Theodore Parker to Ralph Waldo Emerson, December 9, 1859

Dec. 9, 1859.

My Dear Emerson, — Mr. Apthorp leaves me a corner of his paper, which I am only too glad to fill with a word or two of greeting to you and yours. I rejoiced greatly at the brave things spoken by you at the Fraternity Lecture, and the hearty applause I knew it must meet with there. Wendell Phillips and you have said about all the brave words that have been spoken about our friend Captain Brown — No! J. F. Clarke preached his best sermon on that brave man. Had I been at home, sound and well, I think this occasion would have either sent me out of the country — as it has Dr. Howe — or else have put me in a tight place. Surely I could not have been quite unconcerned and safe. It might not sound well that the minister of the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Church had “left for parts unknown,” and that “between two days,” and so could not fulfil his obligations to lecture or preach. Here to me “life is as tedious as a twice-told tale;” it is only a strennous idleness, — studying the remains of a dead people, and that too for no great purpose of helping such as are alive, or shall ever become so. I can do no better and no more. Here are pleasant Americans, — Mrs. Crawford, my friend Dr. Appleton, and above all the Storys, — most hospitable of people, and full of fire and wit. The Apthorps and Hunts are kind and wise as always, and full of noble sentiments. Of course, the great works of architecture, of sculpture and painting, are always here; but I confess I prefer the arts of use, which make the three millions of New England comfortable, intelligent, and moral, to the fine arts of beauty, which afford means of pleasure to a few emasculated dilettanti. None loves beauty more than I, of Nature or Art; but I thank God that in the Revival of Letters our race — the world-conquering Teutons — turned off to Science, which seeks Truth and Industry, that conquers the forces of Nature and transfigures Matter into Man; while the Italians took the Art of Beauty for their department. The Brownings are here, poet and poetess both, and their boy, the Only. Pleasant people are they both, with the greatest admiration for a certain person of Concord, to whom I also send my heartiest thanks and good wishes. To him and his long life and prosperity!

Theodore Parker.¹

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¹ Parker's letter to Francis Jackson on the deed and death of Brown was one of his last public utterances, — for he died and was buried in Florence, where Mrs. Browning was afterwards buried, in May, 1860.

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 513

Amos Bronson Alcott, October 30, 1859

Concord, Sunday, Oct. 30, 1859.

Thoreau reads a paper of his on John Brown, his virtues, spirit, and deeds, at the vestry this evening, and to the delight of his company, I am told, — the best that could be gathered on short notice, and among them Emerson. I am not informed in season, and have my meeting at the same time. I doubt not of its excellence and eloquence, and wish he may have opportunities of reading it elsewhere.

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 506

Amos Bronson Alcott, May 8, 1859

Concord, May 8, 1859.

This evening I hear Captain Brown speak at the town hall on Kansas affairs, and the part taken by him in the late troubles there. He tells his story with surpassing simplicity and sense, impressing us all deeply by his courage and religious earnestness. Our best people listen to his words, — Emerson, Thoreau, Judge Hoar, my wife; and some of them contribute something in aid of his plans without asking particulars, such confidence does he inspire in his integrity and abilities. I have a few words with him after his speech, and find him superior to legal traditions, and a disciple of the Right in ideality and the affairs of state. He is Sanborn's guest, and stays for a day only. A young man named Anderson accompanies him. They go armed, I am told, and will defend themselves, if necessary. I believe they are now on their way to Connecticut and farther south; but the Captain leaves us much in the dark concerning his destination and designs for the coming months. Yet he does not conceal his hatred of slavery, nor his readiness to strike a blow for freedom at the proper moment. I infer it is his intention to run off as many slaves as he can, and so render that property insecure to the master. I think him equal to anything he dares, — the man to do the deed, if it must be done, and with the martyr's temper and purpose. Nature obviously was deeply intent in the making of him. He is of imposing appearance, personally, —tall, with square shoulders and standing; eyes of deep gray, and couchant, as if ready to spring at the least rustling, dauntless yet kindly; his hair shooting backward from low down on his forehead; nose trenchant and Romanesque; set lips, his voice suppressed yet metallic, suggesting deep reserves; decided mouth; the countenance and frame charged with power throughout. Since here last he has added a flowing beard, which gives the soldierly air and the port of an apostle. Though sixty years old, he is agile and alert, and ready for any audacity, in any crisis. I think him about the manliest man I have ever seen, — the typo and synonym of the Just. I wished to see and speak with him under circumstances permitting of large discourse. I am curious concerning his matured opinions on the great questions, — as of personal independence, the citizen's relation to the State, the right of resistance, slavery, the higher law, temperance, the pleas and reasons for freedom, and ideas generally. Houses and hospitalities were invented for the entertainment of such questions, — for the great guests of manliness and nobility thus entering and speaking face to face:—

Man is his own star; and the soul that can

Render an honest and a perfect man

Commands all light, all influence, all fate.

Nothing to him falls early or too late:

Our acts our angels are, — or good or ill,

Our fatal shadows, that walk by us still.

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 504-5

Diary of Ralph Waldo Emerson, March 1857

Captain John Brown gave a good account of himself in the Town Hall last night to a meeting of citizens. One of his good points was the folly of the peace party in Kansas, who believed that their strength lay in the greatness of their wrongs, and so discountenanced resistance. He wished to know if their wrong was greater than the negro's, and what kind of strength that gave to the negro? He believes, on his own experience, that one good, believing, strong-minded man is worth a hundred — nay, twenty thousand — men without character, for a settler in a new country, and that the right men will give a permanent direction to the fortunes of a State. For one of these bullying, drinking rowdies, he seemed to think cholera, smallpox, and consumption were as valuable recruits. The first man who went into Kansas from Missouri to interfere in the elections, he thought, “had a perfect right to be shot.” He gave a circumstantial account of the battle of Black Jack, where twenty-three Missourians surrendered to nine Abolitionists. Ho had three thousand sheep in Ohio, and would instantly detect a strange sheep in his flock. A cowcan tell its calf by secret siguals, he thinks, by the eye, to run away, to lie down, and hide itself. He always makes friends with his horse or mule (or with the deer that visit his Ohio farm); and when he sleeps on his horse, as he does as readily as on his bed, his horse does not start or endanger him. Brown described the expensiveness of war in a country where everything that is to be eaten or worn by man or beast must be dragged a long distance on wheels. “God protects us in winter,' he said; 'no Missourian can be seen in the country until the grass comes up again.”

