs — not to believe in Reuter's telegrams as in the London “Times.” Their lies are stupendous, and by them public opinion all over Europe is poisoned. This is nothing to me. Their lies can't alter the facts — I have other sources of information. But when I see how the telegraph and the European press have been constantly worked for the interest of the secessionists, it does not surprise me to see the difficulty which honest people have in arriving at the truth, either in fact or in theory. Do you know your colleague, Mr. Dayton, United States Minister in Paris? Let me recommend him to you as a most excellent and honorable man. Renewing all our kindest regards to you and yours, believe me, my dear Bismarck, always most sincerely your old friend,

J. L. Motley.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 271-6

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

Boston, 21 Charles Street,

August 29, 1862.

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to John L. Motley, September 3, 1862

Wednesday evening, September 3.

I have waited long enough. We get the most confused and unsatisfactory, yet agitating, rumors. Pope seems to be falling back on the capital after having got the worst of it in a battle on the 30th. Since that there has been little fighting so far as we know, but this noon we get a story that Stonewall Jackson is marching by Leesburg on Baltimore, and yesterday we learned that Cincinnati is in imminent danger of a rebel invasion. How well I remember the confidence that you expressed in General Scott — a confidence which we all shared! The old general had to give up, and then it was nothing but McClellan. But do not think that the pluck or determination of the North has begun to yield. There never was such a universal enthusiasm for the defense of the Union and the trampling out of rebellion as at this perilous hour. I am willing to believe that many of the rumors we hear are mere fabrications. I won't say to you, be of good courage, because men of ideas are not put down by the accidents of a day or a year.

Yours always,

O. W. H.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 271

Abraham Hayward to Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bart., September 19, 1862

The Palace, Corfu,

Sept-19, 1862.

MY DEAR LEWIS,

I am here with Storks. The Ionians are now quiet, and only mutter discontent enough to keep up the steam. Not so the Greeks of actual Greece. Scarlett¹ told me they were ripe for a revolution, when their spirits were suddenly damped by Garibaldi’s failure. They dream of founding a Greek empire on the ruins of the Turkish, and have not industry or enterprise to make a railroad from the Piraeus, or a good road of any sort. The Acropolis is the most glorious of ruins, far, far beyond the Coliseum or anything in Rome. The modern Athens is a second-rate English watering-place.

At Constantinople I lived with the Bulwers,² and saw everything to the best advantage. All without in the way of view is splendid; all (or almost all) within is mean, tawdry, and dirty. Our loans and efforts to set up Turkish finance were the subject of ridicule to all. What signify the resources of a country, when indolence and corruption reign th[r]oughout? I rode round the Whole city outside the walls: not a sign of cultivation, dry plains and mountains covered with forests of tombs. Some individual Turks are men of talent and knowledge, but the Sultan is as absolute as at any period. His lightest caprice is law, and he must have some expensive caprices, for he spends on his establishments and himself two-and-a-half millions sterling a year.

I was very much struck with the Grand Vizier and Foreign Secretary, Fuad Pasha and Aali Pasha, who dined with us one day, and who drank wine, and talked (in perfect French) like cultivated Europeans. Fuad had a great deal of Palmerstonian fun, and came out capitally on the subject of marriage. The Sultanas’ reading is confined to French novels, and their morals must be odd. I do not know whether they are flung into the Bosphorus, but some of them do their best to merit it. One of them told Lady Bulwer she should take La Dame aux Camélias for her model, and on Lady Bulwer shaking her head, exclaimed, Quoi, elle non bonne femme?

Bulwer managed the Servian business with great ability, and does well a great deal of work. I do not believe a syllable of the stories that have reached England concerning him. He and his wife are on the best possible understanding — like Lord and Lady Palmerston, or you and Lady Theresa.

At Vienna I had also a long interview with Count Rechberg³ (Foreign Sec.), he expounded his views on all subjects, from Garibaldi to free trade. He struck me as a clear-headed man, with broad and just views. I also passed a day with the Motleys at their villa, and found him more unreasonable than ever, vowing that the restoration of the Union in its entirety was “as sure as the sun in Heaven.” On my way down the Danube I was in the thick of Wallachian and Moldavian Counts and Countesses returning from the German baths: most amusing companions, and very sociable. I was the only Englishman, and the conversation was a mixture of German, French, and Italian, to say nothing of Danubian and other dialects. I also struck up a friendship with a young and good-looking Russian couple — Prince and Princess Bagratien, on their way to their Georgian principality. They are coming to England next spring and will make a sensation: for she is pretty, and not more that nineteen or twenty ; he, young and very gentlemanlike. I shall certainly bring them to Kent House.

Eber is here, having been stopped by Omar Pacha on his way to Belgrade. Storks sent a yacht for him to the Albanian coast, and he is now going on to Constantinople. Omar handsomely offered to let him go on receiving a pledge, that nothing published in the Times should be used to the detriment of Turkey.

This is a charming place as regards climate and scenery. I shall go to Ancona next week, and home through Milan and Turin. I hope to be in London about the end of October. With best regards to Lady Theresa,

Ever faithfully yours,

A. HAYWARD.

_______________

¹ The Hon. Peter Campbell Scarlett was British Minister at Florence.

² Sir Henry Bulwer, afterwards Lord Dalling, was British Ambassador at Constantinople.

³ Count Rechberg was head of the Austrian Government. As the friend of Madame de Bury, he received Mr. Hayward with great cordiality and frankness.

SOURCE: Henry E. Carlisle, Editor, A Selection from the Correspondence of Abraham Hayward from 1834 to 1884, Volume 2, p. 81-3

John L. Motley to Mary Lothrop Motley, August 26, 1862

Legation of the United States, Vienna,

August 26, 1862.

