John Brown to Franklin B. Sanborn et al, July 23, 1858

July 23. Since the previous date another Free-State Missourian has been over to see us, who reports great excitement on the other side of the line, and that the house of Mr. Bishop (the man who fled to us) was beset during the night after he left, but on finding he was not there they left. Yesterday a proslavery man from West Point, Missouri, came over, professing that he wanted to buy Bishop's farm. I think he was a spy. He reported all quiet on the other side. At present, along this part of the line, the Free-State men may be said, in some sense, to “possess the field;” but we deem it wise to “be on the alert.” Whether Missouri people are more excited through fear than otherwise, I am not yet prepared to judge. The blacksmith (Snyder) has got his family back; also some others have returned, and a few new settlers are coming in. Those who fled or were driven off will pretty much lose the season. Since we came here about twenty-five or thirty of Governor Denver's men have moved a little nearer to the line, I believe.

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 476

John Brown to Theodore Parker, March 7, 1858

Boston, Mass., March 7, 1858.

My Dear Sir, — Since you know I have an almost countless brood of poor hungry chickens to “scratch for,” you will not reproach me for scratching even on the Sabbath. At any rate, I trust God will not. I want you to undertake to provide a substitute for an address you saw last season, directed to the officers and soldiers of the United States Army. The ideas contained in that address I of course like, for I furnished the skeleton. I never had the ability to clothe those ideas in language at all to satisfy myself; and I was by no means satisfied with the style of that address, and do not know as I can give any correct idea of what I want. I will, however, try.

In the first place it must be short, or it will not be generally read. It must be in the simplest or plainest language, without the least affectation of the scholar about it, and yet be worded with great clearness and power. The anonymous writer must (in the language of the Paddy) be “afther others,” and not “afther himself at all, at all.” If the spirit that communicated Franklin's Poor Richard (or some other good spirit) would dictate, I think it would be quite as well employed as the “dear sister spirits” have been for some years past. The address should be appropriate, and particularly adapted to the peculiar circumstances we anticipate, and should look to the actual change of service from that of Satan to the service of God. It should be, in short, a most earnest and powerful appeal to men's sense of right and to their feelings of humanity. Soldiers are men. and no man can certainly calculate the value and importance of getting a single “nail into old Captain Kidd's chest.” It should be provided beforehand, and be ready in advance to distribute by all persons, male and female, who may be disposed to favor the right.

I also want a similar short address, appropriate to the peculiar circumstances, intended for all persons, old and young, male, and female, slaveholding and non-slaveholding, to be sent out broadcast over the entire nation. So by every male and female prisoner on being set at liberty, and to be read by them during confinement. I know that men will listen, and reflect too, under such circumstances. Persons will hear your antislavery lectures and abolition lectures when they have become virtually slaves themselves. The impressions made on prisoners by kindness and plain dealing, instead of barbarous and cruel treatment, such as they might give, and instead of being slaughtered like wild reptiles, as they might very naturally expect, are not only powerful but lasting. Females are susceptible of being carried away entirely by the kindness of an intrepid and magnanimous soldier, even when his bare name was but a terror the day previous.¹ Now, dear sir, I have told you about as well as I know how, what I am anxious at once to secure. Will you write the tracts, or get them written, so that I may commence colporteur?

Very respectfully your friend,

John Brown.

P. S. If I should never see you again, please drop me a line (enclosed to Stephen Smith, Esq., Lombard Street, Philadelphia), at once, saying what you will encourage me to expect. You are at liberty to make any prudent use of this to stir up any friend.

Yours for the right,

J. B.

_______________

¹ A Kansas newspaper said in 1859: “At the sacking of Osawatomie one of the most bitter proslavery men in Lykins County was killed. His name was Ed. Timmons. Sometime afterward Brown stopped at the loghouse where Timmons had lived. His widow and children were there, and in great destitution. He inquired into their wants, relieved their distresses, and supported them until their friends in Missouri, informed through Brown of the condition of Mrs. Timmons, had time to come to her and carry her to her former home. Mrs. Timmons fully appreciated the great kindness thus shown her, but never learned that John Brown was her benefactor.”

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 448-9

John L. Motley to Mary Lothrop Motley, December 1862

Vienna, December, 1862.

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

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

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

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

Ever your most affectionate

Papagei.

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

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

Vienna,

December 22, 1862.

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

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

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

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

Ever your affectionate son,

J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 299-301

Speech of James Henry Hammond: March 4, 1858

ON THE ADMISSION OF KANSAS, UNDER THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION. DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 4, 1858.

The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, having under consideration the bill for the admission of the State of Kansas in the Union — Mr. Hammond said:

Mr. President: In the debate which occurred in the early part of the last month, I understood the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas) to say that the question of the reception of the Lecompton Constitution was narrowed down to a single point. That point was, whether that constitution embodied the will of the people of Kansas. Am I correct?

Mr. Douglas. The Senator is correct, with this qualification: I could waive the irregularity and agree to the reception of Kansas into the Union under the Lecompton Constitution, provided I was satisfied that it was the act and deed of that people, and embodied their will. There are other objections; but the others I could overcome, if this point were disposed of.

Mr. Hammond. I so understood the Senator. I understood that if he could be satisfied that this Constitution embodied the will of the people of Kansas, all other defects and irregularities could be cured by the act of Congress, and that he himself would be willing to permit such an act to be passed.

Now, sir, the only question is, how is that will to be ascertained, and upon that point, and that only, shall we differ. In my opinion the will of the people of Kansas is to be sought in the act of her lawful convention elected to form a Constitution, and no where else; and that it is unconstitutional and dangerous to seek it elsewhere. I think that the Senator fell into a fundamental error in his report dissenting from the report of the majority of the territorial committee, when he said that the convention which framed this Constitution was “the creature of the Territorial Legislature;” and from that one error has probably arisen all his subsequent errors on this subject.

How can it be possible that a convention should be the creature of a Territorial Legislature? The convention was an assembly of the people in their highest sovereign capacity, about to perform their highest possible act of sovereignty. The Territorial Legislature is a mere provisional government; a petty corporation, appointed and paid by the Congress of the United States, without a particle of sovereign power. Shall such a body interefere with a sovereignty — inchoate, but still a sovereignty? Why, Congress cannot interfere; Congress cannot confer on the Territorial Legislature the power to interfere. Congress itself is not sovereign. Congress has sovereign powers, but no sovereignty. Congress has no power to act outside of the limitations of the Constitution; no right to carry into effect the Supreme Will of any people, and, therefore, Congress is not sovereign. Nor does Congress hold the sovereignty of Kansas. The sovereignty of Kansas resides, if it resides anywhere, with the sovereign States of this Union. They have conferred upon Congress, among other powers, that to administer such sovereignty to their satisfaction. They have given Congress the power to make needful rules and regulations regarding the Territories, and they have given it power to admit a State — “admit” not create. Under these two powers, Congress may first establish a provisional territorial government merely for municipal purposes; and when a State has grown into rightful sovereignty, when that sovereignty which has been kept in abeyance demands recognition, when a community is formed there, a social compact established, a sovereignty born as it were on the soil, then to Congress is granted the power to acknowledge it, and the Legislature, only by mere usage, sometimes neglected, assists at the birth of it by passing a precedent resolution assembling a convention.

