William Cullen Bryant to Abraham Lincoln, November 10, 1860

New York, November 10, 1860

To A. Lincoln, President-elect:

You will not, I hope, find what I have to say in this letter intrusive or unreasonable. If you should, you will, of course, treat it as it deserves to be treated. I have no doubt that you receive frequent suggestions from various quarters respecting the selection of your Cabinet when you take the Executive chair. It is natural that your fellow-citizens who elected you to office should feel a strong interest in regard to the choice of those men who are to act as your advisers and your special assistants in the administration of affairs. The confidence of the people in the wisdom and the virtue of the Government depends in a good degree on that choice. You will therefore, I trust, most readily pardon a little zeal in this matter, even if it should go somewhat beyond the limits of a well-bred courtesy.

You have numerous friends in this quarter, and they are among the most enlightened and disinterested of the Republican party, who would be greatly pleased if your choice of a Secretary of State should fall on Mr. Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio. He is regarded as one of the noblest and truest of the great leaders of that party, as a man in all respects beyond reproach — which you know few men are. He is able, wise, practical, pure — no associate of bad men, nor likely to counsel their employment in any capacity. A Cabinet with such a man in its principal department, associated with others worthy to be his colleagues, would immediately command the public confidence. Of course, I do not expect you to make any reply to this letter. You will receive it as an expression of my sincere desire for the success of your administration.

SOURCE: Parke Godwin, A Biography of William Cullen Bryant, Volume 1, p. 150

Francis Lieber to Senator Charles Sumner, March 29, 1865

New York, March 29, 1865.

. . . How often have I said, “Let us beat the enemy and the logic will soon enough follow.” Such letters as Orleans’s and Cobden’s you should read to the President, and pound it into him that we want no peace. We want the restoration of the country minus slavery.  . . . Cobden touches on a very sore point, the necessary statesmanship of the Republican party when the military acting begins to cease. Now the Republican party has fervor, impulse, national convictions, and self-sacrifice; but we are sadly deficient in statesmanship, both with reference to financial and international matters.  . . . You will have to walk very bolt and straight before those English who seem to be so intensely anxious about your friendship to England, mais “soyez forts, et nous vous protégerons.”

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 356

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, March 9, 1863

Shady Hill, 9 March, 1863.

. . . The Democrats seem to me to have come to a consciousness of their danger. They are now setting themselves right and securing power in the future. If we can fairly kill slavery during the next two years, make it really and truly powerless as a political institution, then I have no objection to the Democrats coming back to their old and familiar places of power. The Republican party has not proved itself able in administration; it is better on the whole for the progress of the country and for the improvement of public opinion that the party founded on the essential principles of right and justice should be in the opposition. Moreover there are questions to be settled after the war is over which can be better settled by the unprincipled party in power, than by one bound by its timidities, and unaccustomed to impose restraints. We shall probably require some “conservatism” at the close of the war, and the Democratic party in power is likely to be conservative in some matters on which the Republicans would be weak and divided. I do not think that there is much chance of the formation of a real Union party. The Democrats will keep their organization, will exclude their too open peace members, and will reject all union with the honest men of our side. The odium of the war, of taxes, of disregard of personal liberty, of a violated constitution will be thrown on the Republicans, or the Unionists if that be their name, and the glory of securing victory and peace, and of reestablishing the Union, will be claimed by the Democrats. With which I shall not grumble. The Millennium is not at hand, but there is a good time coming, — and the country, with a thousand evils remaining, will be the better for the war, and Democrats like you and me may rejoice at the triumph of popular government and the essential soundness of the people.

Is this inveterate optimism? Are we at the beginning, on the contrary, of the epoch of the Lower Republic? . . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 261-3

George William Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, November 9, 1864

Harper's Weekly, New York, 9th November, 1864.

My Dear Charles, — Let us thank God and the people for this crowning mercy. I did not know how my mind and heart were strained until I felt myself sinking in the great waters of this triumph. We knew it ought to be; we knew that, bad as we have been, we did not deserve to be put out like a mean candle in its own refuse; but it is never day until the dawn. I do not yet know whether Seymour is elected. I hope not, for while he is in power this grand State is a base for rebel operations; and he is put in power, if at all, by those who would make any honorable government impossible. My heart sank as I stood among drunkards and the worst men, yesterday morning, to vote; but it sank deeper when I saw Aaron L., and others like him, voting to give those drunkards the power of the government. I have prepared a very small sermon upon Political Infidelity, for what infidels such men are to themselves and to mankind!

