John Bright to John L. Motley, March 9, 1863

Rochdale,

March 9, 1863.

My Dear Mr. Motley: I should have written to you sooner, but I have been a week away from town and from home in consequence of the death of my father-in-law at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and for a week past I have been unable to sit down to write, owing to a violent cold, with cough and feverishness, which has made me incapable of any business or exertion.

Your letter gave me much pleasure, and I know not that there is anything in it on your great question that I do not agree with. I am glad to find that you have observed the change of feeling which has taken place in this country, and I hope it has not been without effect in the United States.

Coming down from the War of Independence and from the War of 1812, there has always been in this country a certain jealousy of yours. It has been felt by the ruling class that your escape from George III, and our aristocratic government has been followed by a success and a progress of which England could offer no example. The argument could not be avoided, If Englishmen west of the Atlantic can prosper without Crown, without Lords, without Church, without a great territorial class with feudal privileges, and without all this or these can become great and happy, how long will Englishmen in England continue to think these things necessary for them? Any argument in favor of freedom here, drawn from your example, was hateful to the ruling class; and therefore it is not to be wondered at that a great disaster happening to your country and to its Constitution should not be regarded as a great calamity by certain influential classes here. Again, the rich, made rich by commerce, are generally very corrupt: the fluctuations of politics suddenly influence their fortunes, and they are more likely to take the wrong side than the right one. Thus, in London, Liverpool, and Manchester, on the Stock Exchange and the commercial exchanges, are found many friends of the South, from the stupid idea that, if the North would not resist, peace would of necessity be restored.

But, apart from these classes, the mind of the nation is sound, and universally among the working-classes there is not only a strong hatred of slavery, but also a strong affection for the Union and for the Republic. They know well how literally it has been the home of millions of their class, and their feelings are entirely in its favor. The meetings lately held have not generally been attended by speakers most likely to draw great audiences, and yet no building has been large enough to contain those who have assembled. The effect of these meetings is apparent in some of our newspapers, and on the tone of Parliament. In the House of Commons there is not a whisper about recognition or mediation in any form, and so far I see no sign of any attempt to get up a discussion on the part of any friends of the South. I am not certain just now that the most cunning and earnest friends of the South are not of opinion that it is prudent to be quiet on another ground besides that of a public disinclination to their cause: they think the South has more to hope now from dissensions at the North than from European sympathy; and they believe that nothing would so rapidly heal dissensions at the North as any prospect of recognition or interference from France or England. I gather this from what I heard a short time ago from a leading, perhaps the leading, secessionist in the House of Commons.

So far as England is concerned, every idea of interference in any way seems to be quite abandoned. A real neutrality is the universally admitted creed and duty of this country, and I am convinced that there is a wide-spread dissatisfaction with the tardy action of the government by which the Alabama was allowed to get out to sea.

Two days before Parliament met I made a speech to a meeting mainly of working-men in this town. The object of the meeting was to vote thanks to the New York merchants and others for their contributions to our distressed operatives. I spoke to show them how hostile the pretensions of the South not only to negro freedom, but to all freedom, and, especially, to explain to them the new theory that all difficulties between capital and labor would be got rid of by making all labor into capital, that is, by putting my workmen into the position of absolute ownership now occupied by my horses! The people here understand all this. Cheap newspapers have done much for them of late, and I have no fear of their going wrong.

But, seeing no danger here, what can be said for your own people? The democratic leaders in some of the States seem depraved and corrupt to a high degree. It seems incredible that now, after two years of war, there should be anybody in the North in favor of slavery, and ready rather to peril and to ruin the Union than to wound and destroy the great cause of all the evil; yet so it is, and doubtless the government is weakened by this exhibition of folly and treason. Military successes will cure all this — but can they be secured? Time has allowed the South to consolidate its military power and to meet your armies with apparently almost equal forces. To me it seems that too much has been attempted, and that, therefore, much has failed. At this moment much depends on Vicksburg; if the river be cleared out, then the conspiracy will be cut into two, and the reputation of the administration will be raised. If, again, Charleston be captured, the effect in Europe will be considerable, and it will cause much disheartenment through the South. But if neither can be done, I think the North will be sick of its government, if not of the war, and it will be difficult to raise new forces and to continue the war. Another year must, I think, break down the South, but something must be done and shown to make it possible for Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward to conduct this contest through another campaign.

I cannot believe in the notions of the New York “Times” as to French intervention. The Mexican mess is surely enough for the appetite of Louis Napoleon. Perhaps the story is got up to give more unity to the Northern mind. I can trace it no further than this. Your cause is in your own hands. I hope Heaven may give you strength and virtue to win it. All mankind look on, for all mankind have a deep interest in the conflict. Thank you for all your kind words to myself. I shall always be glad to have a letter from you.

Ever yours sincerely,

John Bright.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 318-22

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

Legation of the United States,

March 3, 1863.           

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

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

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

Ever your most affectionate son,

J. L. M.

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

Journal of Amos A. Lawrence, January 6, 1857

Very cold and windy. Rode an hour and a half. Called at the United States Hotel on Captain John Brown, the old Kansas hero. Found Governor Robinson of Kansas at the Emigrant Aid rooms. Spent most of the forenoon with him. He has resigned his office, and the plan is to give Governor Geary, now a United States official, the popular vote, and so help on the “Free State” movement. Bought a fur coat for Robinson. Met Captain Brown; he is trying to raise a company to be ready in any emergency that may arise in Kansas. He looks a little thinner than when he went to Kansas with his sons. He fought the Missourians at Osawatomie in such a style as struck terror into the whole body of marauders. To Professor Longfellow's in Cambridge with my wife and Mary. A party mostly of young people. Played whist with Mr. Nathan Appleton, Mrs. Lothrop Motley, and Sarah. Home at half past ten, very cold. Deep drifts on the cross roads, Cambridge.

SOURCE: William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence: With Extracts from His Diary and Correspondence, p. 123-4

Diary of Gideon Welles: Monday, September 28, 1863

The last arrivals indicate a better tone and temper in England, and I think in France also. From the articles in their papers, Cole's letter, etc., I think our monitors and heavy ordnance have had a peaceful tendency, a tranquillizing effect. The guns of the Weehawken have knocked the breath out of British statesmen as well as the crew of the Atlanta. The “swamp angel,” as they call Gillmore's gun which throws shot from Morris Island into Charleston, has made itself felt and heard in England.

The President sent for me this noon. I found Seward with him, reading his dispatches for the next steamer. One to Dayton somewhat interesting, to Motley and others commonplace.

A letter which he had prepared, to Stuart in the absence of Lord Lyons, in the case of the Emma, was the special occasion of calling me to the interview. This vessel had run the blockade, but the Arago, an army transport, falling in with her, the commander became alarmed and commenced throwing overboard his cargo of cotton and putting on more steam in order to escape. Her efforts excited suspicion, and the Arago ran down to the Emma, which surrendered. The captain acknowledged her guilt, and she was brought into New York. The District Attorney procured an order of sale from the court, the Navy Department took her at her appraised value, and she was sent to the Navy Yard for alterations, adapting her to naval purposes. It now transpires that Mr. Seward in May last, without consulting or communicating with others, made a strange promise to Mr. Stuart, that he would get an opinion from the Attorney-General as to the construction of an act passed by the last Congress in relation to the sale of captured neutral vessels. In the mean time he pledged himself to Her Majesty's representative that no sale should take place until there was a decision on the point which Mr. Stuart, or Mr. Seward, or both thought of doubtful validity. But the Attorney-General, was pressed with business, had been absent some weeks in Missouri, and his opinion did not come in until late. In the mean time the Emma had been sold to the Navy and transferred to the navy yard, where she had undergone a complete transformation.