But when that convention assembles to form a Constitution, it assembles in the highest known capacity of a people, and has no superior in this Government but a State sovereignty; or rather only the State sovereignties of all the States, acting by their established Constitutional agent the General Government, can do anything with the act of that convention. Then if that convention was lawful, if there is no objection to the convention itself, there can be no objection to the action of the convention; and there is no power on earth that has a right to inquire, outside of its acts, whether the convention represented the will of the people of Kansas or not, for a convention of the people is, according to the theory of our Government, for all the purposes for which the people elected it, the people, bona fide, being the only way in which all the people can assemble and act together. I do not doubt that there might be some cases of such gross and palpable frauds committed in the formation of a convention, as might authorize Congress to investigate them, but I can scarcely conceive of any. And when a State knocks at the door for admission, Congress can with propriety do little more than inquire if her Constitution is republican. That it embodies the will of her people must necessarily be taken for granted, if it is their lawful act. I am assuming, of course, that her boundaries are settled, and her population sufficient.

If what I have said be correct, then the will of the people of Kansas is to be found in the action of her constitutional convention. It is immaterial whether it is the will of a majority of the people of Kansas now, or not. The convention was, or might have been, elected by a majority of the people of Kansas. A convention, elected in June, might well frame a Constitution that would not be agreeable to a majority of the people of a new State, rapidly filling up, in the succeeding January; and if Legislatures are to be allowed to put to vote the acts of a convention, and have them annulled by a subsequent influx of immigrants, there is no finality. If you were to send back the Lecompton Constitution, and another was to be framed, in the slow way in which we do public business in this country, before it would reach Congress and be accepted, perhaps the majority would be turned the other way. Whenever you go outside of the regular forms of law and constitutions to seek for the will of the people you are wandering in a wilderness — a wilderness of thorns.

If this was a minority constitution I do not know that that would be an objection to it. Constitutions are made for minorities. Perhaps minorities ought to have the right to make constitutions, for they are administered by majorities. The Constitution of this Government was made by a minority, and as late as 1840 a minority had it in their hands, and could have altered or abolished it; for, in 1840, six out of the twenty-six States of the Union held the numerical majority.

The Senator from Illinois has, upon his view of the Lecompton Constitution and the present situation of affairs in Kansas, raised a cry of “popular sovereignty.” The Senator from New York (Mr. Seward) yesterday made himself facetious about it, and called it, “squatter sovereignty.” There is a popular sovereignty which is the basis of our Government, and I am unwilling that the Senator should have the advantage of confounding it with “squatter sovereignty.” In all countries and in all time, it is well understood that the numerical majority of the people could, if they chose, exercise the sovereignty of the country; but for want of intelligence, and for want of leaders, they have never yet been able successfully to combine and form a stable, popular government. They have often attempted it, but it has always turned out, instead of a popular sovereignty, a populace sovereignty; and demagogues, placing themselves upon the movement, have invariably led them into military despotism.

I think that the popular sovereignty which the Senator from Illinois would derive from the acts of his Territorial Legislature, and from the information received from partisans and partisan presses, would lead us directly into populace, and not popular sovereignty. Genuine popular sovereignty never existed on a firm basis except in this country. The first gun of the Revolution announced a new organization of it which was embodied in the Declaration of Independence, developed, elaborated, and inaugurated forever in the Constitution of the United States. The two pillars of it were Representation and the Ballot-box. In distributing their sovereign powers among various Departments of the Government, the people retained for themselves the single power of the ballot-box; and a great power it was. Through that they were able to control all the Departments of the Government. It was not for the people to exercise political power in detail; it was not for them to be annoyed with the cares of Government; but, from time to time, through the ballot-box, it was for them — enough — to exert their sovereign power and control the whole organization. This is popular sovereignty, the popular sovereignty of a legal constitutional ballot-box; and when spoken through that box, the “voice of the people,” which for all political purposes, “is the voice of God;” but when it is heard outside of that, it is the voice of a demon, the tocsin of a reign of terror.

In passing I omitted to answer a question that the Senator from Illinois has, I believe, repeatedly asked; and that is, what were the legal powers of the Territorial Legislature after the formation and adoption of the Lecompton Constitution? The Kansas Convention had nothing to do with the Territorial Legislature, which was a provisional government almost without power, appointed and paid by this Government. The Lecompton Constituton was the act of a people, and the sovereign act of a people legally assembled in convention. The two bodies moved in different spheres and on different planes, and could not come in contact at all without usurpation on the one part or the other. It was not competent for the Lecompton Constitution to overturn the territorial government and set up a government in place of it, because that Constitution, until acknowledged by Congress, was nothing; it was not in force anywhere. It could well require the people of Kansas to pass upon it or any portion of it; it could do whatever was necessary to perfect that Constitution, but nothing beyond that, until Congress had agreed to accept it. In the mean time the territorial government, always a government ad interim, was entitled to exercise all the sway over the Territory that it ever had been entitled to. The error of assuming, as the Senator did, that the convention was the creature of the territorial government, has led him into the difficulty and confusion resulting from connecting these two governments together. There was no power to govern in the convention until after the adoption by Congress of its Constitution, and then it was of course defunct.

As the Senator from Illinois, whom I regard as the Ajax Telamon of this debate, does not press the question of frauds, I shall have little or nothing to say about them. The whole history of Kansas is a disgusting one, from the beginning to the end. I have avoided reading it as much as I could. Had I been a Senator before, I should have felt it my duty, perhaps, to have done so; but not expecting to be one, I am ignorant, fortunately, in a great measure, of details; and I was glad to hear the acknowledgement of the Senator from Illinois, since it excuses me from the duty of examining them.

