Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to John L. Motley, August 29, 1862

Boston, 21 Charles Street,

August 29, 1862.

My Dear Motley: I don't know how I can employ the evening of my birthday better than by sitting down and beginning a letter to you. I have heard of your receiving my last, and that you meant to reply to it soon. But this was not in the bond, and whether you write or not, I must let you hear from me from time to time. I know what you must endure with a non-conductor of a thousand leagues between you and this great battery, which is sending its thrill through us every night and morning. I know that every different handwriting on an envelop, if it comes from a friend, has its special interest, for it will give an impression in some way differing from that of all others. My own thoughts have been turned aside for a while from those lesser occurrences of the day which would occupy them at other times by a domestic sorrow, which, though coming in the course of nature, and at a period when it must have been very soon inevitable, has yet left sadness in mine and other households. My mother died on the 19th of this month, at the age of ninety-three, keeping her lively sensibilities and sweet intelligence to the last. My brother John had long cared for her in the most tender way, and it almost broke his heart to part with her. She was a daughter to him, she said, and he had fondly thought that love and care could keep her frail life to the filling up of a century or beyond it. It was a pity to look on him in his first grief; but time, the great consoler, is busy with his anodyne, and he is coming back to himself. My mother remembered the Revolution well, and she was scared by the story of the redcoats coming along and killing everybody as they went, she having been carried from Boston to Newburyport. Why should I tell you this? Our hearts lie between two forces — the near ones of home and family, and those that belong to the rest of the universe. A little magnet holds its armature against the dragging of our own planet and all the spheres.

I had hoped that my mother might have lived through this second national convulsion. It was ordered otherwise, and with the present prospects I can hardly lament that she was spared the period of trial that remains. How long that is to be no one can predict with confidence. There is a class of men one meets with who seem to consider it due to their antecedents to make the worst of everything. I suppose —— —— may be one of these. I met him a day or two since, and lost ten minutes in talk with him on the sidewalk — lost them, because I do not wish to talk with any man who looks at this matter empirically as an unlucky accident, which a little prudence might have avoided, and not a theoretical necessity. However, he said to me that the wisest man he knew — somebody whose name I did not know — said to him long ago that this war would outlast him, an old man, and his companion also, very probably. You meet another man, and he begins cursing the government as the most tyrannical one that ever existed. “That is not the question,” I answer. “How much money have you given for this war? How many of your boys have gone to it? How much of your own body and soul have you given to it?” I think Mr. —— —— is the most forlorn of all the Jeremiahs I meet with. Faith, faith is the only thing that keeps a man up in times like these; and those persons who, by temperament or underfeeding of the soul, are in a state of spiritual anemia, are the persons I like least to meet, and try hardest not to talk with.

For myself, I do not profess to have any political wisdom. I read, I listen, I judge to the best of my ability. The best talk I have heard from any of our home politicians was that of Banks, more than a year and a half ago. In a conversation I had with him, he foreshadowed more clearly the plans and prospects and estimated more truly the resources of the South than any one else with whom I had met. But prophets in America and Europe have been at a very heavy discount of late. Count Gasparin seems to me to have the broadest and keenest understanding of the aims and ends of this armed controversy. If we could be sure of no intermeddling, I should have no anxiety except for individuals and for temporary interests. If we have grown unmanly and degenerate in the north wind, I am willing that the sirocco should sweep us off from the soil. If the course of nature must be reversed for us, and the Southern Goths must march to the “beggarly land of ice” to overrun and recolonize us, I have nothing to object. But I have a most solid and robust faith in the sterling manhood of the North, in its endurance, its capacity for a military training, its plasticity for every need, in education, in political equality, in respect for man as man in peaceful development, which is our law, in distinction from aggressive colonization; in human qualities as against bestial and diabolical ones; in the Lord as against the devil. If I never see peace and freedom in this land, I shall have faith that my children will see it. If they do not live long enough to see it, I believe their children will. The revelations we have had from the Old World have shed a new light for us on feudal barbarism. We know now where we are not to look for sympathy. But oh, it would have done your heart good to see the processions of day before yesterday and to-day, the air all aflame with flags, the streets shaking with the tramp of long-stretched lines, and only one feeling showing itself, the passion of the first great uprising, only the full flower of which that was the opening bud.