I am defeated, of course, and by a very heavy majority. In my own county my vote would have been largest of all the Union candidates if my name could have been sent to the soldiers, as the governor's was. As it is, he is some twenty before me. But Fernando Wood and James Brooks are defeated — God be praised! I have never been deceived about myself, but I am forever glad that my name was associated with this most memorable day.

Yours most affectionately,

G. W. C.

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 184-5

Congressman Israel Washburn, Jr. to James S. Pike, January 31, 1860

Washington, January 31, 1860.

My Dear Pike: I am rejoiced to hear you talk so sensibly. I am for Pitt, and hope our State will be for him in good faith, and secure his nomination. But if, after all, this cannot be done, I am for Seward. No indiscriminate admirer of the governor, I cannot forget how much he has done for the great cause, how brave and logical hare been his words, nor the trials and struggles of the last eight years in this Golgotha. May Maine be firmly and honestly for Fessenden; but let her not be used to defeat not alone her noble son, but every genuine Republican.

I have no doubt that you are entirely right in your apprehensions that there is a deep, widely extended, and formidable movement to nominate Bates, or some one like him, and to this fact, in my honest opinion, is it due that John Sherman was not elected Speaker weeks ago. The effect of electing our first and only candidate, and a Helper signer, after all the clamor made on that subject, was seen, and it was also surmised what would be the argument if, driven from a straight Republican nominee, a non-Helper, non-representative candidate should be chosen. Hence sundry diversions from Sherman to South Americans, hinting to the Democrats to hold on and our line would break soon. Hence the movements of at least one Bates man, who professes strong Republicanism, of whom I may speak hereafter. Sherman permitted the campaign to be directed in the main by these men, and was persuaded by them to favor the diversions I have referred to, or some of them, and to make what I regard as unfortunate speeches. There is not, that I know of, a single correspondent here who has understood the ground we were travelling, or who, if he understood it, has not been laboring in the interest of the “opposition” party rather than of the Republican party.

With our “Peck” of troubles in Maine, and anybody for the Republican nominee who is not a live and true Republican, we shall have a campaign such as I hope not to be obliged to labor in, and which would not promise the most happy results.

Put us on the defensive, set us to explaining and apologizing, give us a candidate of whom we only know that he is an old line Whig and never a Republican, and the canvass will be the hardest we ever had.

When are you coming on?

Yours truly,

I. Washburn, Jr.

J. S. Pike, Esq.

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. 482-3

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, October 15, 1863

15th October, 1863.

Whatever is happening to Meade, let us rejoice over Pennsylvannia and Ohio. It is the great vindication of the President, and the popular verdict upon the policy of the war. It gives one greater joy than any event which has lately happened. Is it not the sign of the final disintegration of that rotten mass known as the Democratic party? In this State we have sloughed off the name Republican and are known as the Union party. How glad I am that we can gladly bear that name, and that the Union at last means what it was intended by the wisest and the best of our fathers to mean!

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 166-7

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

Boston, February 16, 1861.

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

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

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

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

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

O. W. Holmes

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

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

Speech of Senator James W. Grimes, January 30, 1860

It is true that the Republican party have been in possession of the government of the State of Iowa during the last five years and upward. They have had the unlimited control of the government of that State in every one of its departments. They have had a succession of Governors of that political party. They have had all the judicial tribunals, with very few exceptions; and all the judges of the Supreme Court have belonged to that party. Their majorities in the House of Representatives and in the Senate of the State have been predominating, almost two to one, during four successive Legislative Assemblies. But it is not true that the General Assembly of that State has ever passed any law in violation of the Constitution of the United States, in regard to the fugitive-slave law, or in regard to any other act of Congress. No law has been passed by that State, either since it has been under the domination of the Republican party, or before it came under their control, that in the remotest degree contravenes the rights of any of the sister States, or interferes with the relation of master and slave, or master and servant.