Mr. Seward now finds himself embarrassed by the promise which he inconsiderately made and of which impropriety none of us were advised; says the faith of the State Department is pledged, and he wishes all proceedings stopped till the court shall have decided on the validity of the capture. The President had been appealed to, and, though evidently annoyed by the hasty and imprudent action of Mr. Seward, he desired the appeal of the Secretary of State should be considered, and his pledge redeemed. I informed him that the sale had been made, the transfer completed, the vessel had been for weeks at the navy yard undergoing repairs and alterations, that she was an entirely different craft from what she was when captured, that the best we could do under the circumstances was to detain her at the yard and not put her in commission.

These irregular and unauthorized proceedings are cause of constant difficulty and embarrassment, and are very injurious to the public service. We want and have prepared this vessel for special duty, which, had we known the pledges of the Secretary of State, we should have allotted differently. As it is, the government must sustain loss and the Navy Department be straitened by this irregularity.

The President read to Seward and myself a detailed confidential dispatch from Chattanooga very derogatory to Crittenden and McCook, who wilted when every energy and resource should have been put forth, disappeared from the battle-field, returned to Chattanooga, and — went to sleep. The officers who did their duty are dissatisfied. We had their statements last week, which this confidential dispatch confirms. It makes some, but not a very satisfactory, excuse for Rosecrans, in whom the President has clearly lost confidence. He said he was urged to change all the officers, but thought he should limit his acts to Crittenden and McCook; said it would not do to send one of our generals from the East. I expressed a doubt if he had any one suitable for that command or the equal of Thomas, if a change was to be made. There was no one in the army who, from what I had seen and known of him, was so fitted for that command as General Thomas. Rosecrans had stood well with the country until this time, but Thomas was a capable general, had undoubted merit, and was a favorite with the men. Seward thought the whole three — Rosecrans, Crittenden, and McCook — should be removed.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30, 1864, p. 445-7

John L. Motley to Mary Lothrop Motley, February 17, 1863

Vienna, February 17, 1863.

My Dearest Little Mary: I hope that you will accept this note from me as the family contribution for to-day.

I assure you, when you know Vienna as well as we do, you will agree that to screw out a letter once a week is a Kunststück to be proud of. I can't very well write to you, as I write to the State Department, about the movements in Montenegro, the Polish insurrection, or the Prussian-French treaty of commerce, although I dare say these things would amuse you about as much as they do the people at Washington just now, where they have so much other fish to fry. To-day is the last day of the carnival, which we celebrate by remaining calmly within doors in the bosom of our respected family. The great ball at Prince Schwarzenberg's took place last Sunday, so that we were obliged respectfully but firmly to decline. Soon begins the season of “salons.” Now, if there is one thing more distasteful to me than a ball, it is a salon. Of course I don't object to young people liking to dance, and the few balls in the great houses here are as magnificent festivals as could be got up anywhere, and Lily had always plenty of partners and danced to her heart's content, notwithstanding that nearly all the nice youths of the French and English embassies have been transplanted to other realms. But I think that no reasonable being ought to like a salon. There are three topics — the Opera, the Prater, the Burg Theater; when these are exhausted, you are floored. Conversazioni where the one thing that does not exist is conversation are not the most cheerful of institutions.

The truth is that our hostile friends the English spoil me for other society. There is nothing like London or England in the social line on the Continent. The Duke of Argyll writes to me pretty constantly, and remains a believer in the justice of our cause, although rather desponding as to the issue; and Mr. John Stuart Mill, who corresponds with me regularly and is as enthusiastic as I am, tells me that the number of men who agree with him in wishing us success is daily increasing. Among others he mentioned our old friend the distinguished Dr. Whewell, Master of Trinity (with whom we stayed three days at Cambridge when I received my degree there), who, he says, is positively rude to those who talk against the North. He won't allow the “Times” to come into the house. Well, I hope the recent and remarkable demonstrations in England will convince the true lovers of union and liberty in America where our true strength lies, and who our true lovers are.

We have given four diplomatic dinners. The last was five days ago. Sixteen guests, beginning with Count Rechberg and the Prince and Princess Callimaki (Turkish ambassador), and ending with a French and Belgian attache or two. The French and English ambassadors and secretaries dined with us the week before. I think we shall give no more at present, unless we have a smaller one, to which we shall invite the Rothschild of the period, as we have had several good dinners at his house. I am very glad that you are to dine with Mrs. Amory to meet General McClellan. We feel very grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Amory and S—— for their kindness to you. Pray never forget to give all our loves to them. Did Mrs. Amory ever get a letter I wrote her? Its date was May 12. Pray remember us most kindly to Mr. and Mrs. Ritchie. I am so glad that you have been seeing so much of them lately. It is impossible for you not to be fond of them when you know them. Give my love also to Miss “Pussie,” and to my Nahant contemporary, who I hope continues on the rampage as delightfully as ever. You will tell us, of course, what impression General McClellan makes upon you. Personally there seems much that is agreeable, almost fascinating, about him. I only saw him for a single moment, but was much impressed by his manner. I wish it had been his destiny to lead our armies to victory, for I don't see that we have any better man. But no one man will ever end this war except he be an abolitionist heart and soul, and a man of military genius besides.

Things have gone a million miles beyond compromise. Pray tell me what you learn of Hooker.

We all join in kindest love to you, my darling, and to your grandmama and grandpapa, and all at home.

Your ever-affectionate

P. G.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 314-6

Diary of Sergeant Major Luman Harris Tenney: March 8, 1863

Spent the day in camp. Thede came over and we made a little sugar candy. Read some in “Currents and Countercurrents,” by O. W. Holmes. Wanted to read Motley, but Charlie had sent the book back home. Thede and I wished we could be at home two or three hours. A dark and cloudy day.

SOURCE: Frances Andrews Tenney, War Diary Of Luman Harris Tenney, p. 59

John Stuart Mill to John L. Motley, January 26, 1863

Blackheath Park, Kent,

January 26, 1863.

Dear Sir: You may imagine better than I can tell you how much your letter interested me. I am obliged to you for the information respecting the first settlers in New England. I did not know that there were so many people of family among them, though I knew there were some. And I was quite aware that the place which the refuse went to was Virginia — all the popular literature of the century following shows that colony to have been the one regarded as the Botany Bay of that time. But my argument did not turn upon this, nor was I thinking of race and blood, but of habits and principles. New England, as I understand it, was essentially a middle-class colony; the Puritans, in the higher classes, who took part in its foundation, were persons whose sympathies went in a different channel from that of class or rank. The Southern colonies, on the contrary, were founded upon aristocratic principles, several of them by aristocratic men as such, and we know that the greatest of them, Virginia, retained aristocratic institutions till Jefferson succeeded in abolishing them.

Concerning the Alabama, most people of sense in this country, I believe, are reserving their opinion until they hear what the government has to say for itself. My own first impression was that the government was not bound, nor even permitted, by international rules to prevent the equipment of such a vessel, provided it allows exactly similar liberty to the other combatant. But it is plain that notion was wrong, since the government has shown by issuing an order, which arrived too late, that it considered itself bound to stop the Alabama. What explanation it can give of the delay will be shown when Parliament meets; and what it ought to do now in consequence of its previous default, a person must be better acquainted than I am with international law to be able to judge. But I expect to have a tolerably decided opinion on the subject after it has been discussed.

