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

BOSTON, February 3, 1862.

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

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

With kindest remembrances to you all,

Yours always,

O. W. H.

_______________

¹ The Confederates.

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

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: May 8, 1864

CAMDEN, S.C., May 8, 1864. – My friends crowded around me so in those last days in Richmond, I forgot the affairs of this nation utterly; though I did show faith in my Confederate country by buying poor Bones's (my English maid's) Confederate bonds. I gave her gold thimbles, bracelets; whatever was gold and would sell in New York or London, I gave.

My friends in Richmond grieved that I had to leave them—not half so much, however, as I did that I must come away. Those last weeks were so pleasant. No battle, no murder, no sudden death, all went merry as a marriage bell. Clever, cordial, kind, brave friends rallied around me.

Maggie Howell and I went down the river to see an exchange of prisoners. Our party were the Lees, Mallorys, Mrs. Buck Allan, Mrs. Ould. We picked up Judge Ould and Buck Allan at Curl's Neck. I had seen no genuine Yankees before; prisoners, well or wounded, had been German, Scotch, or Irish. Among our men coming ashore was an officer, who had charge of some letters for a friend of mine whose fiancé had died; I gave him her address. One other man showed me some wonderfully ingenious things he had made while a prisoner. One said they gave him rations for a week; he always devoured them in three days, he could not help it; and then he had to bear the inevitable agony of those four remaining days! Many were wounded, some were maimed for life. They were very cheerful. We had supper — or some nondescript meal — with ice-cream on board. The band played Home, Sweet Home.

One man tapped another on the shoulder: '”Well, how do you feel, old fellow?” “Never was so near crying in my life — for very comfort.”

Governor Cummings, a Georgian, late Governor of Utah, was among the returned prisoners. He had been in prison two years. His wife was with him. He was a striking-looking person, huge in size, and with snow-white hair, fat as a prize ox, with no sign of Yankee barbarity or starvation about him.

That evening, as we walked up to Mrs. Davis's carriage, which was waiting for us at the landing, Dr. Garnett with Maggie Howell, Major Hall with me, suddenly I heard her scream, and some one stepped back in the dark and said in a whisper. “Little Joe! he has killed himself!” I felt reeling, faint, bewildered. A chattering woman clutched my arm: “Mrs. Davis's son? Impossible. Whom did you say? Was he an interesting child? How old was he?” The shock was terrible, and unnerved as I was I cried, “For God's sake take her away!”

Then Maggie and I drove two long miles in silence except for Maggie's hysterical sobs. She was wild with terror. The news was broken to her in that abrupt way at the carriage door so that at first she thought it had all happened there, and that poor little Joe was in the carriage.

Mr. Burton Harrison met us at the door of the Executive Mansion. Mrs. Semmes and Mrs. Barksdale were there, too. Every window and door of the house seemed wide open, and the wind was blowing the curtains. It was lighted, even in the third story. As I sat in the drawing-room, I could hear the tramp of Mr. Davis's step as he walked up and down the room above. Not another sound. The whole house as silent as death. It was then twelve o'clock; so I went home and waked General Chesnut, who had gone to bed. We went immediately back to the President's, found Mrs. Semmes still there, but saw no one but her. We thought some friends of the family ought to be in the house.

Mrs. Semmes said when she got there that little Jeff was kneeling down by his brother, and he called out to her in great distress: “Mrs. Semmes, I have said all the prayers I know how, but God will not wake Joe.'”

Poor little Joe, the good child of the family, was so gentle and affectionate. He used to run in to say his prayers at his father's knee. Now he was laid out somewhere above us, crushed and killed. Mrs. Semmes, describing the accident, said he fell from the high north piazza upon a brick pavement. Before I left the house I saw him lying there, white and beautiful as an angel, covered with flowers; Catherine, his nurse, flat on the floor by his side, was weeping and wailing as only an Irishwoman can.

Immense crowds came to the funeral, everybody sympathetic, but some shoving and pushing rudely. There were thousands of children, and each child had a green bough or a bunch of flowers to throw on little Joe's grave, which was already a mass of white flowers, crosses, and evergreens. The morning I came away from Mrs. Davis's, early as it was, I met a little child with a handful of snow drops. “Put these on little Joe,” she said; “I knew him so well.” and then she turned and fled without another word. I did not know who she was then or now.

As I walked home I met Mr. Reagan, then Wade Hampton. But I could see nothing but little Joe and his brokenhearted mother. And Mr. Davis's step still sounded in my ears as he walked that floor the livelong night.

General Lee was to have a grand review the very day we left Richmond. Great numbers of people were to go up by rail to see it. Miss Turner McFarland writes: “They did go, but they came back faster than they went. They found the army drawn up in battle array.” Many of the brave and gay spirits that we saw so lately have taken flight, the only flight they know, and their bodies are left dead upon the battle-field. Poor old Edward Johnston is wounded again, and a prisoner. Jones's brigade broke first; he was wounded the day before.

At Wilmington we met General Whiting. He sent us to the station in his carriage, and bestowed upon us a bottle of brandy, which had run the blockade. They say Beauregard has taken his sword from Whiting. Never! I will not believe it. At the capture of Fort Sumter they said Whiting was the brains, Beauregard only the hand. Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou fallen! That they should even say such a thing!

My husband and Mr. Covey got out at Florence to procure for Mrs. Miles a cup of coffee. They were slow about it and they got left. I did not mind this so very much, for I remembered that we were to remain all day at Kingsville, and that my husband could overtake me there by the next train. My maid belonged to the Prestons. She was only traveling home with me, and would go straight on to Columbia. So without fear I stepped off at Kingsville. My old Confederate silk, like most Confederate dresses, had seen better days, and I noticed that, like Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous “one-hoss shay,” it had gone to pieces suddenly, and all over. It was literally in strips. I became painfully aware of my forlorn aspect when I asked the telegraph man the way to the hotel, and he was by no means respectful to me. I was, indeed, alone — an old and not too respectable-looking woman. It was my first appearance in the character, and I laughed aloud.

A very haughty and highly painted dame greeted me at the hotel. “No room,” said she. “Who are you?” I gave my name. “Try something else,” said she. "Mrs. Chesnut don't travel round by herself with no servants and no nothing.” I looked down. There I was, dirty, tired, tattered, and torn. “Where do you come from?” said she. “My home is in Camden.” “Come, now, I know everybody in Camden.” I sat down meekly on a bench in the piazza, that was free to all wayfarers.

