Charles Eliot Norton to Arthur H. Clough, February 10, 1861

Shady Hill, 10 February, 1861.

. . . Well, since I wrote last to you, great things have been going on here. It has been no time for writing letters, for the speculations of one day were forgotten the next in the new aspect of affairs. Not even yet is there any certainty as to the result of our present troubles and excitements, so far as the South is concerned. It is still doubtful whether the states that have already left the Union will be the only ones to do so, or whether the whole body of Slave States will go off and set up an attempt at a Confederacy to be managed in the interest of the owners of slaves, and for the protection and extension of slavery. There is little to choose between the two. For many reasons, political, social, and economical, it would be desirable to keep the northern tier of Slave States united with the Free States; but on the other hand, if they go off, the Free States no longer have any connection with or responsibility for Slavery. For my own part I have been hopeful from the beginning that the issue of these troubles, whatever it might be, would be for the advantage of the North, and for the permanent and essential weakening of the Slave power; and I see no reason to change this opinion. The truth is that it is the consciousness of power having gone from their hands that has induced the revolutionists of the South to take the hasty, violent, and reckless steps they have done. It is not the oppression of the North, it is not any interference with the interests of the South, it is not John Brown, or Kansas, or the principles of the Republican party, that are the causes of secession, — but it is the fact that the South, which has heretofore, from the beginning, controlled the government of the country, is now fairly beaten, and that it prefers revolution to honest acknowledgment of defeat and submission to it. But disunion is no remedy for defeat; the South is beaten in the Union or out of it. If the Slave States had accepted in a manly way their new position they would have secured their own interests. Slavery would not have been interfered with. But the course they have pursued has already done more work in damaging Slavery as an institution than all the labours of the Abolitionists could have effected for years. The competition for the supply of cotton which has now been effectually roused will be the great means by which slave labour will be rendered unprofitable to the owners of slaves; and as soon as they find this out Slavery will cease to be defended as a Divine Institution, and as the necessary basis of the best form of society. In fact we are seeing now the beginning of the death struggles of Slavery; and there is no ground for wonder at the violence of its convulsions. Civil war between the Free and the Slave States is a remote possibility. It will be hard to drive us of the North into it. But we are quite ready to fight, if need be, for the maintenance of the authority of the Civil Government, (threatened by a prejudiced attack of the Southern revolutionists on Washington,) and, I hope, also for the freedom of the Territories. But I trust that fighting will not be required, and I believe that Mr. Lincoln will be quietly inaugurated on the 4th March. He has shown great courage and dignity in holding his tongue so completely since his election.

I could fill twenty sheets with the rumours, the fancies, and the theories of the day, but by the time my letter reaches you they would not be worth so much as last year's dead leaves. Of course there is no other news with us, for the intensity of the interest in public affairs lessens that of the other events, and diminishes the number of the events themselves. . . .

Emerson's new volume has been a great success here, and has met with far more favour than it seems to have done in England. Ten thousand copies of it have gone off here in spite of the political excitements. I do not wonder that the English critics do not like the book, for every year the imaginative and mystic element of the intellect, as it shows itself in literature, is getting more and more scouted at by them, — but I do not wonder at the abusive vulgarity of the article in the “Saturday Review.” The book is the most Emersonian, good and bad, of all his books; certainly a book to do good to any one who knows how to think. But Emerson's books, as you know, are not nearly so good as himself. . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 216-8

John Lothrop Motley to Anna Lothrop Motley, March 15, 1861

31, Hertford Street,

March 15th, 1861.

My Deaeest Mother, — . . . . . It is not for want of affection and interest, not from indolence, but I can hardly tell you how difficult it is to me to write letters. I pass as much of my time daily as I can at the State Paper Office, reading hard in the old MSS. there for my future volumes; and as the hours are limited there to from ten till four, I am not really master of my own time.

I am delighted to find that the success of the “United Netherlands” gives you and my father so much pleasure. It is by far the pleasantest reward for the hard work I have gone through to think that the result has given you both so much satisfaction. Not that I grudge the work, for, to say the truth, I could not exist without hard labour, and if I were compelled to be idle for the rest of my days, I should esteem it the severest affliction possible.

My deepest regret is that my work should be for the present on the wrong side of the Atlantic. Before leaving the subject of the new volumes, I should like to say that I regret that no one has sent me any of the numerous reviews and notices in the American papers and magazines to which you allude. I received a number of the New York Times from the governor, and also the Courier, containing notices. The latter, which was beautifully and sympathetically written, I ascribed to Hillard's pen, which I do not think I can mistake. If this be so, I hope you will convey my best thanks to him.

These are the only two which have been sent to me, and it is almost an impossibility for me to procure American newspapers here. Of course both Mary and Lily, as well as myself, would be pleased to see such notices, and it seems so easy to have a newspaper directed to 31, Hertford Street, with a three cent stamp. Fortunately I recently subscribed to the Atlantic Monthly, and so received the March number, in which there is a most admirably written notice, although more complimentary than I deserve. It is with great difficulty that I can pick up anything of the sort, and I fear now that as the time passes it will be difficult for me to receive them from America.