There is a defense of blubber about the arctic creatures through which the harpoon must be driven before the vital parts are touched. Perhaps the Northern sensibility is protected by some such incasing shield. The harpoon is, I think, at last through the blubber. In the meanwhile I feel no doubt in my own mind that the spirit of hostility to slavery as the cause of this war is speedily and certainly increasing. They were talking in the cars to-day of Fremont's speech at the Tremont Temple last evening. His allusions to slavery — you know what they must have been — were received with an applause which they would never have gained a little while ago. Nay, I think a miscellaneous Boston audience would be more like to cheer any denunciation of slavery now than almost any other sentiment.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 267-71

Diary of William Howard Russell: May 27, 1861

I visited several of the local companies, their drill-grounds and parades; but few of the men were present, as nearly all are under orders to proceed to the camp at Tangipao or to march to Richmond. Privates and officers are busy in the sweltering streets purchasing necessaries for their journey. As one looks at the resolute, quick, angry faces around him, and hears but the single theme, he must feel the South will never yield to the North, unless as a nation which is beaten beneath the feet of a victorious enemy.

In every State there is only one voice audible. Hereafter, indeed, state jealousies may work their own way; but if words means anything, all the Southern people are determined to resist Mr. Lincoln's invasion as long as they have a man or a dollar. Still, there are certain hard facts which militate against the truth of their own assertions, “that they are united to a man, and prepared to fight to a man.” Only 15,000 are under arms out of the 50,000 men in the State of Louisiana liable to military service.

“Charges of abolitionism” appear in the reports of police cases in the papers every morning; and persons found guilty, not of expressing opinions against slavery, but of stating their belief that the Northerners will be successful, are sent to prison for six months. The accused are generally foreigners, or belong to the lower orders, who have got no interest in the support of slavery. The moral suasion of the lasso, of taring and feathering, head-shaving, ducking, and horseponds, deportation on rails, and similar ethical processes are highly in favor. As yet the North have not arrived at such an elevated view of the necessities of their position.

The New Orleans papers are facetious over their new mode of securing unanimity, and highly laud what they call “the course of instruction in the humane institution for the amelioration of the condition of Northern barbarians and abolition fanatics, presided over by Professor Henry Mitchell,” who, in other words, is the jailer of the work-house reformatory.

I dined at the Lake with Mr. Mure, General Lewis, Major Ranney, Mr. Duncan Kenner, a Mississippi planter, Mr. Claiborne, &c., and visited the club in the evening. Every night since I have been in New Orleans there have been one or two fires; to-night there were three — one a tremendous conflagration. When I inquired to what they were attributable, a gentleman who sat near me, bent over, and looking me straight in the face, said, in a low voice, “The slaves.” The flues, perhaps, and the system of stoves, may also bear some of the blame. There is great enthusiasm among the townspeople in consequence of the Washington artillery, a crack corps, furnished by the first people in New Orleans, being ordered off for Virginia.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 239-40

Hawkins Taylor to Abraham Lincoln, December 27, 1859

Keokuk Dec 27^th 1859

My Dear Sir

Our State Convention comes off soon probably too Soon for the appointment of delegates to the National Republican Convention. As the National Convention is so convenient I am truly sorry that our Convention was appointed so early, there may be great changes in public sentiment between now and next June. I do not expect to be a delegate to the Convention. I do not know how many delegates we may have but th[ere] will probably be one to each Judicial District appointed who will be appointed from our district it is hard to say. There is probably more than half the Political talent in the State in our Judicial District still I will fill my part in the appointment of Delegates at the State Convention and if alive and well I will be at the National Convention and I hope able to exert some influence and the Question is who is the Right Man to bear the Republican Banner In my opinion he should be Conservative yet thoroughly honest and above evry thing else a man of Iron Nerve And evry Kick a Republican. Let him say to the South keep your Slaves if you want to. You shall be fully protected in all your Constitutional Rights, but you must let all free Territory alone except as free setlers while it remains a Territory. You shall have all the Appointments both at home & abroad that your White population entitle you to but not one more. You must let the mails of the Country alone

In a word behave your selves as other people have to do and you Shall be treated as other people are

The candidate should be thoroughly in favor of the Homestead Bill and the Great Central National Road to the Pacific and a Good Tariff Man in feeling. With such a man there no danger of defeat. But without such a man victory would be a defeat worse than defeat itself

I would rather see you the candidate than any other man, but I am willing to see Camron & You the candidates or I am willing to see Bates and some Pensylvany Man the candidates. I have some doubts of Bates. I fear that there is too much “Old Line Whig” about him and besides I would rather see both the Candidates taken from Free States so that we could Show the conservative portion of the South that the Republican party can be a National & conservative party when in power and the Fire Eaters that they can & will be Hung by a Republican administration if they do not behave them selves. I hope & trust that Douglass is politically dead for the next four years at least so far as being a Candidate for President is concerned It is not worth while to disguise the fact he is Strong stronger than any other Man that could be nominated It would be next to impossible to keep him from getting Iowa & all of the Western States, over almost any body And very largely over such candidates as Seward, Chase, Banks, or any such men. The West will not vote for any but a Western Man against a Western Man. We Want and must have free Lands And a Pacific Road and if the National Republican Convention do not give us such a man they need not make a nomination with any hope of success, unless the Locos nominate Some fireeater Which they are sure not to do. They will give us a Third addition of the Polk & Pierce Dodge or I am mistaken

Write me fully when you receive this I am very anxious to hear from you before our State Convention

Yours truly

Hawkins Taylor

Hon. A. Lincoln

SOURCE: Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.