I write you in much better spirits than I have been in since I saw you. In the first place, things are now going in a more encouraging manner in the West. Murfreesboro is an important as well as a glorious achievement, and from the general aspect of things I feel great confidence that you will take Vicksburg and cut off Arkansas and Texas, which then, by your naval superiority, will soon be yours. Then I exult in (what from observation of the politics of that State I was quite prepared for, though not for the unanimity with which it has been done) the passing over of Missouri from slavery to freedom — a fact which ought to cover with shame, if they were capable of it, the wretched creatures who treated Mr. Lincoln's second proclamation as waste paper, and who described the son of John Quincy Adams as laughing in his sleeve when he professed to care for the freedom of the negro. But I am now also in very good heart about the progress of opinion here. When I returned I already found things better than I expected. Friends of mine, who are heartily with your cause, who are much in society, and who speak in the gloomiest terms of what the general feeling was a twelvemonth ago, already thought that a change had commenced; and I heard every now and then that some person of intellect and influence, whom I did not know before to be with you, was with you very decidedly.

You must have read one of the most powerful and most thorough pieces of writing in your defense which has yet appeared, under the signature “Anglo-Saxon,” in the “Daily News.” That letter is by Goldwin Smith, and though it is not signed with his name, he is willing (as I am authorized to say) that it should be known. Again, Dr. Whewell, one from whom I should not have expected so much, feels, I am told, so strongly on your side that people complain of his being rude to them on the subject, and he will not suffer the “Times” to be in his house. These, you may say, are but individual cases. But a decided movement in your favor has begun among the public since it has been evident that your government is really in earnest about getting rid of slavery. I have always said that it was ignorance, not ill will, which made the majority of the English public go wrong about this great matter. Difficult as it may well be for you to comprehend it, the English public were so ignorant of all the antecedents of the quarrel that they really believed what they were told, that slavery was not the ground, scarcely even the pretext, of the war. But now, when the public acts of your government have shown that at last it aims at entire slave-emancipation, that your victory means this, and your failure means the extinction of all present hope of it, many feel very differently. When you entered decidedly into this course, your detractors abused you more violently for doing it than they had before for not doing it, and the “Times” and “Saturday Review” began favoring us with the very arguments, almost in the very language, which we used to hear from the West Indian slaveholders to prove slavery perfectly consistent with the Bible and with Christianity. This was too much — it overshot the mark.

The antislavery feeling is now thoroughly raising itself. Liverpool has led the way by a splendid meeting, of which the “Times” suppressed all mention. But you must have seen a report of this meeting; you must have seen how Spence did his utmost, and how he was met; and that the object was not merely a single demonstration, but the appointment of a committee to organize an action on the public mind. There are none like the Liverpool people for making an organization of that sort succeed, if once they put their hands to it. The day when I read this, I read in the same day's newspaper two speeches by cabinet ministers: one by Milner Gibson, as thoroughly and openly with you as was consistent with the position of a cabinet minister; the other by the Duke of Argyll, a simple antislavery speech, denouncing the pro-slavery declaration of the Southern bishops; but his delivery of such a speech at that time and place had but one meaning. I do not know if you have seen Cairnes's lecture, or whether you are aware that it has been taken up and largely circulated by religious societies and is in its fourth edition. A new and enlarged edition of his great book is on the point of publication, and will, I have no doubt, be very widely read and powerfully influential.

Foreigners ought not to regard the “Times” as representing the British nation. Of course a paper which is so largely read and bought and so much thought of as the “Times” is must have a certain amount of suitability to the people that buy it. But the line it takes on any particular question is much more a matter of accident than is supposed. It is sometimes better than the public, and sometimes worse. It was better on the Competitive Examinations and on the Revised Educational Code, in each case owing to the accidental position of a particular man who happened to write in it — both which men I could name to you. I am just as fully persuaded as if I could name the man that the attitude it has long held respecting slavery, and now on the American question, is equally owing to the accidental interests or sympathies of some one person connected with the paper. The “Saturday Review,” again, is understood to be the property of the bitterest Tory enemy America has — Beresford Hope.

Unfortunately, these papers, through the influence they obtain in other ways, and in the case of the “Times” very much in consequence of the prevailing notion that it speaks the opinions of all England, are able to exercise great power in perverting the opinions of England whenever the public is sufficiently ignorant of facts to be misled. That, whenever engaged in a wrong line, writers like those of the “Times” go from bad to worse, and at last stick at nothing in the way of perverse and even dishonest misrepresentation, is but natural to party writers everywhere; natural to those who go on day after day working themselves up to write strongly in a matter to which they have committed themselves and breathing an atmosphere inflamed by themselves; natural, moreover, to demagogism both here and in America, and natural, above all, to anonymous demagogism, which, risking no personal infamy by any amount of tergiversation, never minds to what lengths it goes, because it can always creep out in time and turn round at the very moment when the tide turns.

Among the many lessons which have been impressed on me by what is now going on, one is a strong sense of the solidarite (to borrow a word for which our language has no short equivalent) of the whole of a nation with every one of its members, for it is painfully apparent that your country and mine habitually judge of one another from their worst specimens. You say that if England were like Cairnes and me there would be no alienation; and neither would there if Americans were like you. But I need not use soft words to you, who, I am sure, detest these things as much as I do. The low tricks and fulsome mob flattery of your public men and the bullying tone and pettifogging practice of your different cabinets (Southern men chiefly, I am aware) toward foreigners have deeply disgusted a number of our very best people, and all the more so because it is the likeness of what we may be coming to ourselves. You must admit, too, that the present crisis, while it has called forth a heroism and constancy in your people which cannot be too much admired, and to which even your enemies in this country do justice, has also exhibited on the same scale of magnitude all the defects of your state of society — the incompetency and mismanagement arising from the fatal belief of your public that anybody is fit for anything, and the gigantic pecuniary corruption which seems universally acknowledged to have taken place, and, indeed, without it one cannot conceive how you can have got through the enormous sums you have spent.

All this, and what seems to most of us entire financial recklessness (though, for myself, I do not pretend to see how you could have done anything else in the way of finance), are telling against you here, you can hardly imagine how much. But all this may be, and I have great hopes that it will be, wiped out by the conduct which you have it in your power to adopt as a nation. If you persevere until you have subdued the South, or at all events all west of the Mississippi; if, having done this, you set free the slaves, with compensation to loyal owners, and (according to the advice of Mr. Paterson, in his admirable speech at Liverpool) settle the freed slaves as free proprietors on the unoccupied land; if you pay honestly the interest on your own national debt, and take measures for redeeming it, including the debt without interest which is constituted by your inconvertible paper currency — if you do these things, the United States will stand very far higher in the general opinion of England than they have stood at any time since the War of Independence. If, in addition to this, you have men among you of a caliber to use the high spirit which this struggle has raised, and the grave reflections to which it gives rise, as means of moving public opinion in favor of correcting what is bad and of strengthening what is weak in your institutions and modes of feeling and thought, the war will prove to have been a permanent blessing to your country such as we never dared hope for, and a source of inestimable improvement in the prospects of the human race in other ways besides the great one of extinguishing slavery.

If you are really going to do these things you need not mind being misunderstood — you can afford to wait.

Believe me, dear sir,

Yours very truly,

J. S. Mill.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 307-14

Diary of John Hay: October 12, 1861

To-night the President went to Seward's, I with him. At the door a telegram was handed him from McClellan stating that the enemy was before him in force and would probably attack in the morning. “If they attack,” he added, “I shall beat them.” We went to Seward’s and talked of many things. Seward spoke of Lander’s restlessness and griefs at inaction; his offered resignation, and resolve to go West and begin again, — that watching the Potomac was not congenial, and other such. Gen. Scott was already fixing his orders for exactly the work he wanted to do.

Col. Scott came in with despatches from McCl., ordering Hooker’s Bladensburg Brigade in — one countermanding and one reaffirming. Scott then went out to order transportation for 6,000.