My Darling Little Mary: I am writing to you a mere apology for a letter. I wrote a letter to your dear grandmama by the last steamer, and, I believe, to you, but I am not sure. I am writing at my office in town, where I have the newspapers up to the 12th of August, which your mother and Lily have not yet seen. Here I have just read in them the details of the late fight in Virginia, in which the Massachusetts Second seems to have so much distinguished itself, and to have suffered so severely. I see with great regret that my old friend and classmate Dr. Shurtleff has lost a son in the fight. The details are still meager, but I have seen enough to feel sure that our men behaved brilliantly, and I can have no doubt of our ultimate success. I have just seen Hayward, whom I dare say you have seen in Hertford Street. He had had a long talk with M. Duvergier d'Hauranne, one of Louis Philippe's old ministers, which gentleman had just heard the whole story of the Richmond battles from the French princes. They described them exactly according to the accounts of the Northern newspapers, which they pronounced perfectly accurate, said that nothing could exceed the courage displayed on both sides, and that the movement to James River had been managed in such a very masterly manner by McClellan. All this I had no doubt of, but I like to hear what outsiders say to each other. Hayward also read me a note from Lord March, Governor-General of Canada, who says that English officers present at the late battles, and since returned to Canada, pronounce the accounts given in the Northern papers as perfectly accurate.

I have not a word to say of news. We dribble on in the even tenor of our Vöslau ways. Hayward is coming out to dine to-morrow,¹ and Saturday or Sunday we expect a visit of a few days from Mr. and Mrs. Hughes (Tom Brown) and Miss Stanley (Arthur Stanley's sister). We hope to have some comfort in talking with them, as Hughes is as stanch a friend to our cause as exists in Europe. Of course we never talk or think of anything else night or day.

Good-by, and God bless you, my darling. I promise to write again next week.

Your affectionate

Papa.

_______________

1 From Mr. Hayward's “Letters,” ii. 82: “I also passed a day with the Motleys at their villa, and found him more unreasonable than ever, vowing that the restoration of the Union in its entirety was as sure as the sun in heaven.”

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 265-7

John L. Motley to Anna Lothrop Motley, August 18, 1862

Marien Villa, Vöslau,

August 18, 1862.

My Dearest Mother: It seems to me at times as if I could not sit out this war in exile. I console myself with reflecting that I could be of little use were I at home, and that I may occasionally be of some service abroad. The men whom I most envy are those who are thirty years of age and who were educated at West Point, or rather that portion of them who did not imbibe a love for the noble institution of slavery together with their other requirements at that college.

There is no doubt, I believe, that Louis Napoleon passes most of his time in urging the English government to unite with him in interfering on behalf of the slave-dealing, negro-breeding Confederacy, and that the agents of that concern have offered to go down and worship him in any way he likes, even to the promising of some kind of bogus abolition scheme, to take effect this time next century, in case he will help them cut the throat of the United States government. Thus far the English government have resisted his importunities. But their resistance will not last long. The only thing that saves us as yet from a war with the slaveholders allied with both France and England is the antislavery feeling of a very considerable portion of the British public. Infinite pains are taken by the agents of the slaveholders to convince the world that the North is as much in favor of slavery as the South, but the antislavery acts of the present Congress have given the lie to these assertions. Nevertheless, I am entirely convinced, not as a matter of theory, but as fact, that nothing but a proclamation of emancipation to every negro in the country will save us from war with England and France combined.

I began this note determined not to say a single word on the subject of the war, as if it were possible to detach one's thoughts from it for a moment. I continue to believe in McClellan's military capacity as, on the whole, equal to that of any of his opponents. I do not think that this war has developed any very great military genius as yet. But it is not a military war, if such a contradiction can be used. It is a great political and moral revolution, and we are in the first stage of it. The coming man, whoever he may be, must have military genius united with intense faith in something. In the old civil wars of Holland, France, and England, the men who did the work were the men who either believed intensely in the Pope and the Inquisition, or who intensely hated those institutions; who either believed in the crown or in the people; who either adored or detested civil and religious liberty. And in our war, supposing other nations let us fight it out, which they are not likely to do, the coming man is some tremendous negro-seller with vast military capacity, or some John Brown with ditto. I have an abiding faith in the American people, in its courage, love of duty, and determination to pursue the right when it has made up its mind. So I believe this conspiracy of the slaveholders will yet be squashed, but it will not be till the people has made a longer stride than it has yet made. Pardon me for this effusion. Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh. And these are times when every man not only has a right, but is urged by the most sacred duty, to speak his mind. We are very tranquil externally, speaking here in Vöslau, where we shall remain till the middle of October. God bless you, my dear mother. All send love to you and the governor, and I remain

Most affectionately your son,

J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 263-5

John L. Motley to Anna Lothrop Motley, June 30, 1862

Legation of the United States, Vienna,

June 30, 1862.

My Dearest Mother:

It is a long time since I wrote to you, and I am only writing a little note at this moment, for I would not let this steamer go without a word of affection and greeting. But the life here is so humdrum, while yours on that side of the ocean is so crowded with great events, that it is always with reluctance that I sit down to write to any one. Our life here (Vöslau) is very retired, and therefore very agreeable, for we can devote ourselves to our own pursuits, the principal part of which, as you may suppose, is reading the American journals. I try to work at my “History,” and have really succeeded in getting my teeth into the subject; but the great events of our own day in our country are so much more absorbing that I find it difficult to make much progress. As for European politics, except in their bearing on our own affairs, they are pale and uninteresting to me, although so important for the Europeans themselves as to prevent their giving sufficient attention to the American war. The consequence is that public ignorance on that subject is amazing.

I do not mean that we had any right to expect that they would sympathize with the great movement now going on in America. The spectacle of a great people going forth in its majesty and its irresistible power to smite to the dust the rebellion of a privileged oligarchy is one so entirely contrary to all European notions that it is hopeless to attempt making it understood. All European ideas are turned upside down by the mere statement of the proposition which is at the bottom of our war. Hitherto the “sovereignty of the people” has been heard of in Europe, and smiled at as a fiction, very much as we smile on our side of the water at that other little fiction, the divine right of kings. But now here comes rebellion against our idea of sovereignty, and fact on a large scale is illustrating our theoretic fiction. Privilege rebels, and the sovereign people orders an army of half a million to smash the revolt.