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 501

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Speech on Affairs in Kansas, at the Kansas Relief Meeting in Cambridge Massachusetts, Wednesday Evening, September 10, 1856

I regret, with all this company, the absence of Mr. Whitman of Kansas, whose narrative was to constitute the interest of this meeting. Mr. Whitman is not here; but knowing, as we all do, why he is not, what duties kept him at home, he is more than present. His vacant chair speaks for him. For quite other reasons, I had been wiser to have stayed at home, unskilled as I am to address a political meeting, but it is impossible for the most recluse to extricate himself from the questions of the times.

There is this peculiarity about the case of Kansas, that all the right is on one side. We hear the screams of hunted wives and children answered by the howl of the butchers. The testimony of the telegraphs from St. Louis and the border confirm the worst details. The printed letters of the border ruffians avow the facts. When pressed to look at the cause of the mischief in the Kansas laws, the President falters and declines the discussion; but his supporters in the Senate, Mr. Cass, Mr. Geyer, Mr. Hunter, speak out, and declare the intolerable atrocity of the code. It is a maxim that all party spirit produces the incapacity to receive natural impressions from facts; and our recent political history has abundantly borne out the maxim. But these details that have come from Kansas are so horrible, that the hostile press have but one word in reply, namely, that it is all exaggeration, It is an Abolition lie. Do the Committee of Investigation say that the outrages have been overstated? Does their dismal catalogue of private tragedies show it? Do the private letters? Is it an exaggeration, that Mr. Hopps of Somerville, Mr. Hoyt of Deerfield, Mr. Jennison of Groton, Mr. Phillips of Berkshire, have been murdered? That Mr. Robinson of Fitchburg has been imprisoned? Rev. Mr. Nute of Springfield seized, and up to this time we have no tidings of his fate?

In these calamities under which they suffer, and the worse which threaten them, the people of Kansas ask for bread, clothes, arms and men, to save them alive, and enable them to stand against these enemies of the human race. They have a right to be helped, for they have helped themselves.

This aid must be sent, and this is not to be doled out as an ordinary charity; but bestowed up to the magnitude of the want, and, as has been elsewhere said, “on the scale of a national action.” I think we are to give largely, lavishly, to these men. And we must prepare to do it. We must learn to do with less, live in a smaller tenement, sell our apple-trees, our acres, our pleasant houses. I know people who are making haste to reduce their expenses and pay their debts, not with a view to new accumulations, but in preparation to save and earn for the benefit of the Kansas emigrants.

We must have aid from individuals, — we must also have aid from the State. I know that the last Legislature refused that aid. I know that lawyers hesitate on technical grounds, and wonder what method of relief the Legislature will apply. But I submit that, in a case like this, where citizens of Massachusetts, legal voters here, have emigrated to national territory under the sanction of every law, and are then set on by highwaymen, driven from their new homes, pillaged, and numbers of them killed and scalped, and the whole world knows that this is no accidental brawl, but a systematic war to the knife, and in defiance of all laws and liberties, I submit that the Governor and Legislature should neither slumber nor sleep till they have found out how to send effectual aid and comfort to these poor farmers, or else should resign their seats to those who can. But first let them hang the halls of the State House with black crape, and order funeral service to be said there for the citizens whom they were unable to defend.

We stick at the technical difficulties. I think there never was a people so choked and stultified by forms. We adore the forms of law, instead of making them vehicles of wisdom and justice. I like the primary assembly. I own I have little esteem for governments. I esteem them only good in the moment when they are established. I set the private man first. He only who is able to stand alone is qualified to be a citizen. Next to the private man, I value the primary assembly, met to watch the government and to correct it. That is the theory of the American State, that it exists to execute the will of the citizens, is always responsible to them, and is always to be changed when it does not. First, the private citizen, then the primary assembly, and the government last.

In this country for the last few years the government has been the chief obstruction to the common weal. Who doubts that Kansas would have been very well settled, if the United States had let it alone? The government armed and led the ruffians against the poor farmers. I do not know any story so gloomy as the politics of this country for the last twenty years, centralizing ever more manifestly round one spring, and that a vast crime, and ever more plainly, until it is notorious that all promotion, power and policy are dictated from one source, — illustrating the fatal effects of a false position to demoralize legislation and put the best people always at a disadvantage; — one crime always present, always to be varnished over, to find fine names for; and we free-statesmen, as accomplices to the guilt, ever in the power of the grand offender.

Language has lost its meaning in the universal cant. Representative Government is really misrepresentative; Union is a conspiracy against the Northern States which the Northern States are to have the privilege of paying for; the adding of Cuba and Central America to the slave marts is enlarging the area of Freedom. Manifest Destiny, Democracy, Freedom, fine names for an ugly thing. They call it otto of rose and lavender, — I call it bilge water. They call it Chivalry and Freedom; I call it the stealing all the earnings of a poor man and the earnings of his little girl and boy, and the earnings of all that shall come from him, his children's children forever.

But this is Union, and this is Democracy; and our poor people, led by the nose by these fine words, dance and sing, ring bells and fire cannon, with every new link of the chain which is forged for their limbs by the plotters in the Capitol.