G. V. Fox came in and began to talk about the great expedition that is fitting at Annapolis. He wants, when they have sailed, to have 14,000 more men detached from the Army of the Potomac to be held in readiness awaiting the result of the expedition. If it causes a retreat of the rebels, then this additional force can be easily spared. The fleet will probably sail on Tuesday, and will have some work to do at Fernandina, Pensacola, Mobile. Gen'l Scott told Fox that 3,500 men would be enough to take Mobile, assisted by their ships. Fox himself seemed very confident that the expedition would succeed. His only nervousness was in relation to submarine batteries which modern science has rendered very destructive and entirely feasible.

Seward spoke also of Motley’s despatch which seems to contain a most cheering account of honest sympathy existing in the best class of English society towards us. Motley’s letter embraced free and cordial conversations with Earl Russell, Earl Grey, Cobden, Mr. Layard, Prince Albert and the Queen.

There was much talk of Daniel Webster, in which the financial sansouciism of the great man was strikingly prominent. Seward thought he would not live, nor Clay, a tithe as long as J. Q. Adams. The President disagreed with him, and thought Webster will be read forever.

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 42-4; Tyler Dennett, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay, p. 27-8.

John L. Motley to Mary Lothrop Motley, December 1862

Vienna, December, 1862.

My Dearest Little Mary: Your last letter was very pleasant to us — I have so high a respect for General Wadsworth. I hardly know a man in the whole country by whose course I have been so electrified as I was by his. Nothing can be nobler or more heroic than his career ever since the breaking out of the war. Certainly these are times that prove the mettle men are made of, and not only does his character, but his intellect, shine forth most brightly since the great events in which he has been taking part have revealed what was in him. The few speeches which he made in the late canvass seemed to me of the highest order of eloquence.

It is some good fruit at least of these unhappy times that we learn to know our contemporaries. In piping times of peace I should not have thought of James Wadsworth other than the agreeable man of the world, the liberal man of fortune, the thriving landlord, and now he turns out a hero and a statesman.

We were inexpressibly shocked and grieved to hear of the death of sweet, dear, and beautiful Mrs. d'Hauteville. How much of loveliness and grace and gentle, intelligent, virtuous womanhood is buried in that grave! What a loss to her family who adored her, to so many friends who admired her and loved her, to her son far away on the field of danger! Certainly we live in tragic days. You may live to see tranquil and happy ones, but it is not probable that we of this generation will do so. The great slave revolution will, I think, take almost the span of one generation to accomplish itself thoroughly. This partial pro-slavery reaction in the North has, I fear, protracted the contest. I say partial, because on taking a wide view of the field I find really that the antislavery party has made enormous progress this year. The States of Pennsylvania and Ohio were almost evenly balanced on a general election taken immediately after the President's Emancipation Proclamation. Massachusetts gave 20,000 majority to the antislavery party; and although the city of New York was pro-slavery, as it always has been, yet the State, the really American part of the four millions of the inhabitants, voted by a great majority for Wadsworth. Then, the result of the Missouri election outweighs all the pro-slavery triumphs in any other State. If I had been told five years ago that that great slave State would, in the year 1862, elect five emancipationists out of the nine members of Congress, and that emancipation would have a strong majority in each house of the Missouri Legislature, I could not have believed in such a vision. . . . This is one of the revolutions that does not go backward. “Die Welt ist rund und muss sich drehen.” I suppose the din about McClellan's removal goes on around you. I take little interest in the matter. It is in vain to try to make a hero of him. But there is so much that is noble and generous and magnanimous in his nature, so much dignity and forbearance, and he is really so good a soldier, that it seems a pity he could not have been a great man and a great commander.

We are humdrumming on as usual. Yesterday we dined at our colleague's, the Dutch minister, Baron Heeckeren. This is our only festivity for the present. I am glad the Hoopers have been so kind as to invite you to Washington again. It is a great privilege for you, and I am very grateful to them. Always remember me most kindly when you see them. I owe Mr. Hooper a letter, which I shall immediately answer.

Ever your most affectionate

Papagei.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 301-3

John L. Motley to Anna Lothrop Motley, December 22, 1862

Vienna,

December 22, 1862.

My dearest Mother: It is long since I have written, and, indeed, I have been far from well for some time — nothing serious or which can cause anxiety, but making me uncomfortable and almost incapable of writing. I cannot, however, let the Christmas-tide pass over without sending you my dearest and best greetings and wishes for health and happiness. Thank God, however, I entertain the hope of living to see the day when even in Boston there will be no pro-slavery party, because when there is no longer slavery there can no longer be a party to support it. . . .

The young Crown Princess of Prussia (Princess Royal of England) was here for three days a little while ago. The morning after her arrival I received a note from my colleague the Prussian minister, in whose house she was staying, informing me she was very desirous of making my acquaintance, having been lately reading my works, etc., and requesting me to call that morning. This I accordingly did, and was received very kindly by the young princess and her husband, and spent a very agreeable half-hour with them quite alone. She is rather petite, has a fresh young face, with pretty features, fine teeth, and a frank and agreeable smile, and an interested, earnest, and intelligent manner. Nothing can be simpler or more natural than her style, which I should say was the perfection of good breeding. She was in close mourning. She said many complimentary things about my writings, and indeed I may say that I heard from others, Lord Bloomfield and Baron Werther for instance, that she was one of my most enthusiastic readers. I say this because I think it will please you.

She had also been reading Froude, whom she much admired. I told her that he was a friend of mine, and that I, too, entertained the highest opinion of him as a historian, although he had by no means converted me to his faith in Henry VIII. The princess was evidently disposed to admire that polygamous party, and was also a great adorer of Queen Elizabeth. Whence I concluded that she had not read my last two volumes, as she would hardly have expected entire sympathy from me in this respect. I told her that although I had great respect for Queen Elizabeth's genius and accomplishments and energy, I was not one of her thick-and-thin admirers. She spoke of Carlyle's last work — I mean his “History of Frederick the Great.” I said that Carlyle's other works seemed to me magnificent, wonderful monuments of poetry and imagination, profound research, and most original humor; but that I thought him a most immoral writer, from his exaggerated reverence for brute force, which he was so apt to confound with wisdom and genius. A world governed a la Carlyle would be a pandemonium. The young prince is tall, blond, soldierly, intelligent, with frank, agreeable manners. Baron Werther told me last night that I ought to feel myself complimented, as I was the only person outside of the imperial family whom the princess had seen in Vienna, except the English ambassador and Lady Bloomfield.

We have very pleasant, bright winter weather here, never much above or below the freezing-point. The Vienna climate is not unlike that of Boston, only very much mitigated. It is dry, clear, with a respectable cold in winter and tolerable heat in summer. I am sorry to say it does not suit me very well. I mean that it has that electrifying, irritating effect of the Boston atmosphere upon me, which does not put me in good working trim. However, I am determined that the new year shall find me hard at work on Volume III. We all send love to you and my father and all at home. Good-by. God bless you, my dearest mother, and all the blessings of the season attend you and all. Write when you can; your letters always give me great pleasure. I shall not let so long an interval elapse again without sending at least a note.

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. 299-301

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to John L. Motley, December 15, 1862

December 15, 1862.

. . . Mrs. Holmes, who is a judge, I can tell you (being President of the Industrial Association), tells me that your Mary is a most excellent worker and a most agreeable young lady. “She never stops, she goes right ahead,”' are the precise words of Mrs. President, who always means exactly what she says. Also Mrs. H. tells me that Mary is looking particularly well.