“Which Mrs. Chesnut?” said she (sharply). “I know both.” “I am now the only one. And now what is the matter with you? Do you take me for a spy? I know you perfectly well. I went to school with you at Miss Henrietta de Leon's, and my name was Mary Miller.” “The Lord sakes alive! and to think you are her! Now I see. Dear! dear me! Heaven sakes, woman, but you are broke!” “And tore,” I added, holding up my dress. “But I had had no idea it was so difficult to effect an entry into a railroad wayside hotel.” I picked up a long strip of my old black dress, torn off by a man's spur as I passed him getting off the train.

It is sad enough at Mulberry without old Mrs. Chesnut, who was the good genius of the place. It is so lovely here in spring. The giants of the forest — the primeval oaks, water-oaks, live-oaks, willow-oaks, such as I have not seen since I left here — with opopanax, violets, roses, and yellow jessamine, the air is laden with perfume. Araby the Blest was never sweeter.

Inside, are creature comforts of all kinds — green peas, strawberries, asparagus, spring lamb, spring chicken, fresh eggs, rich, yellow butter, clean white linen for one's beds, dazzling white damask for one's table. It is such a contrast to Richmond, where I wish I were.

Fighting is going on. Hampton is frantic, for his laggard new regiments fall in slowly; no fault of the soldiers; they are as disgusted as he is. Bragg, Bragg, the head of the War Office, can not organize in time.

John Boykin has died in a Yankee prison. He had on a heavy flannel shirt when lying in an open platform car on the way to a cold prison on the lakes. A Federal soldier wanted John's shirt. Prisoners have no rights; so John had to strip off and hand his shirt to him. That caused his death. In two days he was dead of pneumonia — may be frozen to death. One man said: “They are taking us there to freeze.” But then their men will find our hot sun in August and July as deadly as our men find their cold Decembers. Their snow and ice finish our prisoners at a rapid rate, they say. Napoleon's soldiers found out all that in the Russian campaign.

Have brought my houseless, homeless friends, refugees here, to luxuriate in Mulberry's plenty. I can but remember the lavish kindness of the Virginia people when I was there and in a similar condition. The Virginia people do the rarest acts of hospitality and never seem to know it is not in the ordinary course of events.

The President's man, Stephen, bringing his master's Arabian to Mulberry for safe-keeping, said: “Why, Missis, your niggers down here are well off. I call this Mulberry place heaven, with plenty to eat, little to do, warm house to sleep in, a good church.”

John L. Miller, my cousin, has been killed at the head of his regiment. The blows now fall so fast on our heads they are bewildering. The Secretary of War authorizes General Chesnut to reorganize the men who have been hitherto detailed for special duty, and also those who have been exempt. He says General Chesnut originated the plan and organized the corps of clerks which saved Richmond in the Dahlgren raid.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 304-9

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to John L. Motley November 29, 1861

Boston, November 29, 1861.

My Dear Motley: I know you will let me begin with my personal story, for you have heard before this time about Ball's Bluff and its disasters, and among them that my boy came in for his honorable wounds. Wendell's experience was pretty well for a youngster of twenty. He was standing in front of his men when a spent ball struck him in the stomach and knocked him flat, taking his wind out of him at the same time. He made shift to crawl off a little, the colonel, at whose side he was standing, telling him to go to the rear. Presently he began to come right, and found he was not seriously injured. By the help of a sergeant he got up, and went to the front again. He had hardly been there two or three minutes when he was struck by a second ball, knocked down, and carried off. His shirt was torn from him, and he was found to be shot through the heart — it was supposed through the lungs. The ball had entered exactly over the heart on the left side and come out on the right side, where it was found—a Minie ball. The surgeon thought he was mortally wounded, and he supposed so, too. Next day better; next after that, wrote me a letter. Had no bad symptoms, and it became evident that the ball had passed outside the cavities containing the heart and lungs. He got on to Philadelphia, where he stayed a week, and a fortnight ago yesterday I brought him to Boston on a bed in the cars. He is now thriving well, able to walk, but has a considerable open wound, which, if the bone has to exfoliate, will keep him from camp for many weeks at the least. A most narrow escape from instant death! Wendell is a great pet in his character of young hero with wounds in the heart, and receives visits en grand seigneur. I envy my white Othello, with a semicircle of young Desdemonas about him listening to the often-told story which they will have over again.

You know how well all our boys behaved. In fact, the defeat at Ball's Bluff, disgraceful as it was to the planners of the stupid sacrifice, is one as much to be remembered and to be proud of as that of Bunker Hill. They did all that men could be expected to do, and the courage and energy of some of the young captains saved a large number of men by getting them across the river a few at a time, at the imminent risk on their own part of being captured or shot while crossing.

I can tell you nothing, I fear, of public matters that you do not know already. How often I thought of your account of the great Armada when our own naval expedition was off, and we were hearing news from all along the coast of the greatest gale which had blown for years! It seemed a fatality, and the fears we felt were unutterable. Imagine what delight it was when we heard that the expedition had weathered the gale and met with entire success in its most important object.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 216-8

John Lothrop Motley to Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., November 15, 1861

Vienna, November 14, 1861.

My Dear Holmes: Your letter of October 8 awaited me here. I need not tell you with what delight I read it, and with what gratitude I found you so faithful to the promises which we exchanged on board the Europa. Your poem,¹ read at the Napoleon dinner, I had already read several times in various papers, and admired it very much, but I thank you for having the kindness to inclose it. As soon as I read your letter I sat down to reply, but I had scarcely written two lines when I received the first telegram of the Ball's Bluff affair. I instantly remembered what you had told me — that Wendell “was on the right of the advance on the Upper Potomac, the post of honor and danger,” and it was of course impossible for me to write to you till I had learned more, and you may easily conceive our intense anxiety. The bare, brutal telegram announcing a disaster arrives always four days before any details can possibly be brought. Well, after the four days came my London paper; but, as ill luck would have it, my American ones had not begun to arrive. At last, day before yesterday, I got a New York “Evening Post,” which contained Frank Palfrey's telegram. Then our hearts were saddened enough by reading: “Willie Putnam, killed; Lee, Revere, and George Perry, captured”; but they were relieved of an immense anxiety by the words, “O. W. Holmes, Jr., slightly wounded.”