I have not risen for the purpose of making this explanation, because I am disposed to censure or approve the acts of this kind that have been passed by other States. I have no judgment to pronounce upon that subject. I have no criticism to make on that species of legislation. It is no part of my business, as I understand it, to sit here and arraign the action of sovereign States of this Union in regard to their local laws, whether they may be as objectionable as are the laws of Louisiana and South Carolina to Senators, like the Senator from Massachusetts, or whether they are as objectionable as are the laws of Massachusetts and Connecticut to the Senator from Georgia, and others who act and feel with him. That is not my business. But I am not disposed to let the State of my adoption, where I have the happiness to reside, and which I have the honor here in part to represent, have either the glory or the discredit—whichever way they may be regarded by Senators — of passing any law which she did not pass. Whenever she shall see fit to pass a law of this kind, or of any other kind, I, as a citizen of that State, will express my opinion in approbation or in disapprobation of it, as my judgment shall dictate.

Nor do I allude to this subject at this time for the purpose of relieving myself, my State, or the people whom I represent, from the epithets which were so abundantly poured out upon them by the Senator from Georgia. If there are any people in my State who will be disturbed by them it will not be the men with whom I act, but those who profess a sympathy and affinity for the political party with which the Senator from Georgia associates. So far as the Republicans are concerned, I can vouch for them that they will never be won or intimidated by adjectives, no matter how boisterously, or how numerously, or how harshly, they may be applied.

SOURCE: William Salter, The Life of James W. Grimes, p. 123-4

Francis Preston Blair to Congressman John Sherman, December 6, 1859

Washington City, December 6, 1859.

Dear Sir: — I perceive that a debate has arisen in Congress in which Mr. Helper's book, the “Impending Crisis,” is brought up as an exponent of Republican principles. As the names of many leading Republicans are presented as recommending a compendium of the volume, it is proper that I should explain how those names were obtained in advance of the publication. Mr. Helper brought his book to me at Silver Spring to examine and recommend, if I thought well of it, as a work to be encouraged by Republicans. I had never seen it before. After its perusal, I either wrote to Mr. Helper, or told him that it was objectionable in many particulars, to which I adverted; and he promised me, in writing, that he would obviate the objections by omitting entirely or altering the matter objected to. I understand that it was in consequence of his assurance to me that the obnoxious matter in the original publication would be expurgated, that Members of Congress and other influential men among the Republicans were induced to give their countenance to the circulation of the edition so to be expurgated

F. P. BLAIR,

Silver Spring.

Hon. John Sherman.

SOURCE:  John Sherman, John Sherman's Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet, Volume 1, p. 170

George William Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, August 23, 1861

23d August, '61.

I am very firm in the faith that there can be but the government and anti-government parties, and then that the Republican party, though strictly loyal, does not by any means include all loyal men, and that recent political opponents have a right to demand, as a condition of concerted action, that some of the candidates shall be taken from among them. Isn't this exactly right?

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 151

Governor Samuel J. Kirkwood to Abraham Lincoln, February 2, 1863

St. Louis, Feb. 2, 1863.

His Excellency the President:

Sir — Appreciating as I do the responsibilities and cares of your position, I have avoided obtruding upon you my opinions, except in cases wherein I would, in my judgment, have been wanting in my duty to my country had I forborne to do so. A case of this kind, in my judgment, now presents itself, illustrating a grave question of policy.

On the 8th of January Col. William T. Shaw received from Major-Gen. Curtis, commanding the Department of the Missouri, written orders to repair to Helena, Ark., and report to the officer commanding the Eastern District of Arkansas, for duty in organizing and mustering in troops to be raised from persons emancipated from servitude for garrison and other duties as contemplated in the proclamation of his Excellency the President of the United States of the 1st of January. In obedience to this order, Col. Shaw repaired to Helena, reaching that point about the 16th of January, and reported to Brigadier-General Gorman, commanding, delivering the order of General Curtis. General Gorman positively refused to recognize Col. Shaw as an officer under his command; positively refused to issue any orders or to afford Col. Shaw any facilities to execute the orders of Gen. Curtis; used grossly insulting language to Col. Shaw for being willing to act under such an order; stated that if he (Gen. Gorman) had any officer under his command that would help to execute such orders he would have him mustered out of service, and that if any man should attempt to raise negro soldiers there his men would shoot them. Throughout the entire interview his demeanor and language to Col. Shaw was grossly insulting and abusive. Shortly after this interview, a member of the Second Arkansas Cavalry handed to Col. Shaw a letter directed on the outside of the envelope, "Col. Shaw, in charge of negro camp." The letter was as follows:

Executive Office, Helena, Ark., Jan. 23, 1865.