Here is the puzzle for the European mind. Whoever heard before in human history of a rebellion, except one made by the people against privilege? That the people rising from time to time, after years of intolerable oppression, against their natural masters, kings, nobles, priests, and the like, should be knocked back into their appropriate servitude by the strong hand of authority at any expense of treasure and blood, why, this is all correct. But when the privileged order of the New World — the 300,000 slaveholders leading on their 3,000,000 dupes — rise in revolt against the natural and legal and constitutional authority of the sovereign people, and when that authority, after pushing conciliation and concession in the face of armed treason to the verge of cowardice, at last draws the sword and defends the national existence against the rebels, why, then it is bloodshed, causeless civil war, and so on.

. . . One great fact has been demonstrated — the Americans, by a large majority, will spend any amount of treasure and blood rather than allow their Republic to be divided. Two years ago we did not know this fact. Two years hence, perhaps, we shall learn another fact — that the single possibility of division, that the single obstacle to peace and union, is slavery, and that so long as slavery exists, peace is impossible. Whenever the wise and courageous American people is thoroughly possessed of this truth, our trouble will be over. I think Mr. Lincoln embodies singularly well the healthy American mind. He revolts at extreme measures, and moves in a steady way to the necessary end. He reads the signs of the times, and will never go faster than the people at his back. So his slowness seems sometimes like hesitation; but I have not a doubt that when the people wills it, he will declare that will, and with the disappearance of the only dissolvent the dissolution of the Union will be made impossible. I have got to the end of my paper, and so, with best love to my father and all the rest,

I am, dear mother, most affectionately yours,

J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 260-3

John L. Motley to Mary Lothrop Motley, June 22, 1862

Marien Villa, Vöslau bei Wien,

June 22, 1862.

Darling Kleine Mary: Your letter of June 1 from Washington was most delightful. Every word of it was full of interest, and every sentiment expressed in it is very just and quite according to my heart. . . .  The copy of your little note from the President touched me very much. I have the most profound respect for him, which increases every day. His wisdom, courage, devotion to duty, and simplicity of character seem to me to embody in a very striking way all that is most noble in the American character and American destiny. His administration is an epoch in the world's history, and I have no more doubt than I have of my existence that the regeneration of our Republic for a long period to come will date from his proclamation calling out the first 75,000 troops more than a year ago.

That proclamation was read “amid bursts of laughter by the rebel Congress”; but people do not laugh at Abraham Lincoln now in any part of the world, whatever else they may do or say.

Your affectionate

P.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 260

John L. Motley to Anna Lothrop Motley, June 9, 1862

Vienna,

June 9, 1862.

My Dearest Mother: I am pretty busy now with my “History,” and work on regularly enough, but of course I am disturbed by perpetual thoughts about our own country. I am convinced, however, that it is a mistake in us all to have been expecting a premature result. It is not a war; it is not exactly a revolution; it is the sanguinary development of great political and social problems, which it was the will of the Great Ruler of the Universe should be reserved as the work of the generation now on the stage and their immediate successors. The more I reflect upon this Civil War, and try to regard it as a series of historical phenomena, disengaging myself for the moment from all personal feelings or interests, the more I am convinced that the conflict is the result of antagonisms the violent collision of which could no longer be deferred, and that its duration must necessarily be longer than most of us anticipated. In truth, it is almost always idle to measure a sequence of great historical events by the mere lapse of time, which does very well to mark the ordinary succession of commonplace human affairs. The worst of it is, so far as we are all individually concerned, that men are short-lived, while man is immortal even on the earth, for aught that we know to the contrary. It will take half a century, perhaps, before the necessary conclusion to the great strife in which we are all individually concerned has been reached, and there are few of us now living destined to see the vast result. But it is of little consequence, I suppose, to the Supreme Disposer whether Brown, Jones, and Robinson understand now or are likely to live long enough to learn what he means by the general scheme according to which he governs the universe in which we play for a time our little parts. If we do our best to find out, try to conform ourselves to the inevitable, and walk as straight as we can by such light as we honestly can get for ourselves, even though it be but a tallow candle, we shall escape tumbling over our noses more than half a dozen times daily.

I look at the mass of the United States, and it seems impossible for me to imagine for physical and geographical and ethnographical reasons that its territory can be permanently cut up into two or more independent governments. A thousand years ago this happened to Europe, and the result was the parceling out of two or three hundred millions of human creatures into fifty or five hundred (it matters not how many) different nations, who thus came to have different languages, religions, manners, customs, and histories. As I am not writing a historical lecture, and as I am a wonderful son who can always astonish his mother with his wisdom, it will be sufficient for my present audience to say that not one of the causes which ten centuries ago disintegrated and decomposed the European world, with a territory about the size of the United States, and with essentially the same population, is present at this moment in America. The tendency of the age everywhere, and the strongest instinct of the American people, is to consolidation, unification. It is the tendency of all the great scientific discoveries and improvements which make the age of utilitarianism at which we have arrived. I do not believe the American people (of course I mean a large majority) will ever make such asses of themselves as to go to work in the middle of the nineteenth century and establish a Chinese wall of custom-houses and forts across the widest part of the American continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and keep an army of 300,000 men perpetually on foot, with a navy of corresponding proportion, in order to watch the nation on the south side of the said Chinese wall, and fight it every half-dozen years or so, together with its European allies. The present war, sanguinary and expensive as it is, even if it lasts ten years longer, is cheaper both in blood and in money than the adoption of such a system; and I am so much of a democrat (far more now that I ever was in my life) as to feel confident that the great mass of the people will instinctively perceive that truth, and act in accordance with it. Therefore I have no fear that it will ever acknowledge a rival sovereignty to its own. The Union I do not believe can be severed. Therefore I believe the war must go on until this great popular force has beaten down and utterly annihilated the other force which has arranged itself in plump opposition to it. The world moves by forces.

The popular force, where land is half a dollar an acre and limitless in supply, for a century to come must prove irresistible. How long the conflict will last I know not, but slavery must go down and free labor prevail at last; but those of us whose blood is flowing or whose hearts are aching (like Mrs. W. D 's, for instance, mother of heroes) may find it small consolation that the United States of 1900 will be a greater and happier power than ever existed in the world, thanks to the sacrifices of this generation. But we have only to accept the action of great moral and political forces even as we must instinctively those of physical nature. There, you see what I am reduced to in the utter lack of topics. Instead of writing a letter I preach a sermon. We are going on very quietly. There is nothing doing now. Vienna has decanted itself into the country, and we are left like “lees for the vault to brag of.” The summer, after much preliminary sulking and blustering, seems willing to begin, and our garden is a great resource. There is small prospect of a war in Europe. The poor Poles will be put down at last. What is called moral influence will be bestowed upon them by England and France as generously as the same commodity has been bestowed upon our slaveholders, and it will do about as much good. Fine words have small effect on Cossacks or parsnips.