Poor Mrs. Putnam! I wish you would tell Lowell (for to the mother or father I do not dare to write) to express the deep sympathy which I feel for their bereavement, that there were many tears shed in our little household in this distant place for the fate of his gallant, gentle-hearted, brave-spirited nephew. I did not know him much — not at all as grown man; but the name of Willie Putnam was a familiar sound to us six years ago on the banks of the Arno, for we had the pleasure of passing a winter in Florence at the same time with the Putnams, and I knew that that studious youth promised to be all which his name and his blood and the influences under which he was growing up entitled him to become. We often talked of American politics, — I mean his father and mother and ourselves, — and I believe that we thoroughly sympathized in our views and hopes. Alas! they could not then foresee that that fair-haired boy was after so short a time destined to lay down his young life on the Potomac, in one of the opening struggles for freedom and law with the accursed institution of slavery. Well, it is a beautiful death — the most beautiful that man can die. Young as he was, he had gained name and fame, and his image can never be associated in the memory of the hearts which mourn for him except with ideas of honor, duty, and purity of manhood.

After we had read the New York newspaper, the next day came a batch of Boston dailies and a letter from my dear little Mary. I seized it with avidity and began to read it aloud, and before I had finished the first page it dropped from my hand, and we all three burst into floods of tears. Mary wrote that Harry Higginson, of the Second, had visited the camp of the Twentieth, and that Wendell Holmes was shot through the lungs and not likely to recover. It seemed too cruel, just as we had been informed that he was but slightly wounded. After the paroxysm was over, I picked up the letter and read a rather important concluding phrase of Mary's statement, viz., “But this, thank God, has proved to be a mistake.” I think if you could have been clairvoyant, and looked in upon our dark little sitting-room of the Archduke Charles Hotel, fourth story, at that moment, you could have had proof enough, if you needed any fresh ones, of the strong hold that you and yours have on all our affections. There are very many youths in that army of freedom whose career we watch with intense interest; but Wendell Holmes is ever in our thoughts side by side with those of our own name and blood. I renounce all attempt to paint my anxiety about our affairs. I do not regret that Wendell is with the army. It is a noble and healthy symptom that brilliant, intellectual, poetical spirits like his spring to arms when a noble cause like ours inspires them. The race of Philip Sydneys is not yet extinct, and I honestly believe that as much genuine chivalry exists in our free States at this moment as there is or ever was in any part of the world, from the crusaders down. I did not say a word when I was at home to Lewis Stackpole about his plans, but I was very glad when he wrote to me that he had accepted a captaincy in Stevenson's regiment. I suppose by this time they are in the field.

There, you see how truly I spoke when I said that I could write nothing to you worth hearing, while I, on the contrary, should be ever hungering and thirsting to hear from you. Our thoughts are always in America, but I am obliged to rely upon you for letters. Sam Hooper promised to write (I am delighted to see, by the way, that he has been nominated, as I hoped would be the case, for Congress), and William Amory promised; but you are the only one thus far who has kept promises. I depend on your generosity to send me very often a short note. No matter how short, it will be a living, fresh impression from the mint of your mind — a bit of pure gold worth all the copper counterfeits which circulate here in Europe. Nobody on this side the Atlantic has the faintest conception of our affairs. Let me hear from time to time, as often as you can, how you are impressed by the current events, and give me details of such things as immediately interest you. Tell me all about Wendell. How does your wife stand her trials? Give my love to her and beg her to keep up a brave heart. Hœc olim meminisse juvabit. And how will those youths who stay at home “account themselves accursed they were not there,” when the great work has been done, as done it will be! Of that I am as sure as that there is a God in heaven.

What can I say to you of cisatlantic things? I am almost ashamed to be away from home. You know that I decided to remain, and had sent for my family to come to America, when my present appointment altered my plans. I do what good I can. I think I made some impression on Lord John Russell, with whom I spent two days soon after my arrival in England; and I talked very frankly, and as strongly as I could, to Lord Palmerston; and I had long conversations and correspondences with other leading men in England. I also had an hour's talk with Thouvenel² in Paris, and hammered the Northern view into him as soundly as I could. For this year there will be no foreign interference with us, and I do not anticipate it at any time, unless we bring it on ourselves by bad management, which I do not expect. Our fate is in our own hands, and Europe is looking on to see which side is the strongest. When it has made the discovery, it will back it as also the best and the most moral. Yesterday I had my audience with the emperor. He received me with much cordiality, and seemed interested in a long account which I gave him of our affairs. You may suppose I inculcated the Northern view. We spoke in his vernacular, and he asked me afterward if I was a German. I mention this not from vanity, but because he asked it with earnestness and as if it had a political significance. Of course I undeceived him. His appearance interested me, and his manner is very pleasing. Good-by; all our loves to all.

Ever your sincere friend,

J. L. M.

Remember me most kindly to the club, one and all. I have room for their names in my heart, but not in this page.

_______________

¹ “Vive la France.” A sentiment offered at the dinner to H. I. H. Prince Napoleon at the Revere House, September 25, 1861.

² Minister of Foreign Affairs.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 211-6

John Lothrop Motley to Mary Benjamin Motley, Monday, July 28, 1861

Nahant, July 28, 1861.

My Dearest Mary: I have not written to Forster, because I have taken it for granted that he sees my letters to you, and I could only write the same facts and the same conclusions to other correspondents. Nevertheless, I wish very much to write a line to him and to Milnes, and especially to Lord de Grey, and shall certainly do so within a very short time. I was delighted to hear of young Ridley's triumphs, and sincerely sympathize in the joy of Lord and Lady Wensleydale, to whom pray give my kindest remembrance and congratulations. I am very much obliged to Lord John Russell for his kindness in sending me a copy of his note to Mr. Everett. I have thought very often of writing myself to Lord John, and have abstained because I knew that his time was so thoroughly occupied as to leave him little leisure for unofficial correspondence, and because I knew also that his despatches from Washington and his conversations with Mr. Adams must place him entirely in possession of all the facts of this great argument, and I have not the vanity to suppose that any commentary which I could make would alter the conclusion of a mind so powerful and experienced as his.

“If on the 4th of March,” he says to Mr. Everett, “you had allowed the Confederate States to go out from among you, you could have prevented the extension of slavery and confined it to the slave-holding States.” But, unfortunately, had this permission been given, there would have been no “you” left. The existence of this government consists in its unity. Once admit the principle of secession, and it has ceased to be; there is no authority then left either to prevent the extension of slavery, or to protect the life or property of a single individual on our share of the continent. Permit the destruction of the great law which has been supreme ever since we were a nation, and any other law may be violated at will. We have no government but this one, since we were dependent and then insurgent colonies. Take away that, and you take away our all. This is not merely the most logical of theories, but the most unquestionable of facts. This great struggle is one between law and anarchy. The slaveholders mutiny against all government on this continent, because it has been irrevocably decided no further to extend slavery. Peaceful acquiescence in the withdrawal of the seven cotton States would have been followed by the secession of the remaining eight slave States, and probably by the border free States. Pennsylvania would have set up for itself. There would probably have been an attempt at a Western Confederacy, and the city of New York had already announced its intention of organizing itself into a free town, and was studying the constitutions of Frankfort and Hamburg.