General Orders No. 2.

No person, or persons, in the State of Arkansas shall be enlisted, or recruited, to serve as soldiers except by an officer duly appointed by the Military Governor of this State.

amos F. Eno,

Secretary of State, pro tem.

Col. Shaw finding he could not execute the order of Gen. Curtis, reported in person to him.

Mr. President, I do not desire to intermeddle in matters with which I have not legitimate concern, nor do I think I am so doing in bringing this matter to your notice. Col. Shaw is a gallant officer from the State of Iowa, commanding the Fourteenth Regiment Iowa Volunteer Infantry. He led his regiment bravely at Donelson and Shiloh; was taken prisoner at the latter place, and after a long and severe imprisonment, was paroled and exchanged in October last. Except in military position, he is at least Gen. Gorman's equal. He has been grossly insulted while endeavoring, as a good soldier should, to execute the orders of his superior officer.

But the precise point to which I desire to direct your attention is this: The proclamation issued by you on the 1st of January last was an act the most important you have ever performed and more important than, in all human probability, you will ever again perform. I shall not here argue whether its results will be good or evil.

Had you not believed the good of the country imperatively demanded its issuance, you would not have issued it. I most cordially and heartily endorse it But, Mr. President, that proclamation cannot be productive of good results unless it is observed and put in force. You know its promulgation has afforded many men a pretext for arraying themselves against the country, and if, having been promulgated, it is allowed to be inoperative, its effects must be all evil and none good. Then how may it be executed? Can it be, will it be, by such men as General Gorman?

Permit me to say, in all frankness, but with proper respect and deference, the history of the world cannot show an instance where a policy of a nation to array men strongly for or against it was ever successfully carried into effect by its opponents. It is not in the nature of things it should be so, and with the facts herein presented within my knowledge, I can not feel that I have discharged my duty without saying that, in my judgment, it cannot produce the good effects its friends believe it is capable of producing, and must produce only evil, unless you depend for carrying it into effect upon those who believe it to be a wise and good measure.

Many men holding high commands in the armies of the Union openly denounce the proclamation as an “abolition” document, and say it has changed the war from a war for the Union into a war for freeing the negroes. This is caught up and goes through the ranks and produces a demoralizing effect on the men whose affiliation has been with the Democratic party, and they say “they did not enlist to fight for niggers;” while the men whose affiliation has been with the Republican party are disheartened and discouraged at discovering that the policy of the President, which they heartily endorse and approve, is ridiculed and thwarted by the men who should carry it into effect. If that proclamation is not to be respected and enforced, it had better never have been issued. I am unwilling to be misinterpreted or misunderstood. I am not influenced by party political considerations. There are few men in the country with whom I have differed more widely politically than with Gen. Butler, yet it is to me a source of great pleasure that he is to supersede, at New Orleans, a distinguished and able officer of my own political faith. Gen. Butler is prompt, ready and anxious to do the work assigned him, and such are the men we must have to obtain success. I care not what their political opinions have been, if they are unconditionally for the Union to-day.

Permit me further to call to your notice the document copied herein issued by “Amos F. Eno, Secretary of State, pro tem.” As the Governor of the loyal State of Iowa, duly elected by the people of that State, I would not feel at liberty to order that no person should be enlisted or recruited as soldiers in Iowa, except by an officer duly appointed by myself; and it certainly seems to me that the subordinate of a military governor, appointed by you, for a State in rebellion against the government, should not have that power. This act of this man is evidence of the determination of men holding their authority from you to disregard and bring into disrepute the policy you have felt bound to adopt. There is a further act of this Mr. Eno that I feel obliged to bring to your notice. He claims to act as the Adjutant-General of the Military Governor of Arkansas, and I am informed by authority, upon which I confidently rely, he turned from 100 to 150 sick and wounded soldiers out of a comfortable house, wherein they had been placed, in order to use the house as his headquarters; that these poor fellows were removed while it was raining, and that some of them actually died while being removed. There are many sick and wounded Iowa soldiers at the place, and some of them may have been among those thus treated. I would not, in my judgment, be discharging my duty to them, if I did not bring this matter to your notice and demand an investigation of the facts alleged.