Give our love to the governor and to all the family far and near, and with a boundless quantity for yourself,

I am, my dearest mother,

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. 256-9

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to John L. Motley, April 27, 1862

Boston, April 27, 1862.

My Dear Motley: I saw Lowell day before yesterday, and asked him if he had written as you requested and as I begged him to do. He told me he had, and I congratulated you on having a new correspondent to bring you into intelligent relations with American matters, as seen through a keen pair of Boston eyes, and a new channel through which your intense sympathies can be reached. I trust that between us you can be kept pretty well supplied with that particular kind of knowledge which all exiles want, and which the newspapers do not give—knowledge of things, persons, affairs public and private, localized, individualized, idiosyncratized, from those whose ways of looking at matters you know well, and from all whose statements and guesses you know just what to discount to make their “personal equation” square with your own. The general conviction now, as shown in the talk one hears, in the tone of the papers, in the sales of government stocks, is that of fast-growing confidence in the speedy discomfiture of the rebels at all points. This very morning we have two rebel stories that New Orleans has surrendered, its forts having been taken after some thirty hours' attack. At the same time comes the story that the rebels are falling back from Corinth.

Both seem altogether probable, but whether true or not the feeling is very general now that we are going straight to our aims, not, perhaps, without serious checks from time to time, but irresistibly and rapidly. The great interior communications of the rebels are being broken up. General Mitchell has broken the vertebral column of the Memphis and Charlestown Railroad, and while McClellan, with 130,000 men or more, is creeping up to Yorktown with his mounds and batteries, we see McDowell and Banks and Burnside drawing in gradually and sweeping the rebels in one vast battue before them. On the Mississippi, again, and its tributaries, our successes have made us confident. We do not now ask whether, but when. That truly magnificent capture of “No. 10” has given us all a feeling that we are moving to our ends as fate moves, and that nothing will stop us. I think the cutting of that canal through the swamps and forests ranks with the miracles of this war, with the Monitor achievement, and with the Burnside exploit, which last was so heroically carried out in the face of storms such as broke up the Spanish Armada. As for the canal, no doubt we see things in exaggerated proportions on this side, but to me the feat is like that of Cyrus, when he drew off the waters of the Euphrates and marched his army through the bed of the river. So of the Monitor — “Minotaur,” old Mr. Quincy said to me, “it should have been” — its appearance in front of the great megalosaurus or dinotherium, which came out in its scaly armor that no one could pierce, breathing fire and smoke from its nostrils; is it not the age of fables and of heroes and demigods over again?

And all this makes me think of our “boys,” as we used to call our men, who are doing the real work of the time — your nephews, my son, and our many friends. We have not heard so much of the cavalry, to which I believe Lawrence is attached. But Burnside! how you must have followed him in the midst of storm, of shipwreck, of trial by thirst, if not by famine, of stormy landings on naked beaches, through Roanoke, through Newbern, until at last we find him knocking at the back door that leads to Norfolk, and read this very day that the city is trembling all over in fear of an attack from him, while Fort Macon is making ready at the other end of his field of labor to follow Pulaski. I have heard of Lewis Stackpole; at one time they said his knee troubled him, that he was not able to march as he would like; but you must know more about this than I do. Of course my eyes are on the field before Yorktown. The last note from my boy was on a three-cornered scrap of paper, and began, “In the woods, near the enemy.” It was cheery and manly.

Wendell came home in good health, but for his wound, which was well in a few weeks; but the life he led here was a very hard one, — late hours, excitement all the time, — and I really thought that he would be better in camp than fretting at his absence from it and living in a round of incessant over-stimulating society. I think he finds camp life agrees with him particularly well. Did you happen to know anything of Captain Bartlett, of the Twentieth? I suppose not. He was made a captain when a junior in our college; a remarkable military taste, talent, and air. He lost his leg the other day, when setting pickets before Yorktown. His chief regret was not being able to follow the fortunes of the army any longer. I meant to have told you that my boy was made a captain the other day. He does not care to take the place, being first lieutenant under his most intimate friend Hallowell. The two want to go into battle together, like Nisus and Euryalus. How our little unit out of the six or seven hundred thousand grows in dimensions as we talk or write about it!

I wish I could give you an idea of the momentary phase of the public mind as I see its manifestations here, which are probably not unlike those elsewhere. I will tell you one thing which strikes me. People talk less about what is going on, and more quietly. There is, as I said, a feeling that the curtain is like to drop pretty soon on the first act of the drama, that the military part of the play will be mainly over in a few months. Not extermination, nor pacification, perhaps, but extinction of the hopes of the rebels as to anything they can do with great armies in the field, and the consequent essential break-up of the rebellion. But après? That, of course, is exercising those who have done croaking about the war. I dined at last week, with the Friday Club, and sat next –––. He was as lugubrious on what was to come after the war as he was a year ago with respect to its immediate danger. Then he could hardly bear to think that so accomplished an officer as General Lee was to be opposed to our Northern leaders. Yet who troubles himself very particularly about General Lee nowadays? He thinks there are to be such hatreds between North and South as have not been since the times of the Greek Republic. I suppose seventy years must be at the bottom of all this despondency. Not that everybody does not see terrible difficulties; but let us fight this quarrel fairly out, not patch it up, and it will go hard but we will find some way of living together in a continent that has so much room as this. Of the precise mode no man knoweth. . . .

Yours always,

O. W. H.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 252-6

John L. Motley to Anna Lothrop Motley, March 16, 1862

Vienna,

March 16, 1862.