As I am in the vein of saying things that ought to please you, let me say that my heart always swells with pride, and a glitter comes over my eyes, when I read or hear your denunciations of the enemies of liberty at home and abroad, and your noble pleas for the great system of self-government now on its trial in a certain sense — say, rather, now putting our people on trial to Bee whether they are worthy of it. There were many reasons why you might have lost your passion for a republican government. The old civilizations welcome you as an ornament to their highest circles; at home you of course meet in the upper political spheres much that is not to your taste. But you remain an idealist, as all generous natures do and must. I sometimes think it is the only absolute line of division between men — that which separates the men who hug the actual from those who stretch their arms to embrace the possible. I reduce my points of contact with the first class to a minimum. When I meet them I let them talk for the most part, for there is no profit in discussing any living question with men who have no sentiments, and the non-idealists have none. We don't talk music to those who have no ear. Why talk of the great human interests to men who have lost all their moral sensibilities, or who never had any?

You know quite as well as I do that accursed undercurrent of mercantile materialism which is trying all the time to poison the fountains of the national conscience. You know better than I do the contortions of that detested horde of mercenary partizans who would in a moment accept Jeff Davis, the slave-trade, and a Southern garrison in Boston to get back their post-offices and their custom-houses, where the bread they had so long eaten was covered with slime, like that of their brother serpents, before it was swallowed. The mean sympathizers with the traitors are about in the streets in many aspects: you can generally tell the more doubtful ones by the circumstance that they have a great budget of complaints against the government, that their memory is exceedingly retentive of every reverse and misfortune, and that they turn the small end of their opera-glasses toward everything that looks encouraging. I do not think strange of this in old men — they wear their old opinions, like their old clothes, until they are threadbare, and we need them as standards of past thought which we may reckon our progress by, as the ship wants her stationary log to tell her headway. But to meet young men who have breathed this American air without taking the contagious fever of liberty, whose hands lie as cold and flabby in yours as the fin of a fish on the morning of a victory, this is the hardest thing to bear. Oh, if the bullets would only go to the hearts that have no warm human blood in them! But the most generous of our youth are the price that we must pay for the new heaven and the new earth which are to be born of this fiery upheaval. . . .

Let us keep up our courage for our country and ourselves. It is harder for you, I have no doubt, than for me at home, and getting the news two or three times daily. Many things that may sound ill do not worry me long, for I am a man of large faith, and though the devil is a personage of remarkable talents, I think the presiding Wisdom is sure to be too much for him in the end. We are nervous just now and easily put down; but if we are to have a second national birth, it must be purchased by throes and agonies, harder perhaps than we have yet endured. I think of you all very often; do remember me and my wife (who is giving all her time to good deeds) most kindly to your wife and daughters.

Yours always in faith and hope,

O. W. H.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 296-8

John L. Motley to Mary Lothrop Motley, November 25, 1862

Vienna, 20 Favoriten Strasse, Wieden,

November 25, 1862.

Dearest Little Mary: We jog on here much as usual. We are fortunate in our pleasant house and garden, so that the external physical influences are not so gloomy as they were last winter; but in other respects we are rather dismal, being so far away from the center of all interest, our own beloved country. It is very probable that I shall not live to see the end of this great tragedy, which seems to have hardly passed its first act. But you may do so, and when you do, you will see a great commonwealth, the freest and the noblest that ever existed in history, purged of the foul disorder which has nearly eaten away its vitals. This war is a purifying process, but it seems that a whole generation of youths has to be sacrificed before we can even see the end.

When the news of the attempt of the French emperor to interfere in our affairs in favor of the slaveholders reaches America, I hope it may open the eyes of our people to the danger ever impending over them from abroad. You will see that this is distinctly intimated in the despatch of Drouyn de l'Huys. The party of peace is supposed to have triumphed, and of course peace to the Europeans means the dismemberment of the Republic and the establishment of the slaveholders' Confederacy. I consider the 25,000 majority in glorious Massachusetts after the proclamation as a greater monument of triumph in the onward march of civilization on our continent than anything that has yet happened. I have somewhat recovered from the spleen and despondency into which I was thrown by the first accounts of the elections in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. After all, when one makes an arithmetical calculation we see that the popular vote in the great States is very nearly balanced, and when we reflect that it was really a vote upon the Emancipation Proclamation, the progress is enormous. Two years hence there will be a popular majority for emancipation as large as there was for non-extension in 1860. This is true progress. Moreover, our majority in Massachusetts is almost equal to the Democratic majority in New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania combined.

The President's proclamation was just in time. Had it been delayed it is possible that England would have accepted the invitation of France, and that invitation was in reality to recognize the slaveholders' Confederacy, and to make with it an alliance offensive and defensive. I am not exaggerating. The object is distinctly to unite all Europe against us, to impose peace, and to forcibly dismember our country. Nothing has saved us from this disaster thus far except the antislavery feeling in England, which throughout the country, although not so much in high places, is the predominant popular instinct in England which no statesman dares confront. Thank God, Sumner is reelected, or is sure of it, I suppose, and Sam Hooper, too. The “people” of Massachusetts have succeeded in electing five senators out of forty, thirty representatives out of a few hundred, and half a congressman.¹ If McClellan had been an abolitionist together with his military talents, which are certainly very respectable, he would have been a great man. This is a great political and social revolution, and not an ordinary war. Goodby, my darling. Your letters give us great pleasure. Mr. Sumner is a high-minded, pure-minded patriot, and his rejection by Massachusetts would be a misfortune and a disgrace. Mr. Hooper, too, is eminently qualified for his post, and I beg you to give him my most sincere congratulations at his reelection, which I at one time felt was rather doubtful.

Ever thine in storm and shine and brine,

Papagei.

_______________

¹ These senators and representatives were elected to the Legislature of the State by opponents of the national administration.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 294-6

John L. Motley to Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., November 2, 1862

Vienna, November 2, 1862.

My Dear Holmes: More and more does it become difficult for me to write to you. I am greedier than ever for your letters, but the necessary vapidity of anything I can send to you in return becomes more apparent to me every day. It seems to me that by the time one of my notes makes its way to you in Boston it must have faded into a blank bit of paper. Where there is absolutely nothing in one's surroundings that can interest a friend, the most eloquent thing would seem to be to hold one's tongue. At least, however, I can thank you most warmly for your last letter. You know full well how interested I am in everything you can write, whether of speculation or of narration. Especially am I anxious to hear all that you have to say of Wendell's career. Of course his name among the wounded in the battle of Antietam instantly caught our eyes, and though we felt alarmed and uncomfortable, yet fortunately it was stated in the first intelligence we received that the wound, although in the neck, was not a dangerous one. I could not write to you, however, until I felt assured that he was doing well. I suppose Wendell has gone back to his regiment before this, and God knows whether there has not already been another general engagement in the neighborhood of the Potomac. What a long life of adventure and experience that boy has had in the fifteen months which have elapsed since I saw him, with his Pylades, seated at the Autocrat's breakfast-table in Charles Street!

Mary told me of his meeting with Hallowell, wounded, being brought from the field at the same time with himself, and of both being put together in the same house. We are fortunate in having a very faithful little chronicler in Mary, and she tells us of many interesting and touching incidents that otherwise might never reach us. She has also given us the details of the noble Wilder Dwight's death. It is unnecessary to say how deeply we were moved. I had the pleasure of knowing him well, and I always appreciated his energy, his manliness, and his intelligent, cheerful heroism. I look back upon him now as a kind of heroic type of what a young New-Englander ought to be and was. After all, what was your Chevy Chase to stir blood with like a trumpet? What noble principle, what deathless interest, was there at stake? Nothing but a bloody fight between a set of noble gamekeepers on one side, and of noble poachers on the other! And because they fought well and hacked each other to pieces like devils, they have been heroes for centuries.

Of course you know of Cairnes's book, and of John Mill's article in the “Westminster Review” for October, and of the sustained pluck and intelligence of the two Liberal journals in England, the “Daily News” and the “Star.” As for John Bright, I hope one day to see a statue raised to him in Washington. We must accept our position frankly. We are mudsills beloved of the Radicals. The negro-breeders are aristocrats, and, like Mrs. Jarley, the pride of the nobility and gentry.