I hear, on the other side of the Chamber, a great deal said about “gigantic and stupendous frauds;” and the Senator from New York, in portraying the character of his party and the opposite one, laid the whole of those frauds upon the pro-slavery party. To listen to him, you would have supposed that the regiments of immigrants recruited in the purlieus of the great cities of the North, and sent out, armed and equipped with Sharpe's rifles and bowie knives and revolvers, to conquer freedom for Kansas, stood by, meek saints, innocent as doves, and harmless as lambs brought up to the sacrifice. General Lane's lambs! They remind one of the famous “lambs” of Colonel Kirke, to whom they have a strong family resemblance. I presume that there were frauds; and that if there were frauds, they were equally great on all sides; and that any investigation into them on this floor, or by a commission, would end in nothing but disgrace to the United States.

But, sir, the true object of the discussion on the other side of the Chamber, is to agitate the question of slavery. I have very great doubts whether the leaders on the other side really wish to defeat this bill. I think they would consider it a vastly greater victory to crush out the Democratic party in the North, and destroy the authors of the Kansas-Nebraska bill; and I am not sure that they have not brought about this imbroglio for the very purpose. They tell us that year after year the majority in Kansas was beaten at the polls! They have always had a majority, but they always get beaten! How could that be? It does seem, from the most reliable sources of information, that they have a majority, and have had a majority for some time. Why has not this majority come forward and taken possession of the government, and made a free-State constitution and brought it here? We should all have voted for its admission cheerfully. There can be but one reason: if they had brought, as was generally supposed at the time the Kansas-Nebraska act was passed would be the case, a free-State constitution here, there would have been no difficulty among the northern Democrats; they would have been sustained by their people. The statement made by some of them, as I understood, that that act was a good free-State act, would have been verified, and the northern Democratic party would have been sustained. But Kansas coming here a slave State, it is hoped will kill that party, and that is the reason they have refrained from going to the polls; that is the reason they have refrained from making it a free State when they had the power. They intend to make it a free State as soon as they have effected their purpose of destroying by it the Democratic party at the North, and now their chief object here is, to agitate slavery. For one, I am not disposed to discuss that question here in any abstract form. I think the time has gone by for that. Our minds are all made up. I may be willing to discuss it—and that is the way it should be and must be discussed—as a practical thing, as a thing that is, and is to be; and to discuss its effect upon our political institutions, and ascertain how long those institutions will hold together with slavery ineradicable.

The Senator from New York entered very fairly into this field yesterday. I was surprised, the other day, when he so openly said “the battle had been fought and won.” Although I knew, and had long known it to be true, I was surprised to hear him say so. I thought that he had been entrapped into a hasty expression by the sharp rebukes of the Senator from New Hampshire; and I was glad to learn yesterday that his words had been well considered — that they meant all that I thought they meant; that they meant that the South is a conquered province, and that the North intends to rule it. He said that it was their intention “to take this Government from unjust and unfaithful hands, and place it in just and faithful hands;” that it was their intention to consecrate all the Territories of the Union to free labor; end that, to effect their purposes, they intended to reconstruct the Supreme Court.

The Senator said, suppose we admit Kansas with the Lecompton constitution — what guarantees are there that Congress will not again interfere with the affairs of Kansas? meaning, I suppose, that if she abolished slavery, what guarantee there was that Congress would not force it upon her again. So far as we of the South are concerned, you have, at least, the guarantee of good faith that never has been violated. But what guarantee have we, when you have this Government in your possession, in all its departments, even if we submit quietly to what the Senator exhorts us to submit to — the limitation of slavery to its present territory, and even to the reconstruction of the Supreme Court — that you will not plunder us with tariffs; that you will not bankrupt us with internal improvements and bounties on your exports; that you will not cramp us with navigation laws, and other laws impeding the facilities of transportation to southern produce? What guarantee have we that you will not create a new bank, and concentrate all the finances of this country at the North, where already, for the want of direct trade and a proper system of banking in the South, they are ruinously concentrated? Nay, what guarantee have we that you will not emancipate our slaves, or, at least, make the attempt? We cannot rely on your faith when you have the power. It has been always broken whenever pledged.

As I am disposed to see this question settled as soon as possible, and am perfectly willing to have a final and conclusive settlement now, after what the Senator from New York has said, I think it not improper that I should attempt to bring the North and South face to face, and see what resources each of us might have in the contingency of separate organizations.

If we never acquire another foot of territory for the South, look at her. Eight hundred and fifty thousand square miles. As large as Great Britian, France, Austria, Prussia and Spain. Is not that territory enough to make an empire that shall rule the world? With the finest soil, the most delightful climate, whose staple productions none of those great countries can grow, we have three thousand miles of continental sea-shore line so indented with bays and crowded with islands, that, when their shore lines are added, we have twelve thousand miles. Through the heart of our country runs the great Mississippi, the father of waters, into whose bosom are poured thirty-six thousand miles of tributary rivers; and beyond we have the desert prairie wastes to protect us in our rear. Can you hem in such a territory as that? You talk of putting up a wall of fire around eight hundred and fifty thousand square miles so situated! How absurd.

But, in this territory lies the great valley of the Mississippi, now the real, and soon to be the acknowlIedged seat of the empire of the world. The sway of that valley will be as great as ever the Nile knew in the earlier ages of mankind. We own the most of it. The most valuable part of it belongs to us now; and although those who have settled above us are now opposed to us, another generation will tell a different tale. They are ours by all the laws of nature; slave-labor will go over every foot of this great valley where it will be found profitable to use it, and some of those who may not use it are soon to be united with us by such ties as will make us one and inseparable. The iron horse will soon be clattering over the sunny plains of the South to bear the products of its upper tributaries of the valley to our Atlantic ports, as it now does through the ice-bound North. And there is the great Mississippi, a bond of union made by Nature herself. She will maintain it forever.

On this fine territory we have a population four times as large as that with which these colonies separated from the mother country, and a hundred, I might say a thousand fold stronger. Our population is now sixty per cent. greater than that of the whole United States when we entered into the second war of independence. It is as large as the whole population of the United States was ten years after the conclusion of that war, and our own exports are three times as great as those of the whole United States then. Upon our muster-rolls we have a million of men. In a defensive war, upon an emergency, every one of them would be available. At any time, the South can raise, equip, and maintain in the field, a larger army than any Power of the earth can send against her, and an army of soldiers — men brought up on horseback, with guns in their hands. If we take the North, even when the two large States of Kansas and Minnesota shall be admitted, her territory will be one hundred thousand square miles less than ours. I do not speak of California and Oregon; there is no antagonism between the South and those countries, and never will be. The population of the North is fifty per cent. greater than ours. I have nothing to say in disparagement either of the soil of the North, or the people of the North, who are a brave and energetic race, full of intellect. But they produce no great staple that the South does not produce; while we produce two or three, and these the very greatest, that she can never produce. As to her men, I may be allowed to say, they have never proved themselves to be superior to those of the South, either in the field or in the Senate.