What are the results of law and union? There is no Union. Can any citizen of Massachusetts travel in honor through Kentucky and Alabama and speak his mind? Or can any citizen of the Southern country who happens to think kidnapping a bad thing, say so? Let Mr. Underwood of Virginia answer. Is it to be supposed that there are no men in Carolina who dissent from the popular sentiment now reigning there? It must happen, in the variety of human opinions, that there are dissenters. They are silent as the grave. Are there no women in that country, — women, who always carry the conscience of a people? Yet we have not heard one discordant whisper.

In the free States, we give a snivelling support to slavery. The judges give cowardly interpretations to the law, in direct opposition to the known foundation of all law, that every immoral statute is void. And here of Kansas, the President says: “Let the complainants go to the courts;” though he knows that when the poor plundered farmer comes to the court, he finds the ringleader who has robbed him, dismounting from his own horse, and unbuckling his knife to sit as his judge.

The President told the Kansas Committee that the whole difficulty grew from “the factions spirit of the Kansas people, respecting institutions which they need not have concerned themselves about.” A very remarkable speech from a Democratic President to his fellow citizens, that they are not to concern themselves with institutions which they alone are to create and determine. The President is a lawyer, and should know the statutes of the land. But I borrow the language of an eminent man, used long since, with far less occasion: “If that be law, let the ploughshare be run under the foundations of the Capitol;” — and if that be Government, extirpation is the only cure.

I am glad to see that the terror at disunion and anarchy is disappearing. Massachusetts, in its heroic day, had no government — was an anarchy. Every man stood on his own feet, was his own governor; and there was no breach of peace from Cape Cod to Mount Hoosac. California, a few years ago, by the testimony of all people at that time in the country, had the best government that ever existed. Pans of gold lay drying outside of every man’s tent, in perfect security. The land was measured into little strips of a few feet wide, all side by side. A bit of ground that your hand could cover was worth one or two hundred dollars, on the edge of your strip; and there was no dispute. Every man throughout the country was armed with knife and revolver, and it was known that instant justice would be administered to each offence, and perfect peace reigned. For the Saxon man, when he is well awake, is not a pirate but a citizen, all made of hooks and eyes, and links himself naturally to his brothers, as bees hook themselves to one another and to their queen in a loyal swarm.

But the hour is coming when the strongest will not be strong enough. A harder task will the new revolution of the nineteenth century be, than was the revolution of the eighteenth century. I think the American Revolution bought its glory cheap. If the problem was new, it was simple. If there were few people, they were united, and the enemy 3,000 miles off. But now, vast property, gigantic interests, family connections, webs of party, cover the land with a network that immensely multiplies the dangers of war.

Fellow Citizens, in these times full of the fate of the Republic, I think the towns should hold town meetings, and resolve themselves into Committees of Safety, go into permanent sessions, adjourning from week to week, from month to month. I wish we could send the Sergeant-at-arms to stop every American who is about to leave the country. Send home every one who is abroad, lest they should find no country to return to. Come home and stay at home, while there is a country to save. When it is lost it will be time enough then for any who are luckless enough to remain alive to gather up their clothes and depart to some land where freedom exists.

SOURCE: The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 11: Miscellanies, p. 241-7; Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 500

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

Colonel Charles Russell Lowell to Josephine Shaw, Sunday July 26, 1863

Centreville, Sunday, July 26.

Cousin John has just sent me the report about dear Rob. It does not seem to me possible this should be true about Rob. Was not he preeminently what “Every man in arms should wish to be?”¹

The manliness and patriotism and high courage of such a soldier never die with him; they live in his comrades, — it should be the same with the gentleness and thoughtfulness which made him so loveable a son and brother and friend. As you once wrote, he never let the sun go down upon an unkind or thoughtless word.²

_______________

¹ From Wordsworth's “Character of the Happy Warrior,” a poem that Lowell in his youth had greatly cared for, and which was strangely descriptive of his later career.

² The story, in brief, of the gallant but unsuccessful assault upon Battery Wagner in Charleston harbour is this: The Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Regiment (coloured), after some six weeks’ service in Georgia and South Carolina, where it won respect and praise, even from original scoffers, had, at Colonel Shaw's request, been transferred to General Strong's brigade. The colonel asked “that they might fight alongside of white soldiers, and show to somebody else than their officers what stuff they were made of.” Therefore, at six o'clock on the evening of Saturday, July 18, the regiment reported at General Strong's headquarters on Morris Island, after forty-eight hours of marching, or waiting, without shelter in rain and thunder, for boat transportation, or stewing in tropical heat, with little to eat or drink. They were worn and weary. General Strong told Colonel Shaw that he believed in his regiment, and wished to assign them, in an immediate assault on the enemy's strong works, the post where the most severe work was to be done and the highest honour won. “They were at once marched to within 600 yards of Fort Wagner and formed in line of battle, the Colonel heading the first, and the Major the second battalion.

“At this point, the regiment, together with the next supporting regiment, the Sixth Maine, the Ninth Connecticut, and others, remained half an hour. Then, at half-past seven, the order for the charge was given. The regiment advanced at quick time, changing to double-quick at some distance on. When about one hundred yards from the fort, the Rebel musketry opened with such terrible effect that for an instant the first battalion hesitated; but only for an instant, for Colonel Shaw, springing to the front and waving his sword, shouted, ‘Forward, Fifty-Fourth!’ and with another cheer and a shout they rushed through the ditch, and gained the parapet on the right. Colonel Shaw was one of the first to scale the walls. He stood erect to urge forward his men, and while shouting for them to press on was shot dead, and fell into the fort.”

The attempt to take the fort was a desperate one, and failed. The Fifty-Fourth did nobly, and suffered terribly. Little quarter was given. In that furious fight in the last twilight, lit only by gun-flashes, it is said that the firing from our own ships was, for a time, disastrous to the regiment.

Emerson, in his poem called "Voluntaries," commemorates the sacrifice of Robert Shaw and his men : —

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,

So near is God to man,

When Duty whispers low, Thou must,

The youth replies, I can.