Tell me, when you write, something of our State politics. It cannot be that these factionists can do any harm. But it is most mortifying to me that Boston of all the towns in the world should be the last stronghold of the pro-slavery party. I was interested in the conversation which you report:  “How many sons have you sent to the war? How much have you contributed? How much of your life have you put into it?” I hope there are not many who hold themselves quite aloof. For my own part, I am very distant in body, but in spirit I am never absent from the country. I never knew before what love of country meant. I have not been able to do much for the cause. I have no sons to give to the country. In money I have contributed my mite. I hope you will forgive me for mentioning this circumstance. I do so simply that you may know that I have not neglected a sacred duty. In these days in our country of almost fabulous generosity, I am well aware that what I am able to give is the veriest trifle; but as it is possible you might hear that I have done nothing, I take leave to mention this, knowing that you will not misunderstand me. I am not able to do as much as I ought. Your letters are intensely interesting. It isn't my fault if mine are stupid. Mary and Lily join me in sincerest regards to you and yours.

Ever your old friend,

J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 291-3

John Stuart Mill to John L. Motley, October 31, 1862

Saint-Virain, Avignon,

October 31, 1862.

My Dear Sir: Allow me to thank you most warmly for your long and interesting letter, which, if it had been twice as long as it was, would only have pleased me more. There are few persons that I have only seen once with whom I so much desire to keep up a communication as with you; and the importance of what I learn from you respecting matters so full of momentous consequences to the world would make such communication most valuable to me, even if I did not wish for it on personal grounds. The state of affairs in America has materially improved since you wrote by the defeat of the enemy in Maryland and their expulsion from it, and still more by Mr. Lincoln's antislavery proclamation, which no American, I think, can have received with more exultation than I did. It is of the highest importance, and more so because the manifest reluctance with which the President made up his mind to that decided step indicates that the progress of opinion in the country had reached the point of seeing its necessity for the effectual prosecution of the war. The adhesion of so many governors of States, some of them originally Democrats, is a very favorable sign; and thus far the measure does not seem to have very materially weakened your hold upon the border slave States. The natural tendency will be, if the war goes on successfully, to reconcile those States to emancipating their own slaves, availing themselves of the pecuniary offers made by the Federal government. I still feel some anxiety as to the reception to be given to the measure by Congress when it meets, and I should much like to know what are your expectations on that point.

In England the proclamation has only increased the venom of those who, after taunting you so long with caring nothing for abolition, now reproach you for your abolitionism as the worst of your crimes. But you will find that whenever any name is attached to the wretched effusions, it is always that of some deeply dyed Tory — generally the kind of Tory to whom slavery is rather agreeable than not, or who so hate your democratic institutions that they would be sure to inveigh against you whatever you did, and are enraged at being no longer able to taunt you with being false to your own principles. It is from these also that we are now beginning to hear, what disgusts me more than all the rest, the base doctrine that it is for the interest of England that the American Republic should be broken up. Think of us as ill as you may (and we have given you abundant cause), but do not, I entreat you, think that the general English public is so base as this. Our national faults are not now of that kind, and I firmly believe that the feeling of almost all English Liberals, even those whose language is most objectionable, is one of sincere regret for the disruption which they think inevitable. As long as there is a Tory party in England, it will rejoice at anything which injures or discredits American institutions; but the Liberal party — who are now, and are likely to remain, much the strongest — are naturally your friends and allies, and will return to that position when once they see that you are not engaged in a hopeless, and therefore, as they think, an irrational and unjustifiable, contest. There are writers enough here to keep up the fight and meet the malevolent comments on all your proceedings by right ones. Besides Cairnes and Dicey and Harriet Martineau and Ludlow and Hughes, besides the “Daily News” and “Macmillan” and the “Star,” there are now the “Westminster” and the “London Review,” to which several of the best writers have now gone over; there is Ellison of Liverpool, the author of “Slavery and Secession,” and editor of a monthly economical journal, the “Exchange”; and there are other writers, less known, who, if events go on favorably, will rapidly multiply.

Here in France the state of opinion on the subject is most gratifying. All liberal Frenchmen seem to have been with you from the first. They did not know more about the subject than the English, but their instincts were truer. By the way, what did you think of the narrative of the campaign on the Potomac in the “Revue des Deux Mondes” of October 15, by the Comte de Paris? It looks veracious, and is certainly intelligent, and in general effect likely, I should think, to be very useful to the cause. I still think you take too severe a view of the conduct of our government. I grant that the extra-official dicta of some of the ministers have been very unfortunate. But as a government, I do not see that their conduct is objectionable. The port of Nassau may be all that you say it is, but the United States also have the power, and have used it largely, of supplying themselves with munitions of war from our ports. If the principle of neutrality is once accepted, our markets must be open to both sides alike, and the general opinion in England is (I do not say whether rightly or wrongly) that if the course adopted is favorable to either side, it is to the United States, since the Confederates, owing to the blockade of their ports, have so much less power to take advantage of the facilities extended equally to both. Then, again, if the Tuscarora was ordered away, the Sumter was so, too. What you mention about a seizure of arms by our government must, I feel confident, have taken place during the Trent difficulty, at which time alone, neither before nor after, has the export of arms to America been interdicted. It is very possible that too much may have been made of Butler's proclamation, and that he has more wrong in phraseology than substance. But with regard to the watchword said to have been given by Pakenham at New Orleans, I have always hitherto taken it for a mere legend, like the exactly parallel ones which grew up under our eyes in Paris, in 1848, respecting the socialist insurrection of June. What authority there may be for it I do not know; but if it is true, nothing can mark more strongly the change which has taken place in the European standard of belligerent rights since the wars of the beginning of the century, for if any English commander at the present time were to do the like, he could never show his face in English society (even if he escaped being broken by a court martial); and I think we are entitled to blame in others what none of us, of the present generation at least, would be capable of perpetrating.

You are perhaps hardly aware how little the English of the present day feel of solidarité with past generations. We do not feel ourselves at all concerned to justify our predecessors. Foreigners reproved us with having been the great enemies of neutral rights so long as we were belligerents, and for turning round and stickling for them now when we are neutrals; but the real fact is, we are convinced, and have no hesitation in saying (what our Liberal party said even at the time), that our policy in that matter in the great Continental war was totally wrong. But while I am anxious that liberal and friendly Americans should not think worse of us than we really deserve, I am deeply conscious and profoundly grieved and mortified that we deserve so ill, and are making in consequence so pitiful a figure before the world, with which if we are not daily and insultingly taxed by all Europe, it is only because our enemies are glad to see us doing exactly what they expected, justifying their opinion of us and acting in a way which they think perfectly natural, because they think it perfectly selfish.

If you kindly favor me with another letter here, it is desirable that it should arrive before the end of November. After that time my address will be Blackheath Park, Kent.

I am, my dear sir,

Very truly yours,

J. S. Mill.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 286

John L. Motley to Mary Lothrop Motley, September 21, 1862

Vienna, September 21, 1862.

Dearest Little Mary: Your last letters, 1st and 2d September, reached us with promptness, and gave us the same mingled pain and pleasure that your letters always do. You are a dear darling to write to us so faithfully and conscientiously, and we look forward to our weekly budget from “our own correspondent” with great eagerness. You say in your last that Mrs. Lothrop's third son is going to the war. I cannot sufficiently admire their spirit and patriotism and her courage. I had such a nice, interesting, well-written letter from Julius at Newbern. I wish you would ask Mrs. Lothrop when she writes to thank him for it, and to say that I have not yet answered it simply because I have nothing agreeable or interesting to say from this part of the world. One of these days, when affairs are looking less gloomy, I shall take pleasure in sending an answer to his letter. Meanwhile I am delighted to hear of his promotion to a lieutenancy, and wish him every success.