Very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

SAMUEL J. KIRKWOOD.

SOURCE: Henry Warren Lathrop, The Life and Times of Samuel J. Kirkwood, Iowa's War Governor, p. 267-9

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

Diary of Josephine Shaw Lowell: December 4, 1861

The latest, best and most ardently wished for Republican triumph has been achieved. Fernando Wood is defeated and George Opdyke is Mayor of New York. Hurrah! We scarcely hoped for such delightful news. A Republican Mayor of New York! The idea is positively an almost inconceivable one.

SOURCE: William Rhinelander Stewart, The Philanthropic Work of Josephine Shaw Lowell, p. 22

George William Curtis to John J. Pinkerton, April 13, 1860

North Shore, 13th April, 1860.

My Dear Pinkerton, — Thanks for your kind response. I have had the same suspicion of Pennsylvania, but my general feeling is this: that the nomination of Mr. Bates would so chill and paralyze the youth and ardor which are the strength of the Republican party; would so cheer the Democrats as a merely available move, showing distrust of our own position and power; would so alienate the German Northwest, and so endanger a bolt from the straight Republicans of New England, — that the possible gain of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and even Indiana, might be balanced. Add to this that defeat with Bates is the utter destruction of our party organization, and that success with him is very doubtful victory, and I cannot but feel that upon the whole his nomination is an act of very uncertain wisdom.

It is very true that there is no old Republican, because the party is young, and it will not do to ask too sharply when a man became a Republican. Moreover, a man like Mr. Bates may very properly have been a Fillmore man in '56, because he might not have believed that the Slavery party was as resolved and desperate as it immediately showed itself in the Dred Scott business; this is all true, but human nature cries out against the friends of Fremont in '56 working for a Fillmore man in '60, and there is a good deal of human nature in the public. The nomination of Mr. Bates will plunge the really Republican States into a syncope. If they are strong enough to remain Republican while they are apathetic, then in the border States you may decide the battle.

I think New York is very sure for the Chicago man, whoever he is; but if Bates is the man, we shall have to travel upon our muscle!! Individually believing, as I do, in the necessary triumph of our cause by causes superior to the merely political, I should prefer a fair fight upon the merits of the case between Douglas and Seward, or Hunter or Guthrie and Seward. I think Douglas will be the Charleston man.

Thank you once more.

Yours faithfully,

George William Curtis.

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 130-2

Charles D. Miller, to Samuel L. M. Barlow, February 26, 1860

Peterboro, February 26th, 1860.

S. L. M. Barlow, Esq.:

Sir: I have your letter of 22d inst. Mr. Smith desires me to say that his attention was called at the same time to all the references to himself in your “Manifesto.” That he complained of but one, was by no means because he acquiesced in the others. Compared with that one, the others are of no importance. That one is a sheer fabrication. Of all in it that you attribute to him he had done nothing. But in the other references, your responsibility is only for your opinions of what he confesses he had done.

It is true that Mr. Smith did at the close of his long letter to Mr. Thomas on other subjects, (dated 27th August,) assert the probability of servile insurrections, and the possibility of their success, as reasons why the people should, at the ballot-box, put an end to slavery. But, pray, what responsible connection is there between this and the “Central Association,” or the sad occurrence at Harper's Ferry? The like thing he did in scores of meetings, in his tour through this State in 1858; and never was he more full and faithful at this point than in his speech on the Nebraska Bill. (See pages 200, etc., of the volume of his Congressional Speeches.) In fact, it is for more than a quarter of a century that he has been continually testifying that unless the American people hasten to put away slavery peacefully, it will go out in blood. His only regret in respect to such testimony is, that it has not availed to persuade, or, if you prefer, to frighten the people, both of the North and the South, into his own deep and abiding belief that slavery will die a violent death unless speedily put to a peaceful one. As to Harper's Ferry, Mr. Smith is not aware that he had seen or heard the name of that village, or thought of itself or its name, for years immediately preceding the scene of violence there last October.