My Dearest Mother: Before this reaches you it is probable that the great tragedy will have approached its fifth act, for the grapple with the Confederates on the Potomac can scarcely be deferred much longer. I feel awfully anxious when I think that this great struggle is perhaps even now taking place, although I have full confidence as to the issue. This secession was always a rotten, rickety concern, based entirely or mainly on the confident hope of assistance from England and France. The blunder of Captain Wilkes came very near giving them this advantage; but since this alarming matter was satisfactorily adjusted there has been no hope for the rebellion in Europe. France and England have made their minds up to await the issue of the present campaign.

But I am much more anxious as to the possible policy of the government. I live in daily dread of hearing that hideous word “compromise” trumpeted to the world. Slavery is bad enough as an enemy, but the Lord deliver us from it as a friend! If we do not smash the accursed institution now that we have the means, we shall have the rebellion back again before we have been six months at peace, and we shall deserve our fate. However, I comfort myself with the reflection that revolutions of this kind do not go backward very often. The majority which elected Lincoln in 1860 is larger now than it was then, and I believe the 600,000 volunteers who have turned out from their peaceful homes to fight slavery and nothing else will all come home determined abolitionists. Slavery has trampled upon the Constitution, aimed its murderous blows against the very heart of our nation, turned a prosperous and happy land into a hell, plunged us over head and ears in debt, and for all these favors I do not think that we shall be for giving it anything but the coup de grâce under its fifth rib. It is rather late in the day for it to talk about constitutional guaranties. Last March was the time for that. Compromise was killed at Sumter.

The carnival being ended, there is an end to balls. There are now evening receptions, several in the week, and Lily rather enjoys them. She would like to make a visit to America, too, and will do so if it can be managed, although it is hard to isolate ourselves from our children for so long. Vienna is like another planet. One of Lily's partners asked her if Boston was near the river Amazon. This was rather a geographical achievement for Vienna, as, after all, the Amazon is in America.

Ever your affectionate son,

J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 250-2

John L. Motley to Mary Lothrop Motley, March 16, 1862

Vienna,

March 16, 1862.

Darling Little Woggins: Lily has told you something, I dare say, about this society. The young ladies are a power here. They are called “Comtessen,” for of course no one is supposed to have a lower rank. They have been very civil to Lily, and this is thought a great wonder, for it is not the rule, but the exception. But there is not much advance beyond the circumference of society. There is no court this winter.

When the empress's health permits her to be in Vienna, there is one court ball in the year, to which diplomats are asked, and two a week, to which they are not asked. The society, by which, of course, I mean the crème de la crème, is very small in number and much intermarried. The parties are almost like family parties; but you must confine yourself to this society, for they never mix with what is called second society. So far as manner goes, nothing can be more natural or high-bred than that of the Viennese aristocracy. And there is no such thing as literary or artistic circles. In short, you must be intimate with the Pharaohs or stay at home. Now I have painted the picture, I think, truthfully. Lily came out in England, and has never been out in America. She longs to be there, and will go, if we can manage it, before next winter. If you should decide to come, however, she would stay, for you would get on much better with her assistance, as she already knows familiarly all the Comtessen. As for ourselves, we do not care much for society. The pleasantest things we have here are our occasional dinners. Most of our colleagues have invited us. I have not been able to pay my debts this year, as my apartments are not fit to give diplomatic dinners in. Next winter I hope to clear off the score.

I think we have dined three times at Viennese houses — once at Prince Esterhazy's, once at Prince Liechtenstein's, and once at Baron Rothschild's. I must except our bankers, who ask us very often, and give very pleasant dinners. Everybody goes to the Burg Theater every evening. The opera is not very good, but the house is better. Moreover, the Viennese are under the impression that they are going to have a new opera-house. The foundation is dug. Yesterday we invited our American monde to dine, to celebrate our victories, of which you may suppose our heads and hearts are full. The Americans are very few in number here. Besides Mr. Lippitt, secretary of legation, and Mr. Delaplaine, there were three young medical students, Ropes of Boston, Walcot of Salem, and Caswell of Providence, and the consul, Mr. Canisius, and Mr. Thayer, who has lived here a good while, a studious hermit kind of life, engaged in writing the life of Beethoven. We like him very much. We are intensely anxious for American news, and the steamers in this stormy season make long passages.

Your affectionate

Papa.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 248-50

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to John L. Motley, March 8, 1862

Boston, March 8, 1862.

My Dear Motley: I have been debating with myself whether to wait for further news from Nashville, the Burnside expedition, Savannah, or somewhere, before writing you, and came to the conclusion that I will begin this February 24, and keep my letter along a few days, adding whatever may turn up, with a reflection thereupon. Your last letter, as I told you, was of great interest in itself, and for the extracts it contained from the letters of your correspondents. I lent it to your father and your brother Edward, and a few days ago to William Amory, at his particular request. Calling on old Mr. Quincy two days ago, we talked of you. He desired me most expressly and repeatedly to send his regards and respects. I think I am pretty near the words, but they were very cordial and distinguishing ones, certainly. He takes the greatest interest in your prosperity and fame, and you know that the greatest of men have not many nonagenarian admirers. It is nine weeks, I think, since Mr. Quincy fell and fractured the neck of the thigh-bone, and he has been on his back ever since. But he is cheerful, ready to live or die; considers his later years as an appendix to the opus of his life, that he has had more than he bargained for when he accepted life.

As you might suppose it would be at ninety, though he greatly rejoices at our extraordinary successes of late, he does not think we are “out of the woods,” as he has it, yet. A defeat, he thinks, would take down our spirits as rapidly as they were raised. “But I am an old man,” he says, “and, to be sure, an old man cannot help seeing the uncertainties and difficulties which the excitable public overlooks in its exaltation.”

Never was such ecstasy, such delirium of excitement, as last Monday, a week ago to-day, when we got the news from Fort Donelson. Why, — to give you an instance from my own experience, — when I, a grave college professor, went into my lecture-room, the class, which had first got the news a little before, began clapping and clapping louder and louder, then cheering, until I had to give in myself, and flourishing my wand in the air, joined with the boys in their rousing hurrahs, after which I went on with my lecture as usual. The almost universal feeling is that the rebellion is knocked on the head; that it may kick hard, even rise and stagger a few paces, but that its os frontis is beaten in.