But the strength of a nation depends in a great measure upon its wealth, and the wealth of a nation, like that of a man, is to be estimated by its surplus production. You may go to your trashy census books, full of falsehood and nonsense — they tell you, for example, that in the State of Tennessee, the whole number of house-servants is not equal to that of those in my own house, and such things as that. You may estimate what is made throughout the country from these census books, but it is no matter how much is made if it is all consumed. If a man possess millions of dollars and consumes his income, is he rich? Is he competent to embark in any new enterprise? Can he long build ships or railroads? And could a people in that condition build ships and roads or go to war without a fatal strain on capital? All the enterprises of peace and war depend upon the surplus productions of a people. They may be happy, they may be comfortable, they may enjoy themselves in consuming what they make; but they are not rich, they are not strong. It appears, by going to the reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, which are authentic, that last year the United States exported in round numbers $279,000,000 worth of domestic produce, excluding gold and foreign merchandise re-exported. Of this amount $158,000,000 worth is the clear produce of the South; articles that are not and cannot be made at the North. There are then $80,000,000 worth of exports of products of the forest, provisions and breadstuff. If we assume that the South made but one third of these, and I think that is a low calculation, our exports were $185,000,000, leaving to the North less than $95,000,000.

In addition to this, we sent to the North $30,000,000 worth of cotton, which is not counted in the exports. We sent to her $7 or $8,000,000 worth of tobacco, which is not counted in the exports. We sent naval stores, lumber, rice, and many other minor articles. There is no doubt that we sent to the North $40,000,000 in addition ; but suppose the amount to be $35,000,000, it will give us a surplus production of $220,000,000. But the recorded exports of the South now are greater than the whole exports of the United States in any year before 1856. They are greater than the whole average exports of the United States for the last twelve years, including the two extraordinary years of 1856 and 1857. They are nearly double the amount of the average exports of the twelve preceding years. If I am right in my calculations as to $220,000,000 of surplus produce, there is not a nation on the face of the earth, with any numerous population, that can compete with us in produce per capita. It amounts to $16.66 per head, supposing that we have twelve millions of people. England with all her accumulated wealth, with her concentrated and educated energy, makes but sixteen and a half dollars of surplus production per head. I have not made a calculation as to the North, with her $95,000,000 surplus; admitting that she exports as much as we do, with her eighteen millions of population it would be but little over twelve dollars a head. But she cannot export to us and abroad exceeding ten dollars a head against our sixteen dollars. I know well enough that the North sends to the South a vast amount of the productions of her industry. I take it for granted that she, at least, pays us in that way for the thirty or forty million dollars worth of cotton and other articles we send her. I am willing to admit that she sends us considerably more; but to bring her up to our amount of surplus production — to bring her up to $220,000,000 a year, the South must take from her $125,000,000; and this, in addition to our share of the consumption of the $333,000,000 worth introduced into the country from abroad, and paid for chiefly by our own exports. The thing is absurd; it is impossible; it can never appear anywhere but in a book of statistics, or a Congress speech.

With an export of $220,000,000 under the present tariff, the South organized separately would have $40,000,000 of revenue. With one-fourth the present tariff, she would have a revenue with the present tariff adequate to all her wants, for the South would never go to war; she would never need an army or a navy, beyond a few garrisons on the frontiers and a few revenue cutters. It is commerce that breeds war. It is manufactures that require to be hawked about the world, and that give rise to navies and commerce. But we have nothing to do but to take off restrictions on foreign merchandise and open our ports, and the whole world will come to us to trade. They will be too glad to bring and carry us, and we never shall dream of a war. Why the South has never yet had a just cause of war except with the North. Every time she has drawn her sword it has been on the point of honor, and that point of honor has been mainly loyalty to her sister colonies and sister States, who have ever since plundered and calumniated her. But if there were no other reason why we should never have war, would any sane nation make war on cotton? Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us we could bring the whole world to our feet. The South is perfectly competent to go on, one, two, or three years without planting a seed of cotton. I believe that if she was to plant but half her cotton, for three years to come, it would be an immense advantage to her. I am not so sure but that after three years' entire abstinence she would come out stronger than ever she was before, and better prepared to enter afresh upon her great career of enterprise. What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what every one can imagine, but this is certain: England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her save the South. No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is King. Until lately the Bank of England was king; but she tried to put her screws as usual, the fall before the last, upon the cotton crop, and was utterly vanquished. The last power has been conquered. Who can doubt, that has looked at recent events, that cotton is supreme? When the abuse of credit had destroyed credit and annihilated confidence; when thousands of the strongest commercial houses in the world were coming down, and hundreds of millions of dollars of supposed property evaporating in thin air; when you came to a dead lock, and revolutions were threatened, what brought you up? Fortunately for you it was the commencement of the cotton season, and we have poured in upon you one million six hundred thousand bales of cotton just at the crisis to save you from destruction. That cotton, but for the bursting of your speculative bubbles in the North, which produced the whole of this convulsion, would have brought us $100,000,000. We have sold it for $65,000,000, and saved you. Thirty-five million dollars we, the slaveholders of the South, have put into the charity box for your magnificent financiers, your “cotton lords,” your “merchant princes.”

But, sir, the greatest strength of the South arises from the harmony of her political and social institutions. This harmony gives her a frame of society, the best in the world, and an extent of political freedom, combined with entire security, such as no other people ever enjoyed upon the face of the earth. Society precedes government; creates it, and ought to control it; but as far as we can look back in historic times we find the case different; for government is no sooner created than it becomes too strong for society, and shapes and moulds, as well as controls it. In later centuries the progress of civilization and of intelligence has made the divergence so great as to produce civil wars and revolutions; and it is nothing now but the want of harmony between governments and societies which occasions all the uneasiness and trouble and terror that we see abroad. It was this that brought on the American Revolution. We threw off a Government not adapted to our social system, and made one for ourselves. The question is, how far have we succeeded? The South, so far as that is concerned, is satisfied, harmonious, and prosperous, but demands to be let alone.