Mr. Smith readily admits that his letter to John Brown in your "Manifesto" does not exaggerate his love and admiration of the man, whom, during the many years of his intimate relations with him, both in business and friendship, he was accustomed to regard as unsurpassed, for truthfulness, disinterestedness, and a noble and sublime spirit. No wonder that, regarding him in this light, Mr. Smith did, from the time Capt. Brown started for Kansas, in the spring of 1855, put money into his hand whenever he opened it for money. No wonder, that during the last four years of Capt. Brown's life, Mr. Smith sent very many bank-drafts to him, and to names which the Captain furnished. Whether his call was for fifty dollars or for two hundred and fifty, was all the same. It was never refused. I scarcely need add that no one feels deeper sorrow than does Mr. Smith, that his precious, nay idolized friend, was led into the mistake of shedding blood in his last attempt to help slaves get free. Indeed, it was that mistake which completed the prostration of the miserable health of Mr. Smith's body and brain. What little strength the most obstinate dyspepsia, following up typhoid fever and dropsy, had left him, was swept away by the horrible news from Virginia. You put your own assumed and entirely unauthorized interpretation upon Mr. Smith's use of the words “Kansas work.” What he meant by these words is what Capt. Brown, in his public meeting, held in this village a few weeks before the date of Mr. Smith's letter, described as his latest “Kansas work,” — namely, the removing of slaves without violence to a land where they can be free.

To return to your letter: I hardly need say that it is unsatisfactory to Mr. Smith. It evidently was not intended to be satisfactory to him. It adds studied insults to the cruel and immeasurable wrongs you had previously done him. You had done what you could to blacken his reputation; and now, when arraigned for it, the whole extent of your concession is, that he shall have the privilege of wiping off the blacking if he can. It is as if you had called your innocent fellow-man a cut-throat, and then, wiping your mouth, had told him that you would retract the bad name, if only he would consent to degrade himself so far as to deny that the bad name fits him. In the depths of your malice — a malice unmitigated, as your own letter shows, by the least semblance, and scarcely by the least pretense, of a particle of evidence to justify your accusation — you did him all the injury you could; and now, when called on to repair it, you send him a letter which but deepens it. I need not characterize that letter. It characterizes itself. There is not a right-minded man, North or South, but would pronounce your treatment of Mr. Smith to be base, infamous, and wicked to the last degree — and this, too, according to your own presentation of the case in your own letter. Let your Committee think of their deliberate and enormous crime against Mr. Smith, and then sleep over it if they can. When he was within forty-eight hours of death, in the judgment of the physicians into whose hands he then passed; and when he knew not one person from another; and when his family were too much afflicted to read the newspapers — that Committee was busy, with Satanic industry and Satanic venom, in circulating over the whole land a falsehood of their own coinage, that could not have failed to fill with the hatred and loathing of him ten thousand hearts, both North and South, that had before loved and honored him.

Mr. Smith is not unmindful that you were moved to defame him by party rather than personal objects; and he confesses that he has no sympathy with the Republican party. He will not greatly deplore the advantages you may gain over it. But he must protest against your gaining them at his expense — especially at so great expense as having the most atrocious and injurious falsehoods told of himself. Mr. Smith is an Abolitionist, and not, as you would have it believed, a Republican. The odium of his principles belongs all to himself; and it is not right that the Republican party should suffer at all from it. But although Mr. Smith is an Abolitionist, he has friends and relatives both at the North and South. Moreover, he thinks quite as highly of Southern as of Northern character. I add, that although he has purchased the freedom of many slaves, and not a few of them within two or three hours’ drive of Harper's Ferry, and that although he is a very willing contributor to “Underground Railroads,” he would nevertheless not have any slave seek his freedom at the expense of killing his master. He has always said that he would rather remain a slave for life than get his liberty by bloodshed.

Respectfully yours,

Chas. D. Miller.

SOURCE: Gerrit Smith, Gerrit Smith and the Vigilant Association of the City of New-York, p. 7-11

Rose O’Neal Greenhow to William H. Seward, November 17, 1861

Washington, November 17, 1861.

398, 16th Street.

HON. WM. H. SEWARD, SEC. OF STATE.

Sir, — For nearly three months I have been confined a close prisoner, shut out from air and exercise, and denied all communion with family and friends.

“Patience is said to be a great virtue,” and I have practised it to my utmost capacity of endurance.