In short, we had our choice to submit at once to dismemberment and national extinction at the command of the slavery oligarchy which has governed us for forty years, or to fight for our life. The war forced upon us by the slaveholders has at last been accepted, and it is amazing to me that its inevitable character and the absolute justice of our cause do not carry conviction to every unprejudiced mind. Those, of course, who believe with the Confederates that slavery is a blessing, and the most fitting corner-stone of a political edifice, will sympathize with their cause. But those who believe it to be a curse should, I think, sympathize with us, who, while circumscribing its limits and dethroning it as a political power, are endeavoring to maintain the empire of the American Constitution and the English common law over this great continent. This movement in which we now engage, and which Jefferson Davis thinks so ridiculous, is to me one of the most noble spectacles which I remember in history. Twenty millions of people have turned out as a great posse comitatus to enforce the laws over a mob of two or three millions, — not more, — led on by two or three dozen accomplished, daring, and reckless desperados. This is the way history will record this transaction, be the issue what it may; and if we had been so base as to consent to our national death without striking a blow, our epitaph would have been more inglorious than I hope it may prove to be.

Don't be too much cast down about Bull Run. In a military point of view it is of no very great significance. We have lost, perhaps, at the utmost, 1000 men, 2000 muskets, and a dozen cannon or so. There was a panic, it is true, and we feel ashamed, awfully mortified; but our men had fought four or five hours without flinching, against concealed batteries, at the cannon's mouth, under a blazing July Virginia sun, taking battery after battery, till they were exhausted with thirst, and their tongues were hanging out of their mouths. It was physically impossible for these advanced troops to fight longer, and the reserves were never brought up. So far I only say what is undisputed. The blame for the transaction cannot be fairly assigned till we get official accounts. As for the affair itself, the defeat was a foregone conclusion. If you read again the earlier part of my last letter, you will see that I anticipated, as did we all, that the grand attack on Manassas was to be made with McClellan's column, Patterson's and McDowell's combined. This would have given about 125,000 men. Instead of this, McDowell's advance with some 50,000 men, not onethird part of which were engaged, while the rebels had 100,000 within immediate reach of the scene of action. You will also see by the revelations made in Congress and in the New York “Times” that this has been purely a politician's battle. It is in a political point of view, not a military, that the recent disaster is most deplorable. The rebellion has of course gained credit by this repulse of our troops.

As for the Civil War, nothing could have averted it. It is the result of the forty years' aggression of the slavery power. Lincoln's election was a vote by a majority of every free State that slavery should go no further, and then the South dissolved the Union. Suppose we had acknowledged the Confederacy, there would have been war all the same. Whether we are called two confederacies or one, the question of slavery in the Territories has got to be settled by war, and so has the possession of the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. Even on the impossible theory that the United States continued to exist as a government after submitting without a struggle to dismemberment, still it would be obliged to fight for the rights of its four or five million of tonnage to navigate American waters.

In brief, the period has arrived for us, as it has often arrived for other commonwealths in history, when we must fight for national existence, or agree to be extinguished peaceably. I am not very desponding, although the present is gloomy. Perhaps the day will come ere long when we shall all of us, not absolutely incapacitated by age or sickness, be obliged to shoulder our rifles as privates in the ranks. At present there seems no lack of men. The reverse of last Sunday has excited the enthusiasm afresh, and the government receives new regiments faster than it can provide for them. As I am not fit to be an officer, being utterly without military talent or training, and as it is now decided that such responsible offices shall not be conferred except upon those who can bear an examination by competent military authorities, I am obliged to regret my want of early education in the only pursuit which is now useful. As to going abroad and immersing myself again in the sixteenth century, it is simply an impossibility. I can think of nothing but American affairs, and should be almost ashamed if it were otherwise.

A grim winter is before us. Gather your rosebuds while you may, is my advice to you, and engage your passages not before October. But having said this, I give you carte blanche, and let me know your decision when made. The war is to be a long one. We have no idea of giving in, and no doubt of ultimate triumph. Our disaster is nothing; our disgrace is great, and it must be long before it can be retrieved, because General Scott will now be free to pursue the deliberate plan which he had marked out when he was compelled by outside pressure to precipitate his raw levies against an overwhelming superiority of rebels in a fortified position.

A few days ago I went over to Quincy by appointment to dine with old Mr. Quincy. The dinner was very pleasant. Edmund was there, and very agreeable, with Professor Gould, and Mr. Waterston, and the ladies. The old gentleman, now in his ninetieth year, is straight as an arrow, with thirty-two beautiful teeth, every one his own, and was as genial and cordial as possible. He talked most agreeably on all the topics of the day, and after dinner discussed the political question in all its bearings with much acumen and with plenty of interesting historical reminiscences. He was much pleased with the messages I delivered to him from Lord Lyndhurst, and desired in return that I should transmit his most cordial and respectful regards. Please add mine to his, as well as to Lady Lyndhurst. when you have the privilege of seeing them. I was very sorry not to be able to accept young Mr. Adams's offered hospitality, but I had made arrangements to return to Nahant that night. Pray give my best regards to Mr. and Mrs. Adams. Last Saturday I went to Cambridge and visited Longfellow. He was in bed, with both hands tied up; but his burns are recovering, and his face will not be scarred, and he will not lose the use of either hand. He was serene and resigned, but dreaded going down-stairs into the desolate house. His children were going in and out of the room. He spoke of his wife, and narrated the whole tragedy very gently, and without any paroxysms of grief, although it was obvious that he felt himself a changed man. Holmes came in. We talked of general matters, and Longfellow was interested to listen to and speak of the news of the day and of the all-absorbing topic of the war.

The weather has been almost cloudless for the seven weeks that I have been at home — one blaze of sunshine. But the drought is getting to be alarming. It has hardly rained a drop since the first week in June. Fortunately, the charm seems now broken, and to-day there have been some refreshing showers, with a prospect of more. I dined on Saturday with Holmes. He is as charming, witty, and sympathetic as ever. I wish I could send you something better than this, but unless I should go to Washington again I don't see what I can write now that is worth reading. To-morrow I dine here with Wharton, who is unchanged, and desires his remembrances to you; and next day I dine with Lowell at Cambridge, where I hope to find Hawthorne, Holmes, and others. . . .

P. S.  Tell Tom Brown, with my kindest regards, that every one is reading him here with delight, and the dedication is especially grateful to our feelings. The Boston edition (I wish he had the copyright) has an uncommonly good likeness of him.