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes. We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves. We found them slaves by the common “consent of mankind,” which, according to Cicero, “lex naturœ est.” The highest proof of what is Nature's law. We are old-fashioned at the South yet; slave is a word discarded now by “ears polite;” I will not characterize that class at the North by that term; but you have it; it is there; it is everywhere; it is eternal. The Senator from New York said yesterday that the whole world had abolished slavery. Aye, the name, but not the thing; all the powers of the earth cannot abolish that. God only can do it when he repeals the fiat, “the poor ye always have with you;” for the man who lives by daily labor, and scarcely lives at that, and who has to put out his labor in the market, and take the best he can get for it; in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and “operatives,” as you call them, are essentially slaves. The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street in any of your large towns. Why, you meet more beggars in one day, in any single street of the city of New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole South. We do not think that whites should be slaves either by law or necessity. Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race. The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them, by being made our slaves. None of that race on the whole face of the globe can be compared with the slaves of the South. They are happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations. Yours are white, of your own race; you are brothers of one blood. They are your equals in natural endowment of intellect, and they feel galled by their degradation. Our slaves do not vote. We give them no political power. Yours do vote, and, being the majority, they are the depositaries of all your political power. If they knew the tremendous secret, that the ballot-box is stronger than “an army with banners,” and could combine, where would you be? Your society would be reconstructed, your government overthrown, your property divided, not as they have mistakenly attempted to initiate such proceedings by meeting in parks, with arms in their hands, but by the quiet process of the ballot-box. You have been making war upon us to our very hearthstones. How would you like for us to send lecturers and agitators North, to teach these people this, to aid in combining, and to lead them?

Mr. Wilson and others. Send them along.

Mr. Hammond. You say send them along. There is no need of that. Your people are awaking. They are coming here. They are thundering at our doors for homesteads, one hundred and sixty acres of land for nothing, and Southern Senators are supporting them. Nay, they are assembling, as I have said, with arms in their hands, and demanding work at $1,000 a year for six hours a day. Have you heard that the ghosts of Mendoza and Torquemada are stalking in the streets of your great cities? That the inquisition is at hand? There is afloat a fearful rumor that there have been consultations for Vigilance Committees. You know what that means.

Transient and temporary causes have thus far been your preservation. The great West has been open to your surplus population, and your hordes of semi-barbarian immigrants, who are crowding in year by year. They make a great movement, and you call it progress. Whither? It is progress; but it is progress towards Vigilance Committees. The South have sustained you in a great measure. You are our factors. You fetch and carry for us. One hundred and fifty million dollars of our money passes annually through your hands. Much of it sticks; all of it assists to keep your machinery together and in motion. Suppose we were to discharge you; suppose we were to take our business out of your hands; — we should consign you to anarchy and poverty. You complain of the rule of the South; that has been another cause that has preserved you. We have kept the Government conservative to the great purposes of the Constitution. We have placed it, and kept it, upon the Constitution; and that has been the cause of your peace and prosperity. The Senator from New York says that that is about to be at an end; that you intend to take the Government from us; that it will pass from our hands into yours. Perhaps what he says is true; it may be; but do not forget — it can never be forgotten — it is written on the brightest page of human history — that we, the slaveholders of the South, took our country in her infancy, and, after ruling her for sixty out of the seventy years of her existence, we surrendered her to you without a stain upon her honor, boundless in prosperity, incalculable in her strength, the wonder and the admiration of the world. Time will show what you will make of her; but no time can diminish our glory or your responsibility.

SOURCE: John F. Trow & Co., New York, New York, Selections from the Letters and Speeches of the Hon. James H. Hammond of South Carolina, p. 301-22

Salmon P. Chase to Senator Charles Sumner, September 22, 1847

Cincinnati, September 22, 1847.

My Dear Sir: I am not sure whether I have written to you since I received your admirable lecture on White Slavery in Barbary. I read it with very great pleasure and instruction, and in order that others might be profited and delighted also, I have sent my mite to the fund for putting it into the hands of all the professional men of New England.

Have you ever thought of the subject of Christian Slavery as connected with the Crusades? In your hands its capabilities would be well proved. That was an interesting scene at Damietta, when the Christian Slaves met their Crusader Deliverers.

I send you by this mail a very accurate, though somewhat too favorable, report of Mr. Corwin's late speech at Carthage. I also send you, enclosed, a clip from the Herald, quoting the Chronicle's account of Mr. Corwin's attack upon the Abolitionists. This part of Mr. Corwin's speech pleased the proslavery people, hereabouts, more than his censure of the war offended them. It pained me; for, though I was well aware that Mr. Corwin formerly sympathized little or not at all, with those who adopt an antislavery construction of the Constitution, and proposed to carry their construction out by a system of practical measures, I did hope that his late experience had taught him better, and that he was prepared to occupy high and independent anti-slavery ground. He is where he was, however, and there I must leave him, until he comes to a better mind.

And now what is the true policy of practical, do something antislavery men? Shall we stand apart Whigs, Democrats, and Liberty men, and neutralize each other? Or shall we unite? I am for Union. I care nothing for names. All that I ask for is a platform and an issue, not buried out of sight, but palpable and paramount. Can we not have such a platform—such an issue?

You mentioned in your letter of March last that the Constitutional views presented in the Vanzandt argument might be a basis of political action. They present what seems to me a fair and unexceptionable construction of the Constitution, — its true theory as I verily believe. Why cannot we all unite upon them, and so for the practical measures thence resulting, Wilmot Proviso, Slavery abolition in the District, and the like?

We shall hold our Liberty Convention in October. I wish sensible Anti-Slavery Whigs would be there. I shall try, with others, to have the nomination postponed until Spring or early summer. The presence of such Whigs and like-minded Democrats would aid this result materially: then, with the developments of the winter recommending it, we could form a powerful party of Independents in the Spring.

You have no doubt seen my name connected with the Liberty nominations this fall. Of course holding such views as I have expressed, I could not myself accept any nomination at this time; and should nominations be posponed until Spring I am strong in the faith that a more available man will then be found.

I am much obliged by your kind attentions to my partner when in Boston.

Always glad to hear from you, I shall be particularly pleased to have an early answer to this. Very truly your friend,

P. S. — Did you notice the review of the decision in the Vanzandt case in the last number of the West. Law Journal? It was written by a young lawyer here of great promise.

SOURCE: Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1902, Vol. 2, p. 122-4

William Barton Rogers to Henry Darwin Rogers, January 2, 1860

Boston, January 2, 1860.

My Dear Henry,  . . . Robert has had some trouble of late in arresting the foolish attempt of the Southern students to withdraw from Philadelphia. Through his exertions the University class lost only some fifteen, and those of the most worthless sort, but one hundred and fifty of the class at the Jefferson school went off in a body to Richmond. It seems that the movement was in part instigated by some of the professors in Richmond and other Southern cities, and, worse still, the foolish young men were received with rejoicings and a speech of congratulation from Governor Wise!!