       *   *   *   *   *   *   *

     Best befriended of the God

He who, in evil times,

Warned by an inward voice,

Heeds not the darkness and the dread,

Biding by his rule and choice,

Feeling only the fiery thread

Leading over heroic ground,

Walled with mortal terror round,

To the aim which him allures,

And the sweet Heaven his deed secures.

Peril around, all else appalling,

Cannon in front and leaden rain,

Him Duty through the clarion calling

To the van called not in vain.

     Stainless soldier on the walls,

Knowing this, — and knows no more, —

Whoever rights, whoever falls,

Justice conquers evermore,

Justice after as before, —

And he who battles on her side,

God, though he were ten times slain,

Crowns him victor glorified,

Victor over death and pain.

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 285-6, 431-3

Colonel Charles Russell Lowell to Josephine Shaw, July 24, 1863 - p.m.

Centreville, July 24, P. M.

"Each and All" is a true poem and in Emerson's best strain, — but don't misunderstand it; Emerson doesn't mean to bring in question the reality of beauty, or the substantial truth of our youth's hopes, but he has seen how unripe and childish is the desire to appropriate, and how futile the attempt must always be. He does not lament over this, perhaps he rather rejoices over it, — everything is ours to enjoy, nothing is ours to encage; open, we are as wide as Nature; closed, we are too narrow to enjoy a seashell's beauty.

I wonder whether you will ever like Wordsworth as much as I do, — I wonder whether I liked him as much when I was “only nineteen.” He is clumsy, prosy, and sometimes silly, but he is always self-respectful, serene, and (what I like, even in a poet) responsible, — more of a man than any other modern poet, if not so much of a “person” as some, — less exclusively human and therefore more manly. I don't believe you’ll ever like him as much as I do. Indeed in my heart I hope you will not; he is rather a cold customer, not an ardent Protestant, and yet far from Catholic; but then he lived pretty high up and a good deal alone.

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 281-2

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, Monday Evening, March 3, 1862

Monday evening, 3 March, 1862.

. . . On the day you left us I had a long and most entertaining talk from Emerson about his experiences in Washington. Two things he said were especially striking. “When you go southward from New York you leave public opinion behind you. There is no such thing known in Washington.” — “It consoles a Massachusetts man to find how large is the number of egotists in Washington. Every second man thinks the affairs of the country depend upon him.” He reported a good saying of Stanton, when the difficulty of making an advance on account of the state of the roads was spoken of, — “Oh,” said he, “the difficulty is not from the mud in the roads, but the mud in the hearts of the Generals.”

Emerson said that Seward was very strong in his expressions concerning the incapacity and want of spirit of Congress, — and that Sherman and Colfax confirmed what Seward said, ascribing much of the manifest weakness to “Border State” influence.

And much more. . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 251-2

Diary of William Howard Russell: March 20, 1861

The papers are still full of Sumter and Pickens. The reports that they are or are not to be relieved are stated and contradicted in each paper without any regard to individual consistency. The “Tribune” has an article on my speech at the St. Patrick's dinner, to which it is pleased to assign reasons and motives which the speaker, at all events, never had in making it.

Received several begging letters, some of them apparently with only too much of the stamp of reality about their tales of disappointment, distress, and suffering. In the afternoon went down Broadway, which was crowded, notwithstanding the piles of blackened snow by the curbstones, and the sloughs of mud, and half-frozen pools at the crossings. Visited several large stores or shops — some rival the best establishments in Paris or London in richness and in value, and far exceed them in size and splendor of exterior. Some on Broadway, built of marble, or of fine cut stone, cost from £6,000 to £8,000 a year in mere rent. Here, from the base to the fourth or fifth story, are piled collections of all the world can produce, often in excess of all possible requirements of the country; indeed I was told that the United States have always imported more goods than they could pay for. Jewellers' shops are not numerous, but there are two in Broadway which have splendid collections of jewels, and of workmanship in gold and silver, displayed to the greatest advantage in fine apartments decorated with black marble, statuary, and plate

New York has certainly all the air of a “nouveau riche.” There is about it an utter absence of any appearance of a grandfather — one does not see even such evidences of eccentric taste as are afforded in Paris and London, by the existence of shops where the old families of a country cast off their “exuviӕ” which are sought by the new, that they may persuade the world they are old; there is no curiosity shop, not to speak of a Wardour Street, and such efforts as are made to supply the deficiency reveal an enormous amount of ignorance or of bad taste. The new arts, however, flourish; the plague of photography has spread through all the corners of the city, and the shop-windows glare with flagrant displays of the most tawdry art. In some of the large booksellers' shops — Appleton's for example — are striking proofs of the activity of the American press, if not of the vigor and originality of the American intellect. I passed down long rows of shelves laden with the works of European authors, for the most part, oh shame! stolen and translated into American type without the smallest compunction or scruple, and without the least intention of ever yielding the most pitiful deodand to the authors. Mr. Appleton sells no less than one million and a half of Webster's spelling-books a year; his tables are covered with a flood of pamphlets, some for, others against coercion; some for, others opposed to slavery, — but when I asked for a single solid, substantial work on the present difficulty, I was told there was not one published worth a cent. With such men as Audubon and Wilson in natural history, Prescott and Motley in history, Washington Irving and Cooper in fiction, Longfellow and Edgar Poe in poetry, even Bryant and the respectabilities in rhyme, and Emerson as essayist, there is no reason why New York should be a paltry imitation of Leipsig, without the good faith of Tauchnitz.