I am told, sir, that upon your ipse dixit the fate of citizens depends, and that the sign-manual of the ministers of Louis XIV. and XV. was not more potential in their day than that of the Secretary of State in 1861.

I therefore most respectfully submit that on Friday, August 23rd, without warrant or other show of authority, I was arrested by the detective police, and my house taken in charge by them: that all my private letters and papers of a life-time were read and examined by them: that every law of decency was violated in the search of my house and person, and by the surveillance over me.

We read in history that the poor Marie Antoinette had a paper torn from her bosom by lawless hands, and that even a change of linen had to be effected in sight of her brutal captors. It is my sad experience to record even more revolting outrages than that, for during the first days of my imprisonment, whatever necessity forced me to seek my chamber, a detective stood sentinel at the open door. And thus, for a period of seven days, I, with my little child, was placed absolutely at the mercy of men without character or responsibility; that during the first evening a portion of those men became brutally drunk, and boasted in my hearing of the nice times they expected to have with the female prisoners, and that rude violence was used towards a servant girl during that first evening. For any show of decorum afterwards practised towards me I was indebted to the detective called Captain Dennis.

In the careful analysis of my papers I deny the existence of a line that I had not a perfect right to have written or to have received. Freedom of speech and of opinion is the birthright of Americans, guaranteed to us by our charter of liberty — the Constitution of the United States. I have exercised my prerogative, and have openly avowed my sentiments. During the political struggle I opposed your Republican party with every instinct of self-preservation. I believed your success a virtual nullification of the Constitution, and that it would entail upon us all the direful consequences which have ensued. These sentiments have doubtless been found recorded among my papers, and I hold them as rather a proud record of my sagacity.

I must be permitted to quote from a letter of yours, in regard to “Russell of the London Times,” which you conclude with these admirable words: “Individual errors of opinion may be tolerated, so long as good sense is left to combat them.”

By way of illustrating theory and practice, here am I — a prisoner in sight of the executive mansion — in sight of the Capitol, where the proud statesmen of our land have sung their pagans to the blessings of our free institutions. Comment is idle. Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, every right pertaining to the citizen, has been suspended by what, I suppose, the President calls a “military necessity.” A blow has been struck by this total disregard of all civil rights against the present system of government far greater in its effects than the severance of the Southern States. The people have been taught to contemn the supremacy of the law, to which all have hitherto bowed, and to look to the military power for protection against its decrees. A military spirit has been developed which will only be subordinate to a military dictatorship. Read history, and you will find that the causes which bring about a revolution rarely predominate at its close, and no people have ever returned to the point from which they started. Even should the Southern States be subdued, and forced back into the Union (which I regard as impossible, with a full knowledge of their resources), a different form of government will be found needful to meet the new developments of national character. There is no class of society, no branch of industry, which this change has not reached, and the dull plodding methodical habits of the past can never be resumed.

You have held me, sir, to a man's accountability, and I therefore claim the right to speak on subjects usually considered beyond a woman's ken, and which you may class as “errors of opinion.” I offer no excuse for this long digression, as a three months’ imprisonment, without formula of law, gives me authority for occupying even the precious moments of a Secretary of State.

My object is to call your attention to the fact, that during this long imprisonment I am yet ignorant of the causes of my arrest; that my house has been seized and converted into a prison by the Government; that the valuable furniture it contained has been abused and destroyed; that during some period of my imprisonment I have suffered greatly for want of proper and sufficient food. Also, I have to complain that more recently a woman of bad character —  recognised as having been seen in the streets of Chicago as such, by several of the guard — calling herself Mrs. Onderdunk, was placed here in my house in a room adjoining mine.

In making this exposition, I have no object of appeal to your sympathies. If the justice of my complaint and a decent regard for the world’s opinion do not move you, I should but waste time to claim your attention on any other score.

I may, however, recall to your mind that but a little while since you were quite as much proscribed by public sentiment here, for the opinions and principles you held, as I am now for mine.