The Harpers have not written to me, but I received a line from Tom showing that the book was selling very well considering the times. As to politics, I shall not say a word, except that at this moment we are in profound ignorance as to what will be the policy of the new administration, how the inauguration business went off, and what was the nature of Mr. Lincoln's address, and how it was received, all which you at home at this moment have known for eleven days. I own that I can hardly see any medium between a distinct recognition of the Southern Confederacy as an independent foreign power, and a vigorous war to maintain the United States Government throughout the whole country. But a war without an army means merely a general civil war, for the great conspiracy to establish the Southern Republic, concocted for twenty years, and brought to maturity by Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet Ministers, has, by that wretched creature's connivance and vacillation, obtained such consistency in these fatal three months of interregnum as to make it formidable. The sympathy of foreign powers, and particularly of England, on which the seceders so confidently relied to help them on in their plot, has not been extended to them. I know on the very highest authority and from repeated conversations that the English Government looks with deepest regret on the dismemberment of the great American Republic. There has been no negotiation whatever up to this time of any kind, secret or open, with the secessionists. This I was assured of three or four days ago. At the same time I am obliged to say that there has been a change, a very great change, in English sympathy since the passing of the Morrill Tariff Bill. That measure has done more than any commissioner from the Southern Republic could do to alienate the feelings of the English public towards the United States, and they are much more likely to recognise the Southern Confederacy at an early day than they otherwise would have done. If the tariff people had been acting in league with the secessionists to produce a strong demonstration in Europe in favour of the dissolution of the Union, they could not have managed better.

I hear that Lewis Stackpole is one of the most rising young lawyers of the day, that he is very popular everywhere, thought to have great talents for his profession, great industry, and that he is sure to succeed. You may well suppose with how much delight we hear such accounts of him.

My days are always spent in hard work, and as I never work at night, going out to dinners and parties is an agreeable and useful relaxation, and as I have the privilege of meeting often many of the most eminent people of our times, I should be very stupid if I did not avail myself of it; and I am glad that Lily has so good an opportunity of seeing much of the most refined and agreeable society in the world.

The only very distinguished literary person that I have seen of late for the first time is Dickens. I met him last week at a dinner at John Forster's. I had never even seen him before, for he never goes now into fashionable company. He looks about the age of Longfellow. His hair is not much grizzled and is thick, although the crown of his head is getting bald. His features are good, the nose rather high, the eyes largish, greyish and very expressive. He wears a moustache and beard, and dresses at dinner in exactly the same uniform which every man in London or the civilised world is bound to wear, as much as the inmates of a penitentiary are restricted to theirs. I mention this because I had heard that he was odd and extravagant in his costume. I liked him exceedingly. We eat next each other at table, and I found him genial, sympathetic, agreeable, unaffected, with plenty of light easy talk and touch-and-go fun without any effort or humbug of any kind. He spoke with great interest of many of his Boston friends, particularly of Longfellow, Wendell Holmes, Felton, Sumner, and Tom Appleton.

I have got to the end of my paper, my dearest mother, and so with love to the governor and A––, and all the family great and small, I remain,

Most affectionately your son,

J. L. M.

P.S. — I forgot to say that another of Forster's guests was Wilkie Collins (the “Woman in White's” author). He is a little man, with black hair, a large white forehead, large spectacles, and small features. He is very unaffected, vivacious, and agreable.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Volume 1, p. 362-5

John Lothrop Motley to Anna Lothrop Motley, February 9, 1860

31, Hertford Street,

February 9th, 1861.

My Dearest Mother,  . . . . I wrote you a long letter of eight pages yesterday, and then tossed it into the fire, because I found I had been talking of nothing but American politics. Although this is a subject which, as you may suppose, occupies my mind almost exclusively for the time being, yet you have enough of it at home, as before this letter reaches you it will perhaps be decided whether there is to be civil war, peaceable dissolution, or a patch up; it is idle for me to express any opinions on the subject. I do little else but read American newspapers, and we wait with extreme anxiety to know whether the pro-slavery party will be able to break up the whole compact at its own caprice, to seize Washington, and prevent by force of arms the inauguration of Lincoln. That event must necessarily be followed by civil war, I should think. Otherwise, I suppose it may be avoided. But whatever be the result, it is now proved beyond all possibility of dispute that we never have had a government, and that the much eulogised constitution of the United States never was a constitution at all, for the triumphant secession of the Southern States shows that we have only had a league or treaty among two or three dozen petty sovereignties, each of them insignificant in itself, but each having the power to break up the whole compact at its own caprice. Whether the separation takes place now, or whether there is a patch up, there is no escaping the conclusion that a government proved to be incapable of protecting its own property and the honour of its own flag is no government at all, and may fall to pieces at any moment. The pretence of a people governing itself, without the need of central force and a powerful army, is an exploded fallacy which can never be revived. If there is a compromise now, which seems possible enough, because the Northern States are likely to give way, as they invariably have done, to the bluster of the South, it will perhaps be the North which will next try the secession dodge, when we find ourselves engaged in a war with Spain for the possession of Cuba, or with England on account of the reopened African slave trade, either of which events are in the immediate future.

But I find myself getting constantly into this maelstrom of American politics and must break off short.

I send you by this mail the London Times of the 7th of February. You will find there (in the parliamentary reports) a very interesting speech of Lord John Russell; but it will be the more interesting to you because it contains a very handsome compliment to me, and one that is very gratifying. I have not sent you the different papers in which my book has been reviewed, excepting three consecutive Times, which contain a long article. I suppose that “Littell's Living Age” reprints most of these notices. And the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and Westminster Reviews (in each of whose January numbers the work has been reviewed) are, I know, immediately reprinted. If yon will let me know, however, what notices you have seen, I will send you the others in case you care for them.

We are going on rather quietly. We made pleasant country visits at Sidney Herbert's, Lord Palmerston's, Lady Stanhope's, Lord Ashburton's, but now the country season is pretty well over, parliament opened, and the London season begun. I am hard at work in the State Paper Office every day, but it will be a good while before I can get to writing again.

I am most affectionately your son,

J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Volume 1, p. 357-9