As for Wadsworth, I heard from several sources of his energy and pluck. Wharton has been in my room since I began this note. He had a letter from his sister, in which she says John Vennes, a servant (an Englishman) of theirs, who enlisted in the Sixty-ninth New York, had written to say that his master was the bravest of the brave, and that he was very proud of him as he saw him without his hat, and revolver in hand, riding about and encouraging the troops at the last moment to make a stand. I had a letter from Colonel Gordon the other day. He is at Harper's Ferry, and not at all discouraged by the results of the battle, in which of course he had no part. He says: “Our late check, it seems to me, is almost a victory. From seven to four did our brave troops face that deadly fire of artillery and infantry delivered from breastworks and hidden embrasures. Over and over again did they roll back the greatly outnumbering columns of the enemy, until at last, when a foolish panic seized them, they left the enemy in such a condition that he could not pursue them more than a mile and a half; so that one entire battery, which they might have had for the taking, was left all night on the field and finally returned to us again. Many such victories would depopulate the South, and from the victors there is no sound of joy. In Charleston, Virginia, at Harper's Ferry, and at Martinsburg they mourn the loss of many of their sons. Fewer in numbers, we were more than their match, and will meet them again.'”

In estimating the importance of this affair as to its bearings on the future, it should, I think, be never forgotten that the panic, whatever was its mysterious cause, was not the result of any overpowering onset of the enemy. It did not begin with the troops engaged.

Here we are not discouraged. The three months' men are nearly all of them going back again. Congress has voted 500,000 men and 5,000,000 of dollars; has put on an income tax of three per cent., besides raising twenty or thirty millions extra on tea, coffee, sugar, and other hitherto untaxed articles; and government securities are now as high in the market as they were before the late battle. . . .

J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 191-8

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, February 1, 1863

Shady Hill, 1 February, 1863.

Here is our prospectus. If at any time you want to secure a still wider circulation for any one of your articles than their appearance in "Harper" affords, please send me from one hundred to five hundred slips, which can be cheaply enough struck off if done before the form for the paper is broken up.

McClellan is still here, and has been causing people to break the Sabbath to-day. Agassiz is a devoted admirer of his, and said yesterday that “he was a great but not a towering man.” Dr. Holmes studying him physiologically talks of “broad base of brain,” “threshing floor of ideas,” no invention or original force of intellect, but compact, strong, executive nature, “with a neck such as not one man in ten thousand possesses,” “muscular as a prize-fighter,” etc., etc....

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 260

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: March 15, 1862

When we came home from Richmond, there stood Warren Nelson, propped up against my door, lazily waiting for me, the handsome creature. He said he meant to be heard, so I walked back with him to the drawing-room. They are wasting their time dancing attendance on me. I can not help them. Let them shoulder their musket and go to the wars, like men.

After tea came “Mars Kit” —he said for a talk, but that Mr. Preston would not let him have, for Mr. Preston had arrived some time before him. Mr. Preston said “Mars Kit” thought it “bad form” to laugh. After that you may be sure a laugh from “Mars Kit” was secured. Again and again, he was forced to laugh with a will. I reversed Oliver Wendell Holmes's good resolution — never to be as funny as he could. I did my very utmost.

Mr. Venable interrupted the fun, which was fast and furious, with the very best of bad news! Newbern shelled and burned, cotton, turpentine—everything. There were 5,000 North Carolinians in the fray, 12,000 Yankees. Now there stands Goldsboro. One more step and we are cut in two. The railroad is our backbone, like the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, with which it runs parallel. So many discomforts, no wonder we are down-hearted.

Mr. Venable thinks as we do — Garnett is our most thorough scholar; Lamar the most original, and the cleverest of our men — L. Q. C. Lamar — time fails me to write all his name. Then, there is R. M. T. Hunter. Muscoe Russell Garnett and his Northern wife: that match was made at my house in Washington when Garnett was a member of the United States Congress.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 143

John Lothrop Motley to Mary Benjamin Motley, July 11, 1861

Nahant, July 11, 1861.

My Dearest Mary: I write you this line only to tell you of a most dreadful and heartrending calamity which has thrown this community into mourning. Mrs. Longfellow was burned to death the day before yesterday. She was making seals for the amusement of her younger children in her house at Cambridge, when the upper part of her thin muslin dress caught fire, and in an instant she was all in flames. Longfellow was in the next room. Hearing the shrieks of the children, he flew to her assistance, and seizing a rug, held it around her, and although she broke away from him, attempting to run from the danger, — as persons in such cases seem invariably to do, — he succeeded at last in extinguishing the fire, but not until she was fatally injured. She lingered through the night, attended by several physicians, and expired yesterday forenoon about half-past ten, July 10. I understand that, through the influence of ether, her sufferings were not very intense after the immediate catastrophe, and that she was unconscious for a good while before she died. Longfellow was severely burned in the hands, but not dangerously; but he, too, has been kept under the effects of ether, and is spoken of as in almost a raving condition.

I have not had the heart to make any inquiries, but think that on Saturday I will try to see Mrs. Appleton. It is not more than five or six days since I was calling upon Mr. Appleton, who has so long been dying by inches, and who will look less like death than he does now when he shall have breathed his last. F— was there, and greeted me most affectionately, making the kindest inquiries after you; she never looked more beautiful, or seemed happier, and Longfellow was, as he always is, genial and kind and gentle. I should have stayed with them probably during commencement week at Cambridge, and was looking forward with great pleasure to being with them for a little while. There is something almost too terrible to reflect upon in this utterly trivial way in which this noble, magnificent woman has been put to a hideous death. When you hear of a shipwreck, or a stroke of lightning, or even a railway accident, the mind does not shrink appalled from the contemplation of the tragedy so utterly as it now does, from finding all this misery resulting from such an almost invisible cause — a drop of sealing-wax on a muslin dress. Deaths in battle are telegraphed to us hourly, and hosts of our young men are marching forth to mortal combat day by day, but these are in the natural course of events. Fate, acting on its large scale, has decreed that a great war shall rage, and we are prepared for tragedies, and we know that those who fall have been discharging the highest of duties. But what compensation or consolation is there for such a calamity as this?

I was with Holmes at the Parker House when the news was brought to us. We had gone to see the Greenes (William), with whom we were speaking in the hall. Holmes wanted a commission in Greene's regiment for his son Wendell in case he finds Lee's list completed. We both burst into tears, and did nothing more that morning about military matters; Holmes is, however, going out to see Lee to-morrow morning at his camp at Readville, and will doubtless obtain a lieutenancy under him for his son. Wendell is a very fine fellow, graduating this commencement, but he can't be kept in college any longer. He will get his degree, and is one of the first scholars in his class, but, like nearly all the young men, he has been drilling for months long in one of the various preparatory home battalions, and is quite competent for the post he wishes; but there are so many applicants for these commissions that even such a conspicuous youth as he is not sure of getting one immediately.