No Speaker has yet been elected in Congress, but there is little doubt that the Republican candidate will be chosen. Nor do I think the Southern members, with all their threats of secession and resistance, will attempt anything of the kind. After blowing off their superfluous steam, they will subside into more rational speech and action. It is, however, clear that the conflict between pro-slavery and anti-slavery is henceforth to be perpetual until freedom has triumphed throughout all the States. Little as I can sympathize in John Brown's insurrectionary projects, I believe that the panic will bear good fruit by and by in hastening the legislation which was once in Virginia so near arranging a plan of prospective emancipation. . . .

I have been reading the early chapters of Darwin's book with great interest. . . .

I send you the proceedings of the Natural History Society, containing some little matters of mine which may be interesting. What I say in regard to the Vespertine and Umbral rocks of the Provinces, etc., is intended to show that we long ago recognized these two divisions as important in North American geology, although they are only now becoming recognized by Logan and Dawson. You will see also a short notice of my discovery of a Lingula in the slates of St. John, where no fossils had previously been found.

A Memorial prepared by me in behalf of the Natural History, Horticultural and other societies will be presented to the Legislature erelong, and it is thought the grant of land on the Back Bay will be made for their benefit. My Memorial has been highly approved.

. . . The more I look into Darwin's argument the more I like it, save in the one particular of ignoring entirely violent and sudden physical changes. The calmness and truth-loving spirit of the book are truly admirable. Much of it I know you will approve.

SOURCE: Emma Savage Rogers & William T. Sedgwick, Life and Letters of William Barton Rogers, Volume 2, p. 18-9

John M. Forbes to Senator Charles Sumner, June 27, 1862

Boston, June 27, 1862.

My Dear Mr. Sumner, — The inclosed¹ will explain itself. If you don't object, you may think it worth sending to the “Evening Post,” with our names struck out! I do not see how the Senate can sit with a member who acknowledges such operations, unless a majority of the senators are rotten. Even then I should think the honest ones could stuff it down their throats. If you don't do something, the public verdict will be that you dare not denounce what has been a senatorial custom.  . . . Whoever it hits, Republican, Hunker, or pro-slavery Democrat, the knife ought to be applied, and all the sooner because the immediate sinner is a soidisant Republican.

_______________

¹ A squib in the form of a supposed letter from a business firm to Senator Sumner, referring to the acknowledged acceptance of a bribe by a United States senator, and frankly proposing to bribe Mr. Sumner into obtaining government contracts for them. — Ed.

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 318-9

John L. Motley to Mary Lothrop Motley, January 13, 1862

Vienna, January 13, 1862.

Dearest Little Mary: The cloud has blown over for the present, at least, and the war with England has been averted by the firmness, tact, prudence, and sense of right displayed by our government. I have been thinking, talking, writing so much of this Trent affair that I am determined not to fill my letters with it any longer, now that it is settled. I will, however, make one observation in regard to England. We must not confound the efforts of the war faction in that country with the whole nation. By so doing we commit a great injustice, and do ourselves an immense injury. There is a strong pro-slavery party in England, which has almost thrown off all disguise in their fury in regard to the Trent affair. This party seized upon the first plausible pretext that had been offered to them since our Civil War began, and used it with all their energy to bring about the instant recognition of the Southern Confederacy, the raising of the blockade, and a destructive war against us. There has been a daily manifestation of pro-slavery sympathy in the Tory party in England, shared to a considerable extent by a certain portion of the Whigs. The course of the government of England has been courteous and proper, and we make a mistake in attributing too much importance to the manifestations of the press. As a member of the English cabinet says to me in a letter written so soon as the news of peace came, in order to express his joy and sympathize with mine: “What mischief the press of both countries has been doing! Your people quote our ‘Times,’ we quote the New York ‘Herald,’ and mutual exasperation is natural enough.” This is the Duke of Argyll, as sincere and warm a friend to America and to everything good in it as any one of our own countrymen. I had a letter from Layard, Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs, written in the same spirit.

There is no doubt that there is a large and strong party, probably a majority, that hates the idea of a war with America, and is much relieved by the pacific termination to this quarrel. On the other hand, no doubt, the pro-slavery faction is very active and noisy, and we shall have no end of efforts in the coming session of Parliament to procure the recognition of the slave Confederacy. One thing is perfectly certain: if we continue to dally with the subject of emancipation much longer, and continue our efforts to suppress the rebellion without daring to lay a finger on its cause, we shall have the slave Confederacy recognized by all the governments of Europe before midsummer. The proslavery party in England dare not avow itself in favor of slavery, for that institution is so odious to the great mass of the English nation as to consign any party openly supporting it to destruction; but it contents itself with persuading the public that slavery has nothing to do with secession, that the North is no more antislavery than the South, and that therefore all the sympathies of liberal Englishmen ought to be given to the weaker of the two sections, which is striving by a war of self-defense to relieve itself from a tyrannical oppression, and so on. An answer to this insidious reasoning will, I hope, be soon furnished by the action of Congress.

My dear child, I have been writing to you as if you were Mr. Seward or Abraham Lincoln, and I have half a mind to scratch your name from the top of the letter and substitute that of one of these worthies. However, you have become such a furious politician that I dare say you will excuse such a long political letter. Your last letter, of December 23, gave us much pleasure, as do all your letters. You cannot give us too many details, or write too much or too often. We think of nothing but America now.

I cannot tell you much about Vienna. Yesterday your mother and I went to a great diplomatic dinner at Prince Liechtenstein's. About thirty people, mostly dips. The prince is kind-hearted, genial, with charming manners; the princess very much the same. In the absence of the court, on account of the illness of the empress, they do a little entertaining in a kind of vice-regal way. Last week we all turned out in cocked hats and laced coats to make an evening call, in order to express New Year's wishes and ask after the health of the emperor and empress. We had an extremely pleasant dinner at Prince Esterhazy's, and we dine occasionally with our colleagues of the diplomatic corps, many of whom are very agreeable. To-morrow night is the first ball of the season. It is the first of a set called picnics, the Vienna Almack's subscription balls for the crèmè de la crèmè. Lily will give you an account of it when she writes next week. The winter is not likely to be gay, but I feel already a little better disposed to look for blue sky, now that our government, and especially our much-abused Secretary of State, have manifested so much magnanimity and real statesmanship. I never felt so much confidence as I do now in the Washington authorities.

I do not yet begin to enjoy society. Much English society, I regret almost to say, is very spoiling for any other kind. Yet there is a great charm of manner about the Austrians. The great distinction between Vienna and London company is that here the fine world is composed exclusively of folks of rank and title; there, every illustration from the world of science, art, letters, politics, and finance mingles in full proportion with the patricians, and on equal terms. Society so constituted must be entertaining and instructive.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 228-31

Endorsement of Governor Salmon P. Chase, December 20, 1856

Columbus, Dec. 20, 1856.