The last new thing is the President's message, looking to gradual compensated emancipation. I don't know how it will be received here, but the effect will be good abroad. John Stuart Mill's article in “Fraser” has delighted people here more than anything for a good while. I suppose his readers to be the best class of Englishmen.

Yours always,

O. W. H.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 246-8

John L. Motley to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., February 16, 1862

Legation of the United States of America, Vienna,

February 26, 1862.

My Dear Holmes: You are the most generous and delightful of correspondents and friends. I have two long and most interesting letters of yours to acknowledge, the first of 7th January, the second of 3d February. They are exactly the kind of letters which I most value. I want running commentaries on men and events produced on such a mind as yours by the rapidly developing history of our country at its most momentous crisis. I take great pleasure in reading your prophecies, and intend to be just as free in hazarding my own, for, as you so well say, our mortal life is but a string of guesses at the future, and no one but an idiot would be discouraged at finding himself sometimes far out in his calculations. If I find you signally right in any of your predictions, be sure that I will congratulate and applaud. If you make mistakes, you shall never hear of them again, and I promise to forget them. Let me ask the same indulgence from you in return. This is what makes letter-writing a comfort and journalism dangerous. For this reason, especially as I am now in an official position, I have the greatest horror lest any of my crudities should get into print. I have also to acknowledge the receipt of a few lines to Wendell. They gave me very great pleasure. I am delighted to hear of his entire recovery, and I suppose you do not object, so much as he does, to his being detained for a time from camp by recruiting service. I shall watch his career with deep interest. Just now we are intensely anxious about the Burnside expedition, of which, as you know, my nephew Lewis Stackpole is one. He is almost like my son. I feel very proud of his fine intellectual and manly qualities, and although it is a sore trial to his mother to part with him, yet I am sure that she would in future days have regretted his enrolment in the “stay-at-home rangers.”

That put me in mind to acknowledge the receipt of “Songs in Many Keys.” It lies on our drawing-room table, and is constantly in our hands. I cannot tell you how much pleasure I derived from it. Many of the newer pieces I already know by heart, and admire them as much as you know I have always done their predecessors. The “Ballad” is in a new vein for you, and is, I think, most successful. If I might venture to mention the separate poems by name which most please me, I should certainly begin with “Iris, her Book,” “Under the Violets,” “The Voiceless,” which are full of tenderness and music. Then the clarion ring of the verses for the centennial celebration of Burns has an immense charm for me, and so the trumpet tones of “The Voice of the Loyal North”; but I should go on a long time if I tried to express my honest and hearty admiration for the volume as fully as it deserves. I thank you most sincerely for it, and I assure you that you increase in fullness and power and artistic finish without losing any of your youthful freshness of imagination. I am glad that the emperor had the sense to appreciate your “Vive la France.” I agree with him that it is plein d'inspiration and exceedingly happy. I admire it the more because for the moment it communicated to me the illusion under the spell of which you wrote it. For of course France hates us as much as England does, and Louis Napoleon is capable of playing us a trick at any moment.

I am obliged to reason like a cosmopolite. The English have a right to hate America if they instinctively feel that the existence of a great, powerful, prosperous, democratic republic is a standing menace to the tenure of their own privileges. I think the instinct false, however, to a certain extent. Physical, historical, and geographical conditions make our democratic commonwealth a possibility, while they are nearly all wanting in England. I do not think the power or glory or prosperity of the English monarchy any menace to our institutions. I think it an unlucky and unreasoning perverseness which has led the English aristocracy to fear our advance in national importance. I do not mean that, on the whole, the government has behaved ill to us. Especially international dealings with us have been courteous and conciliatory. I like personally English ways, English character, Englishmen and Englishwomen. It is a great empire in arts and arms, and their hospitalities are very pleasant. Nevertheless, I love my own country never so much as at this moment. Never did I feel so strong a faith in her destiny as now. Of John Bright we have already spoken, and of the daily and noble battle waged for us by the “Daily News” (which I hope you read); and now how must we all rejoice at the magnificent essay in “Fraser's Magazine” by the acknowledged chief of English thinkers, John Stuart Mill!

It is awful to reflect that the crisis of our fate is so rapidly approaching. The ides of March will be upon us before this letter reaches you. We have got to squash the rebellion soon, or be squashed forever as a nation — aut fer, aut feri. I do not pretend to judge military plans or the capacity of generals; but, as you suggest, perhaps I can take a more just view of the whole picture of this eventful struggle at this great distance than do those absolutely acting and suffering in the scene. Nor can I resist the desire to prophesy any more than you do, knowing that I may prove utterly mistaken. I say, then, our great danger comes from foreign interference. What will prevent that? Our utterly defeating the Confederates in some great and conclusive battle, or our possession of the cotton ports and opening them to European trade, or a most unequivocal policy of slave-emancipation. Any one of these three conditions would stave off recognition by foreign powers until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to reduce the South to obedience.

The last measure is to my mind the most important. The South has, by going to war with the United States government, thrust into our hands against our will the invincible weapon which constitutional reasons have hitherto forbidden us to employ. At the same time, it has given us the power to remedy a great wrong to four millions of the human race, in which we have hitherto been obliged to acquiesce. We are threatened with national annihilation, and defied to use the only means of national preservation. The question is distinctly proposed to us, Shall slavery die, or the great Republic? It is most astounding to me that there can be two opinions in the free States as to the answer. If we do fall, we deserve our fate. At the beginning of the contest, constitutional scruples might be respectable. But now we are fighting to subjugate the South, that is, slavery. We are fighting for the Union. Who wishes to destroy the Union? The slaveholders. Nobody else. Are we to spend $1,200,000,000 and raise 600,000 soldiers in order to protect slavery?

It really does seem to me too simple for argument. I am anxiously waiting for the coming Columbus who will set this egg of ours on end by smashing in the slavery end. We shall be rolling about in every direction until that is done. I do not know that it is to be done by proclamation—rather, perhaps, by facts. Well, I console myself by thinking that the people, the American people at least, is about as wise collectively as less numerous collections of individuals, and that the people has really decreed emancipation and is only puzzling how to carry it into effect. After all, it seems to be a law of Providence that progress should be by a spiral movement, so that when we seem most tortuous we may perhaps be going ahead. I am firm in the faith that slavery is now wriggling itself to death. With slavery in its primitive vigor I should think the restored Union neither possible nor desirable. Do not understand me as not taking fully into account all the strategical considerations against premature governmental utterances on this great subject.