God bless you, dearest Mary, and my dear children. In great haste,

Affectionately yours,

J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 172-4

John Lothrop Motley to Mary Benjamin Motley, July 1, 1861

Boston, July 1, 1861.

My Dearest Mary: This is only a note, because I would not let the steamer from New York of day after to-morrow go without a greeting from me. There is absolutely nothing new in the political world since I wrote last. By the way, by the midweek steamer I sent rather a lengthy epistle to the Duke of Argyll, which I hope that he will pardon in two respects — first, its unconscionable length, and, secondly, for talking very plainly about the state of public feeling here. I felt that I could not pay a higher compliment to his intellect and his candor than to make a kind of general statement, without mincing matters.

I told Lord Lyons in Washington that I had appointed myself a peace commissioner between the two countries, and meant to discharge my duties to the fullest extent, and in that vein I had spoken to the President, to Seward, Chase, Blair, and Bates, and to every other personage, private or public, with whom I came in contact . Of course I only said this in jest, — for I have no idea of exaggerating my humble individuality, — but he was kind enough to say that he thought I might do much good.

I think, however, that the day for talk is gone by — England had made up its mind that we had gone to pieces. When she learns, what we are thoroughly convinced of here, that the United States government is invincible, and that this insurrection is to be quelled, as it will be within a year, she will cease to talk of Northern and Southern States, and will find out that the great Republic is still existing one and indivisible. Our case has always been understated. We have a good cause, and no intention of “subjugation,” which, like the ridiculous words “secession” and “coercion,” has been devised to affect the minds of the vulgar. The United States government is at home on its own soil in every State from Maine to California, and is about asserting the rights of property and dominion.

General Scott says that the general impatience is the greatest obstacle in his way; but he is a cool hand and a tried one, and he will give a good account of himself, never fear. The rebels never dreamed of the intense feeling of nationality which pervaded the free States. They thought to have a united South and a divided North; they find exactly the reverse. Slavery will be never extended, and the United States government will survive this crisis and be stronger than ever. Pray give my kindest regards to Lord Lyndhurst and her Ladyship; say that I mean to have the pleasure of writing to him very soon. Mrs. Greene is very well; I have a kind note from Miss Sarah Greene, asking me to dine to-morrow, and I shall do so if I can get up from Nahant. I go there now; my mother is already better for the sea air. I have received all your letters up to the 12th of June. They are most delightful to me, and I have read them all again and again. The family of course have seen them, and I lent them to the Lodges and Mr. Cabot. They go to Newport to-day — what an awful disappointment to me! The first summer that they have not been at Nahant for so many years is the one I am passing there.

While I am writing, Copley Greene and James Amory have been here; Amory showed me a note from Lord Lyndhurst. I have also seen Miss Greene, and agreed to dine with her mother next week instead of this. Saturday we had a delightful club dinner: Agassiz, who was as delightful as ever, and full of the kindest expressions of appreciation and affection for Lily, and Holmes, who is absolutely unchanged, which is the very highest praise that could be given; Lowell, Pierce, Tom Appleton, Dana, Longfellow, Whipple. There were three absent, Felton, Emerson, and Hawthorne, and it says something for a club in which three such vacancies don't make a desolation.

Nahant. I am finishing this note to-night at N–––'s, as I must send it by to-morrow's early boat. My mother is looking better than usual. I have been on the Agassizes' piazza just now. He was not there, but will come to-morrow. Mrs. Agassiz and Mrs. Felton both looked very natural and nice and gentle, and had a thousand kind things to say of you and Lily. Most affectionately yours,

J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 161-4

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

31 Hertford Street,

March 15, 1861.

My Dearest 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 labor, 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 toward the United States, and they are much more likely to recognize 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 favor 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, grayish, and very expressive. He wears a mustache and beard, and dresses at dinner in exactly the same uniform which every man in London or the civilized 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 sat 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 agreeable.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 117-21

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to John Lothrop Motley, February 16, 1861

Boston, February 16, 1861.

My Dear Motley: It is a pleasing coincidence for me that the same papers which are just announcing your great work are telling our little world that it can also purchase, if so disposed, my modest two-volume story. You must be having a respite from labor. You will smile when I tell you that I have my first vacation since you were with us, — when was it? in ’57? — but so it is. It scares me to look on your labors, when I remember that I have thought it something to write an article once a month for the “Atlantic Monthly”; that is all I have to show, or nearly all, for three and a half years, and in the meantime you have erected your monument, more perennial than bronze, in these two volumes of alto-relievo. I will not be envious, but I must wonder — wonder at the mighty toils undergone to quarry the ore before the mold could be shaped and the metal cast. I know you must meet your signal and unchallenged success with little excitement, for you know too well the price that has been paid for it. A man does not give away the best years of a manhood like yours without knowing that his plant has got to pay for his outlay. You have won the name and fame you must have foreseen were to be the accidents of your career. I hope, as you partake the gale with your illustrious brethren, you are well ballasted with those other accidents of successful authorship.

I am thankful for your sake that you are out of this wretched country. There was never anything in our experience that gave any idea of it before. Not that we have had any material suffering as yet. Our factories have been at work, and our dividends have been paid. Society — in Boston, at least — has been nearly as gay as usual. I had a few thousand dollars to raise to pay for my house in Charles Street, and sold my stocks for more than they cost me. We have had predictions, to be sure, that New England was to be left out in the cold if a new confederacy was formed, and that the grass was to grow in the streets of Boston. But prophets are at a terrible discount in these times, and, in spite of their predictions, Merrimac sells at 1125. It is the terrible uncertainty of everything — most of all the uncertainty of opinion of men. I had almost said of principles. From the impracticable abolitionist, as bent on total separation from the South as Carolina is on secession from the North, to the hunker, or submissionist, or whatever you choose to call the wretch who would sacrifice everything and beg the South's pardon for offending it, you find all shades of opinion in our streets. If Mr. Seward or Mr. Adams moves in favor of compromise, the whole Republican party sways like a field of grain before the breath of either of them. If Mr. Lincoln says he shall execute the laws and collect the revenue though the heavens cave in, the backs of the Republicans stiffen again, and they take down the old revolutionary king's arms, and begin to ask whether they can be altered to carry Minie bullets.