Captain John Brown, of Kansas Territory, is commended to me by a highly reputable citizen of this State as a gentleman every way worthy of entire confidence. I have also seen a letter from Governor Charles Robinson, whose handwriting I recognize, speaking of Captain Brown and his services to the cause of the Free-State men in Kansas in terms of the warmest commendation. Upon these testimonials I cordially recommend him to the confidence and regard of all who desire to see Kansas a free State.

S. P. Chase.¹

________________

¹ This eminent man, afterward Senator from Ohio and Chief-Justice of the United States, sent another letter to Brown six months later, but while he was still Governor of Ohio. It is interesting as showing that Governor Chase either did not know or did not choose to recognize the alias of “Nelson Hawkins,” by which Brown was then addressed to avoid the opening of his letters by proslavery postmasters.

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 363

Congressman Israel Washburn, Jr. to James S. Pike, January 25, 1860

Washington, January 25, 1860.

Dear Pike: “Want of penetration!” “By the Lord, I knew ye!” but as I had been told that you were coming to Washington about this time, I supposed Greeley would be most likely to get the letter, and I desired mainly to thank the Tribune.

Tom Corwin has made a six hour’ speech, wise and witty, a little pro-slavery, a good deal anti-slavery, but quite likely to bring out twenty speeches on the two sides, and not unlikely in the end to elect a Democratic Speaker, and certain to make the country hold the Republicans responsible for the non-organization; i.e., responsible to a considerable extent. Only think, a six hours’ speech on all subjects under the sun addressed to the clerk, and this in rebuke of those Republicans who have labored all these weeks to bring the House to its duty, and prevent speaking on our side!

Are you for Edward Bates for President? A categorical answer requested.

Yours truly,

I. Washburn, Jr.

SOURCE: James Shepherd Pike, First Blows of the Civil War: The Ten Years of Preliminary Conflict in the United States from 1850 to 1860, p. 479

George William Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, April 7, 1864

My Dear Charles, — How grandly the country is speaking for the war and the policy! Night before last I dined with Colonel Raasloff¹ and Count Piper and Habricht, and I claimed that thus far we had proved that in a republic patriotism was not necessarily subordinated to party spirit. It seems just now as if our true victory were to be greater than even we had supposed.

I have seen Lincoln tete-a-tete since I saw you, and my personal impression of him confirmed my previous feeling. I am sorry that Fremont seems to be placed in a position which can please no real friend of his. Only to-day I have an invitation from the office of “The New Nation” to meet some friends of all the radical candidates to “take steps to form a radical national committee, and to secure a radical platform, and a reliable radical man for the presidential campaign about to open.” Last week I went to Baltimore, and supped at the Union Club with a dozen of the most strenuous men there. Every one, when the war began, was a pro-slavery man; now they will have nothing but immediate, uncompensated emancipation. Charles, you and I are superannuated fogies.

_______________

¹ The Danish Minister.

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 177-8

Owen Brown Jr. to Mary Ann Day Brown, August 27, 1856

Tabor, Fremont County, Iowa, Aug. 27, 1856.

Dear Mother, — The last news we had from Kansas, father was at Lawrence, and had charge of a company, —the bravest men the Territory could afford. Those who come through here from the Territory say that father is the most daring, courageous man in Kansas. You have no doubt heard that the Free-State men have taken two forts, or blockhouses, with a fine lot of arms, several prisoners, and two cannon. Shannon was obliged to flee for his life; afterwards came to Lane to negotiate for peace. He proposed that the Free-State men should give up the prisoners and arms they had taken; at the same time they (the enemy) should still hold our men as prisoners, and keep all the arms they had taken from the Free-State men. But Lane would not consent to that; he required Shannon to deliver up the howitzer they had taken at Lawrence, release some prisoners, disarm the proslavery men in the Territory, and do all in his power to remove the enemy from the Territory. With fear and trembling, Shannon consented to all of Lane's demands.

There is now at this place a company of volunteers from Maine, Massachusetts, and Michigan, — about eighty in all. We hear lately that about three thousand Missourians have crossed at St. Joe and other places, and have gone armed into the Territory; that Governor Woodson has sent four hundred mounted men on to the frontier to intercept our volunteers and prevent them from carrying in provisions and ammunition, which are much needed now in Kansas. The last information comes from reliable sources, and is probably true, — a portion of it. We also learn that the Free-State men have melted up all the old lead-pipe they can get hold of for ammunition; and now the news comes from reliable sources that Lane is about to enter Leavenworth with two thousand men; that he has sent word to the citizens of Leavenworth, requiring them to deliver up a few prisoners they had taken, with some wagons and other property, or he will destroy the town forthwith. Colonel Smith, of Leavenworth, commander of Government troops, refuses to protect the proslavery men of the Territory, replying that Lane is able to dress them all out, troops and all. Shannon made a speech to them, urging them to cease hostilities, — that he could not defend them (that is, our enemies). At present our enemies and the Missourians are trembling in their boots, if reports are true.

I have gained strength quite fast, and am now determined to go back into the Territory, and try the elephant another pull. We hope that men will volunteer by the thousands from the States, well armed, with plenty of money to buy provisions with, which are scarce in Kansas Territory. There are probably several thousand acres less of corn in Kansas than there would have been had it not been for the war. We look hard for help: now comes the tug of war. We have sent on men to learn the state of affairs on the frontier, and will move on into the Territory shortly. We are now waiting for one other company, which is within a few days' drive of here. For the want of time I leave out many particulars in connection with the taking of those forts, which would be quite interesting, and show Yankee skill and strategy, at least. If any of our folks write to us, or to me (I assume another name, George Lyman), direct to George Lyman, Tabor, Fremont County, Iowa, care Jonas Jones, Esq. Mr. Jones will take them out of the office here and send them on by private conveyance. We cannot hear from you in any other way. Perhaps you know of a different way, but I do not.

Your affectionate son,

Owen Brown.

P. S. Have not heard from Fred since Oliver and William Thompson took him into the camp; nor have I heard from Henry, Salmon, William, and Oliver since they left this place to go home.

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 315-7

John M. Forbes to Nassau W. Senior, September 30, 1861

Naushon Island, September 30,1861.

Dear Mr. Senior, — Your note from the Chateau de Tocqueville reached me a few days since. It must have been a most agreeable reunion there.

We here feel more and more each day the miracle of M. de Tocqueville's prophetic vision of our history. It seems almost like clairvoyance! Our Channing's prevoyance of the results of our Texas land thefts is almost as strange. Such men of genius may well be called seers.