The most amazing part of the whole matter is that people should now go about talking to each other of the “Constitution and the enforcement of the laws” exactly as if we were at peace. We are not in peace. We are in war. And the law of war is perfectly simple. It is to use all and every means necessary for overcoming the resistance of your enemy. Had government issued a proclamation of universal freedom to all men, in the exercise of its unequivocal and unquestioned rights as a belligerent, at about the time when the “Young Napoleon” was burrowing in the Chickahominy swamps, it would have done more toward overcoming the resistance of the enemy by cutting off the great source of their supplies than the whole of that ignominious campaign in the Peninsula, which has brought us, in spite of the unparalleled heroism, endurance, patience, and unflinching courage of our soldiers, back to exactly the same point (to make the best of it) from which we started a year ago. Tell Dr. Holmes that I received his letter of the 4th September yesterday, and that it gave me inexpressible comfort.

I shall write him next week. I agree with every word he says, and it gives me great pleasure to hear him say that the antislavery feeling is on the increase in Boston. Of one thing I feel perfectly certain, although everything else seems obscure as midnight. If Jeff Davis gets half the country, he will get the whole. If we keep half, we shall keep the whole. I mean by “we” the antislavery party of the country.

As to arming the slaves and drilling them as soldiers, I do not care so much about that, except as a means of preventing servile insurrections. Black men, as well as white men, are susceptible of military discipline, and soldiers in the army of whatever color must be shot for massacre and murder. The very reason which always prevented me from being an abolitionist before the war, in spite of my antislavery sentiments and opinions, now forces me to be an emancipationist. I did not wish to see the government destroyed, which was the avowed purpose of the abolitionists. When this became the avowed purpose of the slaveholders, when they made war upon us, the whole case was turned upside down. The antislavery men became the Unionists, the slaveholders the destructionists. This is so plain that no mathematical axiom is plainer. There is no way of contending now with the enemy at our gates but by emancipation.

Poor Fletcher Webster! I saw him on the Common at the head of his regiment; he looked like a man and has died like one. I am beginning to think that they who are dying for their country are happier than those of us who are left. Another old schoolfellow of mine was killed too, Phil Kearny (General Kearny)—the bravest of the brave. Good-by, darling. My love to grandmama and grandpapa and all the family.

Your affectionate

Papa.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 284-6

John Stuart Mill to John L. Motley, September 17, 1862

Saint-Virain, Avignon,

September 17, 1862.

My Dear Sir: I value the permission you gave me to correspond with you much too highly not to avail myself of it thus early, although I have very little to say that will be new, and at the same time interesting, to one whose thoughts are engrossed as yours must be. If you see “Macmillan's Magazine,” which has from the beginning been steadily on the right side in American affairs, you must have remarked the “Notes of a Journey in America,” which have been in the course of publication for some months, ending with a general summing up in the September number. This last paper especially appears to me excellent, and likely to do much good in England. The whole series has been reprinted in a volume, with the name of the writer, Mr. Edward Dicey, author of a recent book on Italy and Rome. You will probably see the “Westminster Review” of next month, which will contain an article of mine on the American question, apropos of Mr. Cairnes’s book. It is hastily written, and slight, for such a subject, but “every little helps,” as the nursery proverb says. I am not at all uneasy about public opinion here, if only the North is successful. The great number of well-meaning people and sincere enemies of slavery, who have been led into disapproving of your resistance to the South when carried to the length of war, have been chiefly influenced by thinking the reconquest of the South impossible. If you prove it to be possible, if you bring the slave States under your power, if you make use of that power to reconstitute Southern society on the basis of freedom, and if finally you wind up the financial results without breaking faith with any of the national creditors (among whom must be reckoned the holders of depreciated currency), you will have all our public with you, except the Tories, who will be mortified that what they absurdly think an example of the failure of democracy should be exchanged for a splendid example of its success. If you come well and honorably through one of the severest trials which a nation has ever undergone, the whole futurity of mankind will assume a brighter aspect. If not, it will for some time to come be very much darkened.

I have read lately two writings of Northern Americans on the subject of England, which show a very liberal appreciation of the misdirection of English opinion and feeling respecting the contest. One is Mr. Thurlow Weed's letter, which was published in the newspapers, and in which those just and generous allowances are made for us which many of us have not made for you. The other is the Rev. Dr. Thompson's “England during our War,” reprinted from the “New Englander,” which is even over-indulgent to our people, but too severe on our government. I believe that our government has felt more rightly all through than a majority of the public.

We shall be at this address until the end of November; afterward at Blackheath Park, Kent. I need hardly say that if your occupations would allow of your writing to me it would not only give me great pleasure, but would make me better able to be of use to a cause which I have as much at heart as even yourself.

I am, my dear sir,

Very truly yours,

J. S. Mill.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 281-3

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Fessenden Morse: January 31, 1865

Headquarters Second Mass. Inf'y,

RoBeRTSVille, S. C, January 31, 1865.

Since my last letter we have pushed farther into this miserable, rebellious State of South Carolina. We came very slowly, as we had to cut our way for the first ten miles through continuous rebel obstructions; but after that distance, the enemy evidently began to think it was no use trying to stop us, and the fallen trees became fewer and further apart. As we marched on from Purysburg, we gradually got out of the swamps and into rich plantations showing signs of the wealth of their old owners. Just think of single fields comprising at least one thousand acres. In the centre or in some part of each one of these great fields, would stand the universal cotton press and cotton gin. The planters' houses were rather better than the average through Georgia, but none of them were what we should call more than second or third class houses in the North; generally they stand half a mile or a mile back from the road, at the end of a perfectly straight, narrow avenue, in fact, nothing more than a cart path.

The most of them are surrounded by magnificent old live oaks and cypress trees, draped all over with the gray Spanish moss which gives to the deserted mansions a very sombre, funereal appearance. In rear of the houses are the rows of negro quarters, and the various outbuildings required on large plantations. So far, on this march, I have seen only one white male inhabitant and very few negroes. Every place is deserted; the valuables and most of the provisions are carried off; but I went into one house where there were rooms full of fine furniture, a fine piano, marble-topped tables, etc.; there was a valuable library in one room, of four or five thousand volumes. I saw a well bound copy of Motley's Dutch Republic, and a good set of Carlyle's works. This property is, of course, so much stuff strewn along the wayside. Unless there happens to be a halt near by, no one is allowed to leave the column to take anything; but stragglers, wagon-train men, and the various odds and ends that always accompany an army on the march, pick up whatever they want or think they want, and scatter about and destroy the rest, and by the time the last of a column five or six miles long gets by, the house is entirely gutted; in nine cases out of ten, before night all that is left to show where the rich, aristocratic, chivalrous, slave-holding South Carolinian lived, is a heap of smoldering ashes.

On principle, of course, such a system of loose destruction is all wrong and demoralizing; but, as I said before, it is never done openly by the soldiers, for every decent officer will take care that none of his men leave the ranks on a march. But there is no precedent which requires guards to be placed over abandoned property in an enemy's country. Sooner or later, of course, as we advanced and occupied all of the country, it would be taken, and I would rather see it burned than to have it seized and sent North by any of the sharks who follow in the rear of a conquering army. Pity for these inhabitants, I have none. In the first place, they are rebels, and I am almost prepared to agree with Sherman that a rebel has no rights, not even the right to live except by our permission.