I could easily have escaped arrest, having had timely warning. I thought it possible that your statesmanship might prevent such a proclamation of weakness to the world as even the fragment of a once great Government turning its arms against the breasts of women and children. You have the power, sir, and may still further abuse it. You may prostrate the physical strength, by confinement in close rooms and insufficient food. You may subject me to harsher, ruder treatment than I have already received; but you cannot imprison the soul. Every cause worthy of success has had its martyrs. The words of the heroine Corday are applicable here: “C’est le crime qui fait la honte, et non pas l’échafaud.” My sufferings will afford a significant lesson to the women of the South, that sex or condition is no bulwark against the surging billows of the “irrepressible conflict.”

The “iron heel” of power may keep down, but it cannot crush out, the spirit of resistance in a people armed for the defence of their rights; and I tell you now, sir, that you are standing over a crater whose smothered fires in a moment may burst forth.

It is your boast that thirty-three bristling fortifications surround Washington. The fortifications of Paris did not protect Louis Philippe when his hour had come.

In conclusion, I respectfully ask your attention to this my protest, and have the honour to be, &c,

&c, &c,

ROSE O'N. Geeenhow.

SOURCE: Rose O'Neal Greenhow, My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition rule at Washington, p. 118-24

Hannibal Hamlin to George Ashmun, May 30, 1860

WASHINGTON, May 30, 1860.

Gentlemen, — Your official communication of the 18th inst., informing me that the representatives of the Republican party of the United States, assembled at Chicago on that day, had by unanimous vote selected me as their candidate for the office of Vice-President of the United States, has been received, together with the resolutions adopted by the convention as its declaration of principles. These resolutions enunciate clearly and forcibly the principles which unite us, and the objects proposed to be accomplished. They address themselves to all, and there is neither necessity nor propriety in entering upon a discussion of any of them. They have the approval of my judgment, and in any action of mine will be faithfully and cordially sustained. I am profoundly grateful to those with whom it is my pride to cooperate for the nomination so unexpectedly conferred. And I desire to tender through you to the members of the convention my sincere thanks for the confidence thus reposed in me. Should the nomination which I now accept be ratified by the people, and the duties devolved on me of presiding over the Senate of the United States, it will be my earnest endeavor faithfully to discharge them with a just regard for the rights of all.

It is to be observed in connection with the doings of the Republican convention, that the paramount object with us is to preserve the normal conditions of our territorial domains as homes for freemen. The able advocate and defender of Republican principles whom you have named for the highest place that can gratify the ambition of man comes from a State which has been made what it is by the special action in that respect by the wise and good men who founded our institutions. The rights of free labor have been there vindicated and maintained. The thrift and enterprise which so distinguish Illinois, one of the most flourishing States of the glorious West, we would see secured to all the territories of the Union, and restore peace and harmony to the whole country by bringing back the government to what it was under the wise and patriotic men who created it. If the Republicans shall succeed in that object, as they hope to, they will be held in grateful remembrance by the busy and teeming millions of the future ages.

I am, very truly yours,

H. Hamlin.

To the Hon. George Ashmun,

President of the Convention, and others of the Committee.

SOURCE: Charles Eugene Hamlin, The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin, p. 351; David W. Bartlett, The Life and Public Services of Hon. Abraham Lincoln, p. 356-7

Senator James W. Grimes to Elizabeth S. Nealley Grimes, June 4, 1860

Washington, June 4, 1860.

We have just had a four hours speech from Sumner on the “Barbarism of Slavery.” In a literary point of view it was of course excellent. As a bitter, denunciatory oration, it could hardly be exceeded in point of style and finish. But, to me, many parts of it sounded harsh, vindictive, and slightly brutal. It is all true that slavery tends to barbarism, but Mr. Sumner furnishes no remedy for the evils he complains of. His speech has done the Republicans no good. Its effect has been to exasperate the Southern members, and render it utterly impossible for Mr. Sumner to exercise any influence here for the good of his State. Mr. C. F. Adams made a manly, statesmanly speech in the House of Representatives, four days ago, which was attentively listened to by everybody. He read it, as did Mr. Sumner his.

Mr. Seward is now here, and made a speech in Executive session the other day on the Mexican Treaty, that to my view showed more intellectual vigor than did his speech which you heard. His speech to which I refer was short, extemporaneous, and very able, converting almost the whole Senate to his views.

The nomination of Lincoln strikes the mass of the people with great favor. He is universally regarded as a scrupulously honest man, and a genuine man of the people.

SOURCE: William Salter, The Life of James W. Grimes, p. 127-8