I am sorry that you still class me with the crowd who always seek to forget their own sins in abusing their neighbors. The fact is, all my prepossessions were in favor of England, and I had watched with the greatest satisfaction the subsidence of the old animosities, growing out of the two wars, and the growth of that good fooling which ought to animate the two nations who are, or might be, the bulwark of free institutions against the despotisms of the Old World.

When we cast off the nightmare despotism, which had so long ruled us, the slave oligarchy, which sympathized with Russia because of serfdom, and dismissed your minister to show their homage to the Czar, and which refused you a limited right of search, because it favored the slave trade; in fine, when at last we placed ourselves right on the question of slavery, which has always been a reproach from you to us, I thought the entente cordiale was complete. I did not look for material aid nor want it, but only such forbearance of countenance towards our Sepoys" as would help to discourage them, and would bring our two nations still more into harmony.

Perhaps I feel the disappointment more bitterly than the mob does, because my hope and prejudices were strongly for a warm English alliance— now, I fear, deferred another twenty years. Your "Times " I expected nothing better from than we have had in its cold sneers at the breaking of our bubble of democracy, but from your ministry I did look for something better than a proclamation of strict neutrality, putting us upon precisely the same footing with our “Sepoys,” forbidding either party to bring prizes into your ports, prohibiting your subjects aiding either; and this, too, issued just as our new minister was arriving, thus giving him no opportunity to confer upon mutual interests; for I contend that it is our mutual interests that have been endangered, not ours alone.

I beg your Sepoys’ pardon for naming them with ours. They at least had foreign conquerors, and a hated religion to conspire against, and yet we watched your Indian battles with a brother's eye, and canonized your Havelocks, Hodsons, and other martyrs, as if they had been our own. Even our press, loose as it is, uttered no sound of exultation at what seemed at one time to be the downfall of your Indian empire.

Had your Sepoys brought a prize into our California ports, we should have known only the British owner, and restored her. Once more I beg your Sepoys' pardon. They were not guilty of the deep crime against their nationality and the principles of government which marks our more barbarous rebels!

One word about the Morrill tariff. It is a labored, clumsy production, and it will fall by its own weight. Some of its blunders have been partially corrected; but you mistake the intention of those who passed it, or at least of the majority of them.

Its aim was to substitute the steadiness of specific duties for the vibrating, cheating system of ad valorem. Certain high duties were doubtless smuggled in under guise of specifics, and the extreme difficulty of so framing our specific duties that our poorer classes shall not pay the same duties, per yard or per pound, on their cheap cloth or tea, will probably cause a repeal of the tariff. Yet I think British experience and opinion favor the principle of specific rather than ad valorem duties. One tends to cheat the people who buy the poorest qualities, the other tends to enormous frauds against government and profits by false swearing, and encourages the use of poor, showy goods, as against the more substantial ones which come in under specifics.

You are a little more encouraging as to results than you were, but I still think you do not properly appreciate the fact that we are not fighting to subjugate the South, but to put down a small class who have conspired against the people, and who are a thousand times worse enemies of the mass of the people at the South than the North.

The only pinch is our finances. Cannot you help us upon the text of the cutting within, if you find that sound? Our moneyed men continue to take their tone very much from England, and confident views of financial success coming from your side have great weight. . . .

Very truly yours,

J. M. Forbes.

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 247-50

John Brown Jr. to Jason Brown et al, August 16, 1856

Camp Of U. S. Cavalry, Near Lecompton, Kansas,

Aug. 16, 1856.

Dear Brother Jason And Others, — Agreeably with my promise to write often, I have sent you lately not less than four letters, — one or two by private hands, the others by mail. Events of the most stirring character are now passing within hearing distance. I should think more than two hundred shots have been fired within the past half hour, and within a mile of our camp. Have just learned that some eighty of our Free-State men have “pitched into” a proslavery camp this side of Lecompton, which was commanded by a notorious proslavery scoundrel named Titus, one of the Buford party from Alabama. A dense volume of smoke is now rising in the vicinity of his house. The firing has ceased, and we are most impatient to learn the result.

During the past month the Ruffians have been actively at work, and have made not less than five intrenched camps, where they have in different parts of the Territory established themselves in armed bands, well provided with provisions, arms, and ammunition. From these camps they sally out, steal horses, and rob Free-State settlers (in several cases murdering them), and then slip back into their camp with their plunder. Last week a body of our men made a descent upon Franklin,¹ and after a skirmishing fight of about three hours took their barracks, and recovered some sixty guns and a cannon, of which our men had been robbed some months since, on the road from Westport. Our loss was one man killed and two severely wounded, but it is thought they will recover. The enemy were in a log building, from which they kept up a sharp fire, while they themselves were quite unexposed. Our men then had recourse to a system of tactics not laid down in Scott. They procured a wagon loaded with hay, and running it down against the building set it on fire, when the rascals immediately surrendered. Yesterday our men had invested another of their fortified camps on Washington Creek, a south branch of the Wakarusa; and it was expected that an attack would be made upon it last night.

Hurrah for our side! A messenger has just come in, stating that on the approach of our men, some two hundred and fifty or three hundred in number, at Washington Creek yesterday, towards evening, the enemy broke and fled, leaving behind, to fall into the hands of our men, a lot of provisions and a hundred stand of arms. But this is not all. The notorious Colonel Titus, who only a day or two since was heard to declare that “Free-State men had only two weeks longer to remain in Kansas,” went out last night on a marauding expedition, in which he took six prisoners and a lot of horses. This morning our men followed him closely and fell upon his camp, killed two of his men, liberated the prisoners he had taken, took him and ten other prisoners, set fire to his house, and with a lot of arms, tents, provisions, etc., returned, having in the fight had only one of our men seriously wounded.

_______________

¹ Four miles south of Lawrence. The fights that followed are those mentioned by Atchison on page 309.

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 311-2

Diary of Josephine Shaw Lowell: September 20, 1862

On the 25th of the month a proclamation is due from Mr. Lincoln and everyone looks for emancipation. If he issues such an edict of course the pro-slavery generals must either resign or fight for freedom with a will, because if slavery is extinct, not to be revived under any circumstances, all their hopes of preserving it are past and they will be tired of shilly-shally when there's no object to be gained by it. Oh, that the Lord would only put it into Lincoln's head to do something strong and decided! We must ride this time through.

SOURCE: William Rhinelander Stewart, The Philanthropic Work of Josephine Shaw Lowell, p. 33

John Lothrop Motley to Anna Lothrop Motley, February 9, 1861

31 Hertford Street,

February 9, 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 eulogized 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 honor of its own flag is no government at all and may fall to pieces at any moment. The pretense 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 is 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 you 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, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 110-2