But are there any trustworthy friends of the Union among the slaveholders? Should we lose many Kentuckians and Virginians who are now with us if we boldly confiscated the slaves of all rebels? And a confiscation of property which has legs and so confiscates itself at command is not only a legal, but would prove a very practical, measure in time of war. In brief, the time is fast approaching, I think, when “Thorough” should be written on all our banners. Slavery will never accept a subordinate position. The great Republic and slavery cannot both survive. We have been defied to mortal combat, and yet we hesitate to strike. These are my poor thoughts on this great subject. Perhaps you will think them crude.

I was much struck with what you quote from Mr. Conway, that if emancipation was proclaimed on the Upper Mississippi it would be known to the negroes of Louisiana in advance of the telegraph. And if once the blacks had leave to run, how many whites would have to stay at home to guard their dissolving property?

You have had enough of my maunderings. But before I conclude them, may I ask you to give all our kindest regards to Lowell, and to express our admiration for the “Yankee Idyl”? I am afraid of using too extravagant language if I say all I think about it. Was there ever anything more stinging, more concentrated, more vigorous, more just? He has condensed into those few pages the essence of a hundred diplomatic papers and historical disquisitions and Fourth of July orations. I have very pleasant relations with all the “J. B.'s”¹ here. They are all friendly and well disposed to the North. I speak of the embassy, which, with the ambassador and ambassadress, numbers eight or ten souls, some of them very intellectual ones.

Shall I say anything of Austria? What can I say that would interest you? That is the reason why I hate to write. All my thoughts are in America. Do you care to know about the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian (if L. N.² has his way)? He is next brother to the emperor; but although I have had the honor of private audience of many archdukes here, this one is a resident of Triest. He is about thirty; has an adventurous disposition, some imagination, a turn for poetry; has voyaged a good deal about the world in the Austrian ship of war, for in one respect he much resembles that unfortunate but anonymous ancestor of his, the King of Bohemia, with the seven castles, who, according to Corporal Trim, had such a passion for navigation and sea affairs, “with never a seaport in all his dominions.” But now the present King of Bohemia has got the sway of Triest, and Ferdinand Maximilian has been resident there, and is Lord High Admiral and chief of the Marine Department. He has been much in Spain and also in South America. I have read some travels — “Reise Skizzen” — of his, printed, not published. They are not without talent, and he ever and anon relieves his prose jog-trot by breaking into a canter of poetry. He adores bullfights, rather regrets the Inquisition, and considers the Duke of Alva everything noble and chivalrous and the most abused of men. It would do your heart good to hear his invocations to that deeply injured shade, his denunciations of the ignorant and vulgar Protestants who have defamed him. “Du armer Alva! weil du dem Willen deines Herren unerschütterlich treu warst, weil die fest bestimmten Grundsätze der Regierung,” etc., etc., etc. You can imagine the rest. (N. B. Let me observe that the D. R. was not published until long after the “Reise Skizzen” were written.)

Dear me, I wish I could get back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries! If once we had the “rebels licked, Jeff Davis hanged, and all,” I might shunt myself back to my old rails. But alas! the events of the nineteenth century are too engrossing. If Lowell cares to read this letter, will you allow me to make it over to him jointly, as Captain Cuttle says? I wished to write to him, but I am afraid only you would tolerate my writing so much when I have nothing to say. If he would ever send me a line I should be infinitely obliged, and would quickly respond. We read “The Washers of the Shroud” with fervent admiration. Always remember me most sincerely to the club, one and all. It touches me nearly when you assure me that I am not forgotten by them. To-morrow is Saturday, and last of the month.³ We are going to dine with our Spanish colleague.⁴ But the first bumper of the don's champagne I shall drain to the health of the Parker House friends. Mary and Lily join me in kindest regards to you and all yours; and I am, as always,

Sincerely your friend,

J. L. M.

_______________

¹ Cf. “Jonathan to John,” in “The Biglow Papers.”

² Louis Napoleon.

³ The club dinner took place on that day.

⁴ M. de la Torre Ayllon.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 239-46

John L. Motley to Mary Lothrop Motley, February 16, 1862

Vienna, February 16, 1862.

My Darling Mary: You complain of not getting letters often enough, and you think I might write more than I do. But, my dear child, you must remember how little of interest we have to speak to you about, and how many correspondents. I have this moment counted the letters lying unanswered on my table. There are seventeen. And yet I write letters all day long. I do not complain, for I am so greedy to receive letters from America that I am very willing to do my part in the correspondence. You are where all our interests and all our thoughts are. Here, when I have told you that your mama and Lily and I are well, and that Susie was jolly by the last accounts, I have said all. Our life is very humdrum. Once in a while we dine out, not very often, and the dinner is not an institution as in London. The hour is generally five, and it is all over by seven, for that is the hour at which the theater begins, and everybody thinks it necessary to go, or to make believe to go, either to the opera or the theater. Both these houses are very small for a large town, and all the boxes are taken by the season, so that it is only when some of our friends send us a box that we can go. In self-defense, when the season for hiring arrives, we must take one.

The opera-house is tolerably good, the singing so-so. The theater, the Burg Theater, as it is called, because it makes part of the imperial castle or palace, is the funniest, shabbiest ramshackle old place you can imagine. The chandelier would hardly give sufficient light for an ordinary saloon. There are two little rows of about a dozen oil-lamps in it, and one with a few more. Yon can hardly see across the house, although it is very narrow and as straight as an omnibus. All your friends and acquaintances are in the boxes, and you can just discern their noble features glimmering through the darkness. En revanche, the acting is excellent. Every part is well sustained in comedy and farce, and there are one or two rather remarkable actors. I have not yet seen a tragedy; we are sufficiently dismal in the world without weeping over fictitious woes. On the whole, there is something to my mind rather aristocratic and imperial in this very shabby, dingy little theater, with its admirable acting, with its boxes filled with archdukes and princes and ambassadors. You can have gorgeously gilt, brand-new theaters anywhere in Paris or Buffalo, but you would find it difficult to find so select a set of actors and spectators.