They have rebelled against a Government they never once felt; they lived down here like so many lords and princes; each planter was at the head of a little aristocracy in which hardly a law touched him. This didn't content these people; they wanted “their rights,” and now they are getting them. After long deliberation, they plunged into a war in order to gratify their aristocratic aspirations for a Government of their own, and to indulge in their insane hatred for us Yankee mud-sills. The days of the rebellion are coming to an end very fast; even its lying press cannot keep up its courage much longer. For a year they have met with a series of reverses sufficient to break the spirit of the proudest nation, and this next spring will see a combination of movements which must destroy their only remaining bulwark, Lee's army, and then the bubble will burst; and I believe that we shall find that Jeff Davis and other leading Confederates will be abused and hated by men of their own section of country more than they will by the Northerners.

No, I might pity individual cases brought before me, but I believe that this terrible example is needed in this country, as a warning to those men in all time to come who may cherish rebellious thoughts; I believe it is necessary in order to show the strength of this Government and thoroughly to subdue these people. I would rather campaign it until I am fifty years old than to make any terms with rebels while they bear arms. We can conquer a peace, and it is our duty to do it.

This little, deserted town of Robertville we reached two days ago; our whole left wing is close by. We shall fill up again with supplies, and in about two days strike into the country. Barnwell, Branchville, Augusta, Columbia, and Charleston are all threatened. I hope the rebels know as little as we do which one is in the most immediate danger of a visit. Wheeler's cavalry is all around us, but as yet no infantry. A regiment of his command tried to stop our coming into this town. The Third Wisconsin, without firing a shot, charged them, broke them all to pieces, and lost only three men.

SOURCE: Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865, p. 209

John L. Motley to Anna Lothrop Motley., September 8, 1862

Marien Villa, Vöslau,

September 8, 1862.

My Dearest Mother: I wish it were possible for me to say anything that would interest you from this place. I should like to write you at least a note once a week to assure you of my affection; but when I have said that, it seems that there was nothing left to say. I do not care to be always talking of the one great subject which occupies all our thoughts, because, in the first place, my own feelings and opinions are so different from those which you are most in the habit of hearing that you must sometimes fail to sympathize with me; and, secondly, there is always such a difference in my position when writing from yours when reading. Our latest news leaves the Union army concentrating on the Rappahannock, with McClellan uniting his forces with Pope and Burnside. And so all the slaughter and fever and digging of ditches and building of corduroy roads on that fatal Peninsula has been for nothing, and McClellan's army, what is left of it, is about where it was six months ago.

Well, we are a patient and long-suffering people, and I admire the energy and courage and hopefulness of my countrymen more than I can express, and I have as stanch a faith as ever in the ultimate result, although it may be delayed for a generation. I wish I had as much faith in our generals-in-chief. I know nothing of parties or men as motives, but certainly the Peninsular campaign will never form a brilliant chapter in our history. I can only hope that the one opening on the Rappahannock may be more successful. But perhaps ere you read this a decisive battle may have been fought. At least I hope, when the next pull comes, we may not be on the retreat. Considering that McClellan took the field in the spring with those memorable words, “We have had our last retreat,” one must allow that he has given the country enough of that bitter dose. Our men have certainly behaved nobly. You may suppose with what tearful interest we read of the Cedar Mountain battle, and saw the well-known and familiar names of the brave youths who have fallen. But it is such a pang to speak their names, and words of consolation to the mourners are such a mockery, that it is as well to leave them unsaid. My heart thrilled when I read of Gordon's brigade, and especially of the devoted and splendid Massachusetts Second, to whom I had the honor of presenting the banner on that sunshiny afternoon about a year ago. Gordon seems to have behaved brilliantly. Poor Mr. Savage! I hope he bears the painful captivity of his son well. The Russells are expected here soon, I believe.

We are stagnant as usual here. I try to write, but it is hard work with one's thoughts so perpetually absorbed with our own war against tyrants more bloody than Philip or Alva, and an institution more accursed than the Spanish Inquisition. The ever-living present is so much more entrancing with its horrors than the past, which, thank God! is dead and buried with its iniquities. We remain here till the middle of October, and shall go to town with heavy hearts, for in the winter we must go into the world and see society, for which we have little inclination. We have had the Hugheses (Tom Brown) staying with us, and enjoyed the visit. He is as stanch an American as I am, and almost as much interested in the great struggle. Miss Stanley, sister of Canon Arthur Stanley, was with them. She was a nurse in the Crimea. They were on a rapid tour to Constantinople.

Good-by, my dear mother. Give my love to my father and my precious Mary and to all the family. Believe me, your ever-affectionate

J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 279-81

John L. Motley to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., August 31, 1862

Vienna, August 31, 1862.

My Dear Holmes: Bare, bare, bare of news, events, objects of the slightest interest to you or any one else, what need have I to apologize for silence? Naked, but not ashamed, I involve myself in my virtue, while you, if, like kind fortune, you will still wag your swift pen at me, — si celerem quatis pennam, — will find me ever grateful, or even trying to be resigned if you do not. I have not written for about four months. Even to my little Mary I am obliged now to write themes instead of letters. By this mail I send her one “on the advantages of silence.” If you should happen to meet her, ask her to show it to you that you may see to what a depth of imbecility your old friend has descended. I have yours of the 27th of April and the 20th of June. I am deeply grateful for them. I have just been reading them both over, and you will be glad to know that now, after the lapse of fifty years, which is about the distance from the first date at the rate we are living at, there is no false coloring, no judgment turned inside out, no blundering prophecy, no elation or no despondency which subsequent events have come to rebuke.

Writing as you do to me out of the kindness of your heart and the fullness of your head, you willingly run the risk of making blunders for the sake of giving me, in your vivid and intense way, a rapid image of the passing moment. I strain my eyes across the Atlantic through the stereoscope you so kindly provide me, and for an instant or two I am with you. I think very often of your Wendell. He typifies so well to me the metamorphosis of young America from what it was in our days. Consule Planco. There, within less than a twelvemonth after leaving college, the young poet, philosopher, artist, has become a man, robustus acri militia puer, has gone through such scenes as Ball's Bluff, Fair Oaks, and the seven days before Richmond, and, even while I write, is still engaged, perchance, in other portentous events, and it is scarcely a year since you and I went together to the State House to talk with the governor about his commission. These things would hardly be so startling if it was the mere case of a young man entering the army and joining a marching regiment. But when a whole community suddenly transmutes itself into an army, and the “stay-at-home rangers” are remembered on the fingers and pointed at with the same, what a change must be made in the national character!

Pfui liber den Buben

Hinter den Ofen,

Hinter den Sttthlen,

Hinter den Sophen,

as the chivalrous Koerner sang.

I had a very well-written letter the other day from a young cousin of mine, Julius Lothrop by name, now serving as sergeant in the Massachusetts Twenty-fourth. I need not say how I grieved to hear that Lowell had lost another nephew, and a near relative to your wife, too. You mentioned him in your very last letter as having gained health and strength by his campaigning. There is something most touching in the fact that those two youths, Putnam and Lowell, both scions of our most honored families, and both distinguished among their equals for talent, character, accomplishment, and virtue, for all that makes youth venerable, should have been among the earliest victims of this infernal conspiracy of slaveholders. I know not if such a thought is likely to comfort the mourners, but it is nevertheless most certain that when such seed is sown the harvest to be reaped by the country will be almost priceless. Of this I entertain no doubt whatever. God knows I was never an optimist, but in the great result of this tremendous struggle I can foresee nothing but good. The courage and the determination of both sides being equal, the victory must be to the largest army and navy and the longest purse.

What has so long held back the imprisoned power of the North during all these dreary years of the slave domination of our Republic was, after all, a moral principle. It was pushed to excess till it became a vice, but it was still the feeling of patriotism and an exaggerated idea of public faith. There is even a lingering band or two to be broken yet before the great spirit of the North is completely disenthralled. But I hope I am not mistaken in thinking that they have become weaker than packthread.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 276-9