Diary of William Howard Russell: May 22, 1861

The thermometer to-day marked 95° in the shade. It is not to be wondered at that New Orleans suffers from terrible epidemics. At the side of each street a filthy open sewer flows to and fro with the tide in the blazing sun, and Mr. Mure tells me the city lies so low that he has been obliged to go to his office in a boat along the streets.

I sat for some time listening to the opinions of the various merchants who came in to talk over the news and politics in general. They were all persuaded that Great Britain would speedily recognize the South, but I cannot find that any of them had examined into the effects of such a recognition. One gentleman seemed to think to-day that recognition meant forcing he blockade; whereas it must, as I endeavored to show him, merely lead to the recognition of the rights of the United States to establish a blockade of ports belonging to an independent and hostile nation. There are some who maintain there will be no war after all; that the North will not fight, and that the friends of the Southern cause will recover their courage when this tyranny is over. No one imagines the South will ever go back to the Union voluntarily, or that the North has power to thrust it back at the point of the bayonet.

The South has commenced preparations for the contest by sowing grain instead of planting cotton, to compensate for the loss of supplies from the North. The payment of debts to Northern creditors is declared to be illegal, and “stay laws” have been adopted in most of the seceding States, by which the ordinary laws for the recovery of debts in the States themselves are for the time suspended, which may lead one into the belief that the legislators themselves belong to the debtor instead of the creditor class.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 231-2

Speech of Colonel William F. Bartlett, March 17, 1864

Mr. Chairman And Fellow Citizens, — I could wish that it had been your fortune to present this testimonial to one who would have done more justice to it in words more befitting the occasion and the gift. Had I your own command of language I could hardly do justice to it. If in the performance of my duties as a soldier I have met your approbation, I am truly grateful for it. The consciousness of duty performed is in itself a sufficient reward, but to this to-day is added the knowledge of the approval and applause of others, and the assurance that those at home appreciate our sacrifices, and that it is to keep a desolating war from their hearthstones that we take the field. You in this quiet Northern town know little of the misery of war, and the desolation that follows in the track of an army. If some fine day you should see an army file into your fields, and destroy your growing harvests, and dig a rifle pit in your garden, or cut down your choicest trees because they obstructed the view, you would see that the misery that the South is now suffering is but the just reward of her treachery and rebellion. His Excellency has just assured me of his confidence by placing under my command another Massachusetts regiment. The last one I had the honor to command was enlisted for only nine months, but served nearly twelve, and I believe during that term had its full share of danger, and I never knew of its disgracing the service or the State. Massachusetts soldiers never do. The regiment I now command will serve three years, and it is proposed to end the war in a much shorter time; but if we should be needed for three times three years, we have enlisted for the war. I see around me here the names of places which I cannot soon forget — places where I have known the saddest and the proudest moments of my life. I see the tattered flags of the brave old Twentieth, under which my earliest duties as a soldier were done on the field of battle. If the names of all the gallant men who have fought and fallen around you in your defense could be inscribed in characters of gold within your folds, it would be a fitting tribute of their devotion to the cause of which you are to us the hallowed symbol. You at home hope that this war will soon be over, and we hope so too, but we will have no peace but an honorable one. If we would have a lasting peace, we must realize that our honor, our safety, our very existence as a nation, depend upon our self-sacrifice and our valor. You must put forth every exertion, you must give every dollar, and if need be send every man, until we can win a victorious peace. I go to the field in a few weeks and shall carry this beautiful gift. I shall bring it back, if I come, bruised and disfigured perhaps, but with no stain of dishonor. For it, and for this flattering ovation, for the presence here of so many friends, and among them one whom the State and country loves and honors — for this day never to be forgotten by me, I thank you.

SOURCE: Francis Winthrop Palfrey, Memoir of William Francis Bartlett, p. 94-6

Diary of Luman Harris Tenney: Wednesday, July 30, 1862

In camp on Rocky Creek, Spring River. Issued five days' rations, preparatory to marching northward. Boys in good spirits. Wrote to Fred Allen. Saw Charlie in the morning. Read Will's last journal, much better than his late ones. His discouragement about the late reverses. To be sure the present hour looks dark but I have faith in the future. The light will soon break. I have faith to believe that the North will yet be victorious over the South, right be victorious over wrong. I am sorry Will feels so. It looks like an apology for not enlisting. To fear defeat and yet not raise a hand looks faulty.