I dined with a litterateur well known in England to many people a year or two ago — sprightly, loquacious, and well informed, if neither witty nor profound — now a Southern man with Southern proclivities, — as Americans say; once a Southern man with such strong anti-slavery convictions, that his expression of them in an English quarterly had secured him the hostility of his own people — one of the emanations of American literary life for which their own country finds no fitting receiver. As the best proof of his sincerity, he has just now abandoned his connection with one of the New York papers on the republican side, because he believed that the course of the journal was dictated by anti-Southern fanaticism. He is, in fact, persuaded that there will be a civil war, and that the South will have much of the right on its side in the contest. At his rooms were Mons. B–––, Dr. Gwin, a Californian ex-senator, Mr. Barlow, and several of the leading men of a certain clique in New York. The Americans complain, or assert, that we do not understand them, and I confess the reproach, or statement, was felt to be well founded by myself at all events, when I heard it declared and admitted that “if Mons. Belmont had not gone to the Charleston Convention, the present crisis would never have occurred.”

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 24-6

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: June 19, 1861

In England Mr. Gregory and Mr. Lyndsey rise to say a good word for us. Heaven reward them; shower down its choicest blessings on their devoted heads, as the fiction folks say.

Barnwell Heyward telegraphed me to meet him at Kingsville, but I was at Cool Spring, Johnny's plantation, and all my clothes were at Sandy Hill, our home in the Sand Hills; so I lost that good opportunity of the very nicest escort to Richmond. Tried to rise above the agonies of every-day life. Read Emerson; too restless — Manassas on the brain.

Russell's letters are filled with rubbish about our wanting an English prince to reign over us. He actually intimates that the noisy arming, drumming, marching, proclaiming at the North, scares us. Yes, as the making of faces and turning of somersaults by the Chinese scared the English.

Mr. Binney¹ has written a letter. It is in the Intelligencer of Philadelphia. He offers Lincoln his life and fortune; all that he has put at Lincoln's disposal to conquer us. Queer; we only want to separate from them, and they put such an inordinate value on us. They are willing to risk all, life and limb, and all their money to keep us, they love us so.

Mr. Chesnut is accused of firing the first shot, and his cousin, an ex-West Pointer, writes in a martial fury. They confounded the best shot made on the Island the day of the picnic with the first shot at Fort Sumter. This last is claimed by Captain James. Others say it was one of the Gibbeses who first fired. But it was Anderson who fired the train which blew up the Union. He slipped into Fort Sumter that night, when we expected to talk it all over. A letter from my husband dated, "Headquarters, Manassas Junction, June 16, 1861":

My Dear Mary: I wrote you a short letter from Richmond last Wednesday, and came here next day. Found the camp all busy and preparing for a vigorous defense. We have here at this camp seven regiments, and in the same command, at posts in the neighborhood, six others — say, ten thousand good men. The General and the men feel confident that they can whip twice that number of the enemy, at least.

I have been in the saddle for two days, all day, with the General, to become familiar with the topography of the country, and the posts he intends to assume, and the communications between them.

We learned General Johnston has evacuated Harper's Ferry, and taken up his position at Winchester, to meet the advancing column of McClellan, and to avoid being cut off by the three columns which were advancing upon him. Neither Johnston nor Beauregard considers Harper's Ferry as very important in a strategic point of view.

I think it most probable that the next battle you will hear of will be between the forces of Johnston and McClellan.

I think what we particularly need is a head in the field — a Major-General to combine and conduct all the forces as well as plan a general and energetic campaign. Still, we have all confidence that we will defeat the enemy whenever and wherever we meet in general engagement. Although the majority of the people just around here are with us, still there are many who are against us.

God bless you.

Yours,

James Chesnut, Jr.

Mary Hammy and myself are off for Richmond. Rev. Mr. Meynardie, of the Methodist persuasion, goes with us. We are to be under his care. War-cloud lowering.

Isaac Hayne, the man who fought a duel with Ben Alston across the dinner-table and yet lives, is the bravest of the brave. He attacks Russell in the Mercury — in the public prints — for saying we wanted an English prince to the fore. Not we, indeed! Every man wants to be at the head of affairs himself. If he can not be king himself, then a republic, of course. It was hardly necessary to do more than laugh at Russell's absurd idea. There was a great deal of the wildest kind of talk at the Mills House. Russell writes candidly enough of the British in India. We can hardly expect him to suppress what is to our detriment.

_______________

¹ Horace Binney, one of the foremost lawyers of Philadelphia, who was closely associated with the literary, scientific, and philanthropic interests of his time. His wife was a sister of Mrs. Chesnut, the author's mother-in-law.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 64-6

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

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

Shady Hill, 10 February, 1861.

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

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

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

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

Charles Eliot Norton to Arthur H. Clough, December 11, 1860

Shady Hill, 11 December, 1860.

. . . Confusion and alarm are the order of the day with us. The movement for the breaking-up of the Union has acquired a most unexpected force. No one could have supposed beforehand that the South would be so blind to its own interests, so deaf to every claim of safety and honour, as to take such a course as it has done since the election a month ago. This course if followed out must bring ruin to the Southern States, and prolonged distress to the North. We are waiting on chance and accident to bring events. Everything in our future is uncertain, everything is possible. The South is in great part mad. Deus vult perdere. There is no counsel anywhere; no policy proposed. Every man is anxious; no one pretends to foresee the issue out of trouble. I have little hope that the Union can be preserved. The North cannot concede to the demands of the South, and even if it could and did, I doubt whether the result would be conciliation. The question is now fairly put, whether Slavery shall rule, and a nominal Union be preserved for a few years longer; or Freedom rule and the Union be broken up. The motives which the Southern leaders put forward for disunion are mere pretexts; their real motives are disappointed ambition, irritated pride, and the sense that power which they have so long held has now passed out of their hands.

There is little use in speculating on the consequences of disunion. If but one or two States secede, if the terrorism now established in South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, and which has strength to control every expression of sentiment opposed to disunion, — if this terrorism be broken through, and a chance be given for the conservative opinion in these States to manifest itself, it is possible that secession may take place without violence. But if, on the other hand, the excited feeling now prevalent should extend and gather force, peaceable secession becomes hardly possible, and all the horrors of servile insurrection and civil war loom up vaguely in the not distant future.