In the meantime, as you know very well, a monstrous conspiracy has been hatching for nobody knows how long, barely defeated in its first great move by two occurrences —Major Anderson's retreat to Fort Sumter, and the exposure of the great defalcations. The expressions of popular opinion in Virginia and Tennessee have encouraged greatly those who hope for union on the basis of a compromise; but this evening's news seems to throw doubt on the possibility of the North and the border States ever coming to terms; and I see in this same evening's paper the threat thrown out that if the Southern ports are blockaded fifty regiments will be set in motion for Washington! Nobody knows, everybody guesses. Seward seems to be hopeful. I had a long talk with Banks; he fears the formation of a powerful Southern military empire, which will give us trouble. Mr. Adams predicts that the Southern Confederacy will be an ignominious failure.

A Cincinnati pamphleteer, very sharp and knowing, shows how pretty a quarrel they will soon get up among themselves. There is no end to the shades of opinion. Nobody knows where he stands but Wendell Phillips and his out-and-outers. Before this political cataclysm we were all sailing on as quietly and harmoniously as a crew of your good Dutchmen in a trekschuit. The club has flourished greatly, and proved to all of us a source of the greatest delight. I do not believe there ever were such agreeable periodical meetings in Boston as these we have had at Parker's. We have missed you, of course, but your memory and your reputation were with us. The magazine which you helped to give a start to has prospered since its transfer to Ticknor and Fields. I suppose they may make something directly by it, and as an advertising medium it is a source of great indirect benefit to them. No doubt you will like to hear in a few words about its small affairs. I don't believe that all the Oxfords and Institutes can get the local recollections out of you. I suppose I have made more money and reputation out of it than anybody else, on the whole. I have written more than anybody else, at any rate. Miss Prescott's stories have made her quite a name. Wentworth Higginson's articles have also been very popular. Lowell's critical articles and political ones are always full of point, but he has been too busy as editor to write a great deal. As for the reputations that were toutes faites, I don't know that they have gained or lost a great deal by what their owners have done for the “Atlantic.” But oh, such a belaboring as I have had from the so-called “Evangelical” press for the last two or three years, almost without intermission! There must be a great deal of weakness and rottenness when such extreme bitterness is called out by such a good-natured person as I can claim to be in print. It is a new experience to me, but is made up by a great amount of sympathy from men and women, old and young, and such confidences and such sentimental épanchements that if my private correspondence is ever aired I shall pass for a more questionable personage than my domestic record can show me to have been.

Come, now, why should I talk to you of anything but yourself and that wonderful career of well-deserved and hardly won success which you have been passing through since I waved my handkerchief to you as you slid away from the wharf at East Boston? When you write to me, as you will one of these days, I want to know how you feel about your new possession, a European name. I should like very much, too, to hear something of your every-day experiences of English life, how you like the different classes of English people you meet — the scholars, the upper class, and the average folk that you may have to deal with. You know that, to a Bostonian, there is nothing like a Bostonian's impression of a new people or mode of life. We all carry the Common in our heads as the unit of space, the State House as the standard of architecture, and measure off men in Edward Everetts as with a yardstick. I am ashamed to remember how many scrolls of half an hour's scribblings we might have exchanged with pleasure on one side, and very possibly with something of it on the other. I have heard so much of Miss Lily's praises that I should be almost afraid of her if I did not feel sure that she would inherit a kindly feeling to her father and mother's old friend. Do remember me to your children; and as for your wife, who used to be Mary once, and I have always found it terribly hard work to make anything else of, tell her how we all long to see her good, kind face again. Give me some stray half-hour, and believe me always your friend,

O. W. Holmes

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 113-7

George William Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, February 6, 1863

February 6, 1863.

Why should Dr. Holmes trouble himself about the base of McClellan's brain? McClellan has nothing to do with all this McClellanization of the public mind. The reaction requires a small Democrat with great military prestige for its presidential candidate. The new programme, you know, is a new conservative party of Republicans and Democrats, and all mankind except Abolitionists. It will work, I think, for as a party we have broken down. I blame nobody. It was inevitable. The “Tribune,” through the well-meaning mistakes of Greeley, has been forced to take (in the public mind, which is the point) the position of W. Phillips, — the Union if possible, emancipation anyhow. As a practical political position that is not tenable. If, by any hocus-pocus, the war order of emancipation should be withdrawn, we should be lost forever, beyond McClellan's power, assisted by John Van Buren, the “Boston Courier” and “Post” and the “New York Herald,” to save us. There's nothing for us but to go forward and save all we can.

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 161

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

Boston, April 29, 1860.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oatlands Park Hotel, Walton-on-Thames,

March 29, 1860.

My Dear Wendell: I am not going to make one word of apology for my long silence. If you will forgive it and write me again at once, I promise faithfully that I will write to you as often as once a quarter if you will do the same. I cannot do without letters from you, and although I have a special dislike to writing them myself, I am willing to bore you for the sake of the reward. I really believe that you are the only one of my friends to whom I have not expressed in rapturous terms the delight with which I have read and re-read your “Autocrat.” We were quite out of the way of getting the “Atlantic” in our foreign residences—in Nice, Switzerland, and Rome. But one day after it had been collected into a volume some traveler lent it to us, and we carefully forgot to return it — a petty larceny combined with breach of trust which I have never regretted, for no one could appreciate it more highly than I, in the first place, and then all my family. It is really even better than I expected it to be, and that is saying much, for you know how high were my anticipations, and if you do not, poor Phillips, now no more, who always so highly appreciated you, could have told you how surely and how often I predicted your great and inevitable success. The “Autocrat” is an inseparable companion, and will live, I think, as long certainly as anything which we have turned out on our side. It is of the small and rare class to which Montaigne's “Essays,” “Elia,” and one or two other books belong, which one wishes to have forever under one's thumb. Every page is thoughtful, suggestive, imaginative, didactic, witty, stimulating, grotesque, arabesque, titillating — in short, I could string together all the adjectives in the dictionary without conveying to you an adequate expression of my admiration.