SOURCE: Frances Andrews Tenney, War Diary Of Luman Harris Tenney, p. 22

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes: Sunday, April 13, 1862

Rain begins at guard-mounting. A year ago today Sumter was taken. Great events, great changes, since then. The South was eager, prepared, “armed and equipped.” The event found the North distracted, undecided, unarmed, wholly unprepared, and helpless. Then came the rousing up of the lion-hearted people of the North. For months, however, the superior preparation of the South triumphed. Gradually the North, the Nation, got ready; and now the victory over Beauregard and [that] at [Island] Number 10, following Fort Donelson, put the Nation on firm ground, while the Rebellion is waning daily. Tonight received Commercial of the 10th, with pretty full accounts of the great battles.

Captain Haven and Lieutenant Bacon, Companies G and K, marched seventy miles on their late scout into Monroe. Scout Jackson, Company B, gone one week today toward Logan. I hope he is all right.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 228

Autobiography Of Alexander G. Downing.

I first saw daylight early on Monday morning, the 15th day of August, 1842, in a log house of one room, on the northeast corner of block 14, in the town of Bloomfield, Green county, Indiana. My father at that time had a small tanyard on said block of land, but had to give up the tanning business finally, on account of quicksand in the well from which he drew the water to fill his tanning vats. My father and his twin brother came from West Virginia¹ in their boyhood days and located at Salem, Indiana. While living there they learned the tanner's trade. Their father, my grandfather, came from Ireland when a young lad and later served his adopted country in the Revolutionary War. After the war he settled in Virginia. My mother was from North Carolina and was of English ancestry. She died when I was almost two years old, and my only sister died six months later. In 1846 my father married again and moved upon an eighty-acre farm two miles east of Bloomfield, which became the first family homestead. There my five half-brothers were born. Our combined ages are, on this 14th day of June, 1914, 396 years, while our combined time in Iowa is three hundred and sixty years.

I attended school two summers, during the last two years we lived in Indiana. It was in a log schoolhouse, located in heavy timber. It had no floor, nor even a window, though there was a small hole in one side of the building to give light when the door was shut. The door was made of split staves, and hung by wooden hinges; the accustomed latch-string was on the outside. There was not a nail in the entire building. I attended my first Sunday School at this schoolhouse, my cousin being the superintendent. He gave me a Sunday School book, the reading of which at that time of my boyhood days has guided me to this day in living the better life.

In May, 1854, father pulled up stakes and left for Iowa. We had one team of horses and three yoke of oxen, with two wagons loaded with the family bedding, clothes and utensils, besides enough dried fruit to last two years. We also took along a small herd of young cows and heifers.

It was my lot to drive those cattle. I was in my twelfth year and with the one hired man walked the whole way, driving the herd. I had just received from my uncle a new pair of boots for the journey; but those boots almost proved my undoing. My uncle had bought our eighty-acre farm, upon which was a ten-acre field of fall wheat, having been sown in the standing corn. He told me that if I would cut the stalks he would buy me a new pair of boots for our journey. That spring I went at the job with father's old iron hoe, which had a dogwood handle, and whacked down that ten acres of cornstalks, earning my boots. On our way to Iowa we encountered so much rain and water that the boots became so shrunken and stiff I could scarcely get them on and off; I had to leave them on for days at a time. The result was that my feet became very sore and calloused, and to this day I have a callous place on the bottom of one foot caused by the pegs in those boots.

We crossed the Mississippi river at Davenport, Iowa, on Sunday morning, June 11, 1854. It was a hot, foggy morning, but soon clouded over and by the next day we had to travel in a cold, all day, northeastern rainstorm. In all we were on the road twenty-two days, and we had rain at some time during the day for eighteen of those days.

Father had come to Iowa in the fall of 1852 and had entered two hundred and forty acres of land eight miles east of Tipton, the county seat of Cedar county. After he had the land surveyed he bought forty acres more, of timber land, four miles distant. Here he cut forks and poles for the frame and then went to Davenport for the lumber with which to build our shanty to live in during the summer. Davenport was thirty miles distant, and it took him three days with an ox team to make the trip.

In the latter part of the summer I had to drive the three yoke of oxen hitched to a breaking plow while the hired man held the plow handles, to break twenty acres of prairie. The grass and blue stem were so high and always so wet that I never thought of being dry until in the afternoon. There were so many rattlesnakes that I had to wear those “store” boots all that summer, to protect my feet. While the hired man and I were breaking prairie, father was building our house, a one and one-fourth story building, into which we moved some time in November. He also built a sod stable, covering it with slough grass. Besides this, he with the help of two hired men cut and stacked about sixty tons of the blue stem for hay. We built a rail fence around the stacks and then during the winter