Lily has been to a few balls, all that have been given; the picnics, five of them — subscription assemblies, like Almack's or Papanti's. The last one, the most brilliant of the season, at Marquis Pallavicini's, she lost, because it was on a Sunday. To-morrow night we go to one at Prince Schwarzenberg's, which will be very fine, I doubt not, and, as they say, the last of the season. You see we do not lead very dissipated lives. We take the deepest interest in American affairs. In truth, we never think or talk of anything else.

Your loving

Papa.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 237-9

Lord Wensleydale to John L. Motley, February 7, 1862

Ampthill,

February 7, 1862.

My Dear Motley: My dear wife and myself have had for weeks past a great longing to hear something about you and your belongings. As I do not know how to gain information on that not uninteresting subject from any other quarter, I must ask you myself how you are all going on. I did hear, some month or two ago, that Mrs. Motley and your daughters were going to spend a part of the winter at Pau; two or three weeks since I was told this was inaccurate, and that you are now all at Vienna together, which is much more satisfactory, no doubt, to you and your friends.

I hope you all found it as agreeable as we did on two different occasions when we spent some days there in 1835 and 1853. To be sure, you do not live among a free people, as you and I have been accustomed to do, but you live, as I have found, among a people full of bonhomie and kindness, well disposed and quiet, with a fair admixture of intelligence, brave and loyal; and it sometimes happens that our freedom prevents our being so agreeable. We found abundant civility from Esterhazy, whom I dare say you know. I was in great anxiety at the time of the unfortunate affair of the Trent. How I should have hated to be at war with your free and great country! How unfeignedly I rejoiced to hear the almost unexpected news that the dispute was settled, and how sincerely I hope that no other event will occur to prevent us remaining at peace with each other forever! Your immediate fellow-countrymen, the Northerners, have much too strong a feeling that we do not wish them well. The “Times” and other papers have dealt so much and so long in abuse and insolent remarks, and are in such circulation here, that your fellow-countrymen assume they express the public feeling, which I think is far from being the case. No doubt we were provoked by the proceeding of Captain Wilkes. The sentiment was unanimous and intense, but as the act has been disavowed (and it could not possibly have been justified), the feeling is rapidly dying away, and I hope we shall continue good friends, and I am sure we shall endeavor to act with perfect neutrality between the belligerents; for such they must be considered to be, though you were, in my opinion, perfectly right in those two letters you published in the early part of the summer, when you proved the Southerners then to be rebels. We lawyers feel rather inclined to be surprised that so much bad international law should be laid down by such authorities as Messrs. Everett, Seward, G. and C. Sumner. There is but one opinion on that subject among us. Most of them relied upon a dictum of Lord Stowell, not fully explained in our treatises on international law, viz., that ambassadors were seizable whilst proceeding from a belligerent to a neutral country. All that was meant was that an ambassador was seizable in passing through the country of a belligerent — that his diplomatic character would not protect him there.

The last despatches of Earl Russell, stating the legal argument, are very good — all the legal parts the Solicitor-General's, Roundell Palmer. This was mentioned last night in the House of Lords.

I hope what the noble earl and also Lord Granville said as to future conduct on our part may not be unacceptable in America.

My lady is a great sufferer from gout, having been since Saturday in bed. I began the New Year with a week of bed from the same cause. I am now well.

She desires her kindest remembrances to your ladies and yourself, and sincere good wishes for your prosperity. I agree most truly.

Believe me

Yours very sincerely,

Wensleydale.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 234-7

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes to John L. Motley, February 3, 1862

BOSTON, February 3, 1862.

. . . We are the conquerors of nature, they¹ of nature's weaker children. We thrive on reverses and disappointments. I have never believed they could endure them. Like Prince Rupert's drop, the unannealed fabric of rebellion shuts an explosive element in its resisting shell that will rend it in pieces as soon as its tail, not its head, is fairly broken off. That is what I think — I, safe prophet of a private correspondence, free to be convinced of my own ignorance and presumption by events as they happen, and to prophesy again; for what else do we live for but to guess the future, in small things or great, that we may help to shape it or ourselves to it? Your last letter was so full of interest by the expression of your own thoughts and the transcripts of those of your English friends, especially the words of John Bright,—one of the two foreigners that I want to see and thank, the other being Count Gasparin, — that I feel entirely inadequate to make any fitting return for it. I meet a few wise persons, who for the most part know little; some who know a good deal, but are not wise. I was at a dinner at Parker's the other day, where Governor Andrew and Emerson and various unknown dingy-linened friends met to hear Mr. Conway, the not unfamous Unitarian minister of Washington, Virginia-born, with seventeen secesh cousins, fathers, and other relatives, tell of his late experiences at the seat of government. He had talked awhile with Father Abraham, who, as he thinks, is honest enough. He himself is an out-and-out immediate emancipationist, believes that is the only way to break the strength of the South, that the black man is the life of the South, that the Southerners dread work above all things, and cling to the slave as a drudge that makes life tolerable to them. He believes that the blacks know all that is said and done with reference to them in the North; that their longing for freedom is unutterable; that once assured of it under Northern protection, the institution would be doomed. I don't know whether you remember Conway's famous “One Path” sermon of six or eight years ago. It brought him immediately into notice. I think it was Judge Curtis (Ben) who commended it to my attention. He talked with a good deal of spirit. I know you would have gone with him in his leading ideas. Speaking of the communication of knowledge among the slaves, he said if he were on the Upper Mississippi and proclaimed emancipation, it would be told in New Orleans before the telegraph could carry the news there.

I am busy with my lectures at the college, and don't see much of the world, but I will tell you what I see and hear from time to time, if you like to have me. I gave your message to the club, who always listen with enthusiasm when your name is mentioned. My boy is here still, detailed on recruiting duty, quite well. I hope you are all well, and free from all endemic irritations such as Sir Thomas Browne refers to when he says that “colical persons will find little comfort in Austria or Vienna.”

With kindest remembrances to you all,

Yours always,

O. W. H.

_______________

¹ The Confederates.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 232-4