In order that you shall not think me merely a devourer and not an appreciator, I will add that the portions which give me the most pleasure are those, by far the largest, which are grave, earnest, and profound, and that the passages least to my mind are those which in college days would have most highly delighted me, viz., the uproariously funny ones. But, as Touchstone observes, “we that have good wits cannot hold, we must be flouting,” and I do not expect to bottle you up. I have not the book at my elbow at this moment, and am too lazy to go down-stairs to fetch it, but, as an illustration of what I most enjoy, take such a passage as about our brains being clockwork. I remember nothing of the diction at this instant, but the whole train of thought is very distinct to me. Also the bucketful of fresh and startling metaphors which the Autocrat empties on the head of the divinity student in return for his complimentary language as to the power of seeing analogies. Also — but I shall never get any further in this letter if I once begin to quote the “Autocrat,” so I will only add that I admire many of the poems, especially “The Voiceless,” which I am never tired of repeating. It is scarcely necessary for me to add that it is always with a deep sensation of pride and pleasure that I turn to page 28 and read the verses therein inscribed. Strange to say, I have not yet read “The Professor at the Breakfast-Table.” I tried to buy it the other day at Sampson Low's, one of the chief American republishers or importers, but he said that it had been done by (gentlemen who have, among others, done me the same favor).

Is there no chance of ever getting an international copyright bill and hanging these filibusters, who are legally picking the pockets of us poor-devil authors, who would fain become rich devils if we could? Why do you not make use of your strong position, having the whole American public by the button, to make it listen to reason? If I were an autocrat like you, I would issue an edict immediately. Or I would have a little starling that should say nothing but “Copyright” and let the public hear nothing else. Let me not omit to mention also with how much pleasure I read your poem on Burns. It is magnificent, and every verse rings most sympathetically upon the heart. So you see we do not lose the run of you, although I have been so idle about writing, and I am promising myself much pleasure from “The Professor at the Breakfast-Table,” which I shall have sent to me from Boston. By the way, I bagged the other day a splendid presentation copy of the “Autocrat,” which you had sent to Trübner for some one else, and I gave it to Mrs. Norton (of whom you have heard often enough, and who is a poet herself), who admires it as much as I do. I do not know whether I shall like the novel as well as your other readers are likely to do, because the discursive, irresponsible, vagrant way of writing which so charms me in the “Autocrat” is hardly in place in a narrative, and, for myself, I always find, to my regret, that I grow every year less and less capable of reading novels or romances. I wish it were not so. However, I doubt not you will reclaim me, but I do not mean to read it until it is finished.

I have not a great deal to talk about now that I find myself face to face with you. We have been, by stress of circumstances rather than choice, driven to England, and we have seen a great deal of English society, both in town and country. We have received much kindness and sat at many “good men's feasts”; and I must say that I have, as I always had, a warm affection for England and the English. I have been awfully hard at work for the last year and a half, with unlucky intermissions and loss of time, but I hope to publish a couple of bulky volumes by the beginning of next year. There is a cartload of MS. already in Murray's hands, but I do not know how soon we shall begin to print.

I wish when you write — and you see that I show a generous confidence in your generosity by assuming that you will write notwithstanding my delinquencies — you would tell me what is going on in your literary world, and also something about politics. One can get but little from the newspapers; but I should really like to know what chance there is of the country's being rescued from the government which now oppresses us. But I forget, perhaps you are not a Republican, although I can hardly conceive of your being anything else. With regard to my views and aspirations, I can only say that if Seward is not elected (provided he be the candidate) this autumn, good night, my native land! I admire his speech, and agree with almost every word he says, barring of course the little sentimentality about the affection we all feel for the South, which, I suppose, is very much like the tenderness of Shylock — “Kind sir, you spat on me on Thursday last, you spurned me such a day, and another time you called me dog, and for these courtesies,” etc., etc. However, if Mr. Seward thinks it worth while to stir in a little saccharine of this sort, he knows best. The essential is to get himself nominated and elected. Now please write and tell me what the chances are, always provided you agree with me, but not if you are for the pro-slavery man, whoever he may be. I have not yet succeeded in suppressing Louis Napoleon, who bamboozles the English cabinet and plays his fantastic tricks before high heaven with more impunity than ever. Of a truth it may be said now, — three hundred years ago it was uttered by one of the most illustrious of her sons, — “Gallia silvescit.” What can be more barbarous than the condition of a country relapsed of its own choice under a military despot?

Pray remember us most kindly to your wife and children, and believe me always

Most sincerely yours,

J. L. Motley.

Pray remember me most affectionately to all the fellows at the club.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 81-5

Diary of Reverend James Freeman Clarke: October 21, 1861

Battle of Edwards' Ferry [Ball's Bluff]. Took telegram to Dr. Holmes about his son.

SOURCE: Edwin Everett Hale, Editor, James Freeman Clarke: Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence, p. 273

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to Reverend James Freeman Clarke, October 24, 1862

October 24, 1862.

MY DEAR JAMES, — I received your circular for a meeting of the “Protective War-Claim Association” last week, and now I have a new one, which I feel bound to answer.

I go very little to Society and Club meetings. Some feel more of a call that way, others less; I among the least.

I hate the calling of meetings to order. I hate the nomination of officers, always fearing lest I should be appointed Secretary. I hate being placed on committees. They are always having meetings at which half are absent and the rest late. I hate being officially and necessarily in the presence of men most of whom, either from excessive zeal in the good cause or from constitutional obtuseness, are incapable of being bored, which state is to me the most exhausting of all conditions, absorbing more of my life than any kind of active exertion I am capable of performing.

I am slow in apprehending parliamentary rules and usages, averse to the business details many persons revel in; and I am not in love with most of the actively stirring people whom one is apt to meet in all associations for doing good.

Some trees grow very tall and straight and large in the forest close to each other, but some must stand by themselves or they won’t grow at all. Ever since I used to go to the “Institute of 1770” and hear Bob Rantoul call members to order, and to the “Euphradian,” where our poor Loring used to be eloquent about Effie Deans, I have recognized an inaptitude, not to say ineptitude, belonging to me in connection with all such proceedings.

“What if everybody talked in this way?” The Lord arranges his averages in such a way that to every one person like myself there are two or three organizing, contriving, socializing intelligences, and three or four self-sacrificing people, who have forgotten what they like and what they hate by nature, and about a dozen good indifferent folks that will take part in anything they are asked to.

Now look at it, dear James, Father Confessor, Good Shepherd. I have just sent off a long article for the December Atlantic, and that puts off my introductory lecture — (which I promised to write for H. J . Bigelow, who was sick) — and on that lecture I want to be at work at 10.30 to-morrow, when your meeting is. I like to stir up my doctors with wholesome fresh thought; and to arrange that takes time, and as I have but a little over a week for it I don’t want to go and sweat a forenoon away in doing what some of your committee will find a pleasant excitement, but what will vex and fret and drain my nerves more than to write an anniversary poem —which is itself a short fever.

This note is personal to you because I had a mind to tell you how alien associated action is to my tastes and habits, and because I knew you would take the trouble to read and understand it.

SOURCE: John T. Morse Jr., Life and letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Volume 1, p. 305-7