At present there is universal alarm; general financial pressure, great commercial embarrassment. The course of trade between the North and the South is interrupted; many manufacturing establishments are closed or working on short time; there are many failures, and many workmen thrown out of employment. This general embarrassment of business is shared in by foreign commerce, and must be sympathetically felt in England. The prospects of the next cotton crop are most uncertain.

The North stands in a perfectly fair position. It waits for action on the part of the South. It has little to regret in its past course, and nothing to recede from. It would not undo the election of Mr. Lincoln if it could; for it recognizes the fact that the election affords no excuse for the course taken by the South, that there was nothing aggressive in it and nothing dangerous to real Southern interests. It feels that this is but the crisis of a quarrel which is not one of parties but of principles, and it is on the whole satisfied that the dispute should be brought to a head, and its settlement no longer deferred. It is, however, both astonished and disappointed to find that the South should prefer to take all the risks of ruin to holding fast to the securities afforded to its institutions and to all the prosperity established by the Union. It is a sad thing, most sad indeed, to see the reckless flinging away of such blessings as we have hitherto enjoyed; most sad to contemplate as a near probability the destruction of our national existence; saddest of all to believe that the South is bringing awful calamities upon itself. But on the other hand there is a comfort in the belief that, whatever be the result of present troubles, the solution of Slavery will be found in it; and that the nature of these difficulties, the principles involved in them, and the trials that accompany them, will develop a higher tone of feeling and a nobler standard of character than have been common with us of late.

All we have to do at the North is to stand firm to those principles which we have asserted and which we believe to be just, — to have faith that though the heavens fall, liberty and right shall not fail, and that though confusion and distress prevail for the time in the affairs of men there is no chance and no anarchy in the universe.

We are reaping the whirlwind, — but when reaped the air will be clearer and more healthy.

I write hastily, for it is almost the mail hour, and I want to send this to you to-day. But even were I to write at length and with all deliberation, I could do no more than show you more fully the condition of anxious expectancy in which we wait from day to day, and of general distress among the commercial community.

Of course in these circumstances there is little interest felt in other than public affairs. It is a bad time for literature; the publishers are drawing in their undertakings; — and among other postponements is that of your poems. So much do our personal concerns depend on political issues. The only new book of interest is Emerson's.¹ It was published a day or two since and could not have appeared at a fitter time, for it is full of counsels to rebuke cowardice, to confirm the moral principles of men, and to base them firmly on the unshaken foundations of eternal laws. It is a book to be read more than once. It is full of real wisdom, but the wisdom is mingled with the individual notions of its author, which are not always wise. . . .

_______________

¹ The Conduct of Life.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 212-5

Arthur H. Clough to Charles Eliot Norton, July 4, 1861

London: July 4, 1861.

On coming back from abroad ten days ago I received two letters from you, one of which I had received by copy from my wife at Athens. Many thanks for them; they were very interesting, and I hope you will not be discouraged by my brief acknowledgments from writing further. I am still invalided, and am to go abroad again the day after to-morrow. I have achieved a good deal already, having seen Athens and Constantinople. I was half-tempted to come over to pay you the visit you so kindly proposed, but I should have had to return early in September, and I hope some year to spend a September on your side. I have just made a call on a former acquaintance in America, Miss E. H., of Concord, who brought me a letter from Emerson moreover. She tells me that in New England, she believes, people do not expect that the Southern States will ever be brought back into the Union, and that it is not the object simply to make them return; it being indeed hardly possible that the States, North and South, should ever again live together in union, but that the war is rather in vindication of the North and its rights, which have been trampled upon by the South. Is this true, in your judgment? Certainly it does seem hardly conceivable that South Carolina should ever return. On what terms then would the North be willing to make peace, and what conditions would it require in limine before entering upon the question of separation?

As for the feeling here, you must always expect statesmen to be cold in their language, and the newspapers impertinent and often brutal. Beyond this, I think people here had been led to suppose at the outset that the Northern feeling was strong against civil war, (and so it was I suppose,) and that the principle of separation was conceded; the indignation being merely at the mode adopted for obtaining it. And the attack on Fort Sumter which caused so sudden a revulsion of feeling with you was naturally attended with no such change here. But coexisting with all this, I believe there is a great amount of strong feeling in favour of the North.

Technically we are wrong, I suppose, and as a matter of feeling, we are guilty of an outrage in recognising the South as a belligerent power, but as a matter of convenience between your government and ours, I suppose the thing is best as it is.

Miss H. will take to Emerson four photographs of Rowse's picture of me; one for you: it may be better than nothing.

My nervous energy is pretty well spent for to-day, so I must come to a stop. I have leave till November, and by that time I hope I shall be strong again for another good spell of work.

Lord Campbell's death is rather the characteristic death of the English political man. In the cabinet, on the bench, and at a dinner party, busy, animated, and full of effort to-day, and in the early morning a vessel has burst. It is a wonder they last so long. I shall resign if it proves much of a strain to me to go on at this official work. Farewell.

SOURCE: Arthur Hugh Clough, Letters and Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, p. 316-7

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

Freshwater, Isle of Wight: March 10, 1861.

I hope your being at home may be understood to prove that you are a good deal stronger. I am a good deal better myself, and have no very good excuse for not writing beyond the advice which is given me to indulge in laziness. Had I had six months' leave proclaimed to me from beforehand, I should have naturally thought of going over to see you in America; but, what with water-cure and other things, I don't think I shall even go abroad to the Continent for more than a month.

I am glad to hear you speak so hopefully of your future much, however, will I suppose in any case depend on the good sense and character of your new President and his advisers. I for my part should suppose that an attempt to retake the federal forts would be unwise. You are strong enough not to need it.

Emerson's new essays were to me quite as good as, if not better than, any former volume. The reviews are no great index of public interest unless you collect a good number. There are now so many local reviews, and people with us depend so very little on Athenaeums and Literary Gazettes, or even Saturday Reviews. An article in the 'Times' is the really important thing for a book to get with a view to sale, but even that proves little as to people's interest. There is a vast deal of anti-mysticism, and of a dense, supercilious, narrow-minded common sense, which of course speaks pretty loudly.

SOURCE: Arthur Hugh Clough, Letters and Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, p. 301-2

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

Boston, April 29th, 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 honours are our honours, 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 button-hole. I hoped very much to pick up something which might interest you from some of our friends which 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 neighbours after the Chateau Margaux has reached the emotional centre, 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 labours 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, organising 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 civilisation 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 honours 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, Volume 1, p. 340-2

Ralph Waldo Emerson to Herman Grimm, June 27, 1861

Concord, June 27, 1861.

My Dear Friend, — You will think there never was such prodigal sloth as mine. To have such friends within easy reach by the steamer's mails, and to postpone letters (to write which is its own reward), and, by postponing, to brave the chances of time and harm on either side, — looks foolhardy, in a world where decay is so industrious. You have behaved so nobly too, on your part, as to leave my sloth and irresolution without excuse: for you have sent me such gentle reminders, in the shape of new benefits, that my debt grows from month to month. The Life of Michelangelo did not reach me until long after it was announced by your letter. I feared it was lost, and ordered a copy from Berlin. Your own book arrived at last, and, soon afterwards, the ordered copy, and there is now a third copy, in our Boston Athenaeum; so that America can begin to read. The book is a treasure, — in the hero, the treatment, the frank criticism, the judicial opinions, and, — what I value most, — the interior convictions of the writer bravely imparted, though more seldom than I could wish, as in the first pages, or in the interpretation of M. A.'s sentence or Raffaelle's diligence. The book has research, method, and daylight. I hate circular sentences, or echoing sentences, where the last half cunningly repeats the first half, — but you step from stone to stone, and advance ever. I first knew from your Essay the passages from Francesco d' Ollanda, and now you tell me the Florentine Government will print the Buonarroti Papers. Mr. Cobden, the English Member of Parliament, was in Boston two years ago, and told me he had been shown by the Buonarroti family, in Florence, a considerable collection of MSS. of Michelangelo. I hope, now that liberty has come, or is coming to Italy, there will be all the more zeal to print them. Michael is an old friend of mine. A noble, suffering soul; poor, that others may be rich; indemnified only in his perception of beauty. And his solitude and his opulent genius strongly attract. I miss cheerfulness. He is tragic, like Dante; though the Erythrӕan Sibyl is beautiful. I remember long ago what a charm I found in the figure of Justice, on Paul III's monument, in the Vatican, and wished the legend true that ascribed the design to Michael A. Yet he has put majesty, like sunshine, into St. Peter's. We must let him be as sad as he pleases. He is one of the indispensable men on whose credit the race goes. I believe I sympathize with all your admirations. Goethe and Michael A. deserve your fine speeches, and are not perilous, for a long time. One may absorb great amounts of these, with impunity; but we must watch the face of our proper Guardian, and if his eye dims a little, drop our trusted companions as profane. I have a fancy that talent, which is so imperative in the passing hour, is deleterious to duration; what a pity we cannot have genius without talent. Even in Goethe, the culture and varied, busy talent mar the simple grandeur of the impression, and he called himself a layman beside Beethoven.

Yet I do not the less esteem your present taste, which I respect as generous and wholesome. Nay, I am very proud of my friend, and of his performance. Pleases me well that you see so truly the penetrative virtue of well-born souls. Above themselves is the right by which they enter ad eundem into all spirits and societies of their own order. Like princes, they have sleeping titles, which perhaps they never assert, finding in the heyday of action relations enough close at hand, yet are these claims available at any hour, — claims, against which, conventions, disparities, nationality, fight in vain, for they transcend all bounds, as gravity grasps instantaneously all ponderable masses.

Thanks evermore for these costly fruits you send me over the sea! I have the brochure on Goethe in Italy and that on the portraits and statues of Goethe. I persuade myself that you speak English. I read German with some ease, and always better, yet I never shall speak it. But I please myself, that, thanks to your better scholarship, you and I shall, one of these days, have a long conversation in English. We are cleaning up America in these days to give you a better reception. You will have interested yourself to some extent, I am sure, in our perverse politics. What shall I say to you of them? 'T is a mortification that because a nation had no enemy, it should become its own; and, because it has an immense future, it should commit suicide! Sometimes I think it a war of manners. The Southern climate and slavery generate a marked style of manners. The people are haughty, self-possessed, suave, and affect to despise Northern manners as of the shop and compting-room; whilst we find the planters picturesque, but frivolous and brutal. Northern labor encroaches on the planters daily, diminishing their political power, whilst their haughty temper makes it impossible for them to play a second part. The day came when they saw that the Government, which their party had hitherto controlled, must now, through the irresistible census, pass out of their hands. They decided to secede. The outgoing administration let them have their own way, and when the new Government came in, the rebellion was too strong for any repression short of vast war; and our Federal Government has now 300,000 men in the field. To us, before yet a battle has been fought, it looks as if the disparity was immense, and that we possess all advantages, — whatever may be the issue of the first collisions. If we may be trusted, the war will be short, — and yet the parties must long remain in false position, or can only come right by means of the universal repudiation of its leaders by the South.

But I am running wide, and leaving that which belongs to you. Let me say that I rejoice in the union which allows me to address this letter to you, whilst I have my friend Gisela in my thoughts. To her, also, be this sheet inscribed; and let me entreat, meantime, that she, on the other hand, will not quite believe that she writes to me by the hand of her husband, but will, out of her singular goodness, use to me that frankness with which she already indulged me with autograph letters. My only confidante in this relation is my daughter Ellen, who reads Gisela's letters and yours to me, with entire devotion, and whose letter to your wife (sent through Rev. Mr. Longfellow) I hope you have long since received. Ellen has facility — and inclination to front and surmount the barriers of language and script. My little book, Conduct of Life, I tried in vain to send you by post. So I sent it by Mr. Burlingame, our Minister to Austria, who kindly promised me to forward it to you. But the Austrian Government has declined to receive him, and I know not how far he went, or what became of the poor little book. You asked for my photograph head, and I tried yesterday in Boston to procure you something; but they were all too repulsive. Ellen had enclosed in her letter some scrap of an effigy. But I am told that I shall yet have a better to send. And so, with thanks and earnest good wishes to you and yours, I wait new tidings of you.

R. W. Emerson.

Herman Grihm.

SOURCE: Frederick William Holls, editor, Correspondence between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Grimm, p. 57-63

The Social and Moral Condition of Washington

A Washington correspondent of the New York World answers the questions, “Have the Northern army and Northern supremacy benefited or injured Washington?  Have they brought to the Southern border the best or the worst of humanites?” as follows:

Something of the best certainly.  I have before written of the intellectual and social innovations storming Washington under convoy of a Republican dynasty and patriot army of occupation.  Of the misty departure, the gradual lessening and withdrawal from a thousand rented houses, of dresses gorgeous with gold and scarlet emblazonings, diamonds glistening on full imperious bosoms, wreaths, rioting, rampageous bluster, and other efflorescence of the Southern “Master-race.”  Of the substitution, in their stead, of modest and graceful fashions, neutral tints, figures, whose close bodiced whiteness must be guessed at from the stainless faces and golden hair above them the quiet tone of a higher breeding, the courtesies and charities and ease of the most civilized modern life.

Now are the metal revolutions less noteworthy.  “The old order changeth, yielding place to new,” and by favor of the latter our poets, scholars, and thinkers are having their time of political rule and remuneration.  It seems odd to find within the Ionic porches of the Government money factory such a gathering of bookmen, old and young, as I can name; to see the veteran Pierpont, and “Peter Schlemil,” and O’Connor – the talented Boston essayist and tale writer – and Piatt, who with Howells (now consul at Venice,) published the most promising volume of poems yet given us from the West – and Chilton, and Dr. Elder, et alii sim – all hopefully engaged in signing, cutting, or recording government notes and bonds, preparing tax schedules or in some other way laboring from 9 till 4 daily, Sundays excepted, in the joint behalf of Mercury and the republic.  Stepping across the yard, and entering the library of the State Department, one is assisted in his examination of parchment treaties and Puffendorff by J. C. Derby, so long in the front rank of New York publishers, now Mr. Seward’s librarian, and as ever, though not a soldier, bearded like the pard.  Already, on Pennsylvania Avenue, Fred. Cozzens’ store, to which Sparrow-grass has transported his catawbas and cabanas and genial self, is the lounging place of many of the afore-named gentry.  At the White house, of a morning, you will perhaps meet N. P. Willis in the reception room; but in Mr. Nicolay’s up-stair sanctum are sure to find John Hay, whose Atlantic papers are written with such purity of style and feeling, at his desk as under secretary to the President.  Then, among women writers, there is Mr. Prentice’s favorite contributor, nee Sallie M. Bryan, now wife of the aforesaid Piatt; and Mrs. Donn Piatt, otherwise “Bell Smith Abroad;” Mrs. Devereux Umstead and Mrs. Kirkland; and as of their male compeers, plenty of others whom I do not just now remember.  And of artists, there are Leutze, hard at work upon his twenty thousand dollar picture; Miss Lander, the sculptor, sister to Gen. Fred., who captured so many Colonels last Friday; and the Vermont sculptor, Larkin Meade, whose “Green Mountain boy” is now exhibiting at Philip & Solomon’s.  And the hall of the Smithsonian has yielded surprised echoes this winter to ringing utterances of the representative Northerns – Emerson, Taylor, Curtis, Holland, and Greeley.  Everywhere, intermingled with the varying phases of success, misfortune, valor and contrivance evolved by the present life struggle, the Northern mind and heart have exercised pervading influence at the Capital.

But this has nothing to do with the demoralization of Washington, and sounds curiously, I suppose, as a prelude to statements under such a caption.  The caption itself is paradoxical. – Washington life has so long been a synonym for dissipation, extravagance, finesse and fraud, that to talk of demoralizing it is presenting a converse to the proverb about gilding refined gold and painting the lily – it is to speak of corrupting an aged egg or making thick the water of the Ohio river.  Yet the truth is as I write it.  Even Washington has been lowered from its average standard of morals by a year of military occupation.  And it is high time that some attempt at reform should be made by those in power – from the Provost Marshal to the Municipal Police.

Bear in mind that the present condition of the city is in no wise chargeable to the influences mentioned above.  It has come in spite of them; as not so bad as it would be without them.  It is perhaps to a certain extent inseperable from an Army in Waiting.  Perhaps there is not so much vice here as has rioted in Vienna, Paris, Lisbon, Berlin or Brussels during the historic periods of their military occupation.  But these are larger cities.  Here, where 6,000 buildings and eight times as many resident people constitute the town, the amount of vice and crime brought with and bred among an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men is frightfully concentrated and apparent.  Licentiousness, debauchery, and gambling have raged like the typhoid and contagious fevers of the camps. – Worse, the latter flourish inversely with good weather, and the former seem to increase continuously, maintain a rising average through rain, hail, sleet, and sunshine.  I think the atmosphere is less tainted with the odor of fraudulent contracting, peculation and bribery than it was in A. D. 1861; but the pestilent fogs of vice are gathering in such noisome thickness as to indicate it well for the spiritual safety of our officers that active operations are close at hand.  With the motion of actual warfare comes a cleansing moral process, none but stagnant waters are spread with scum and slime.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 1, 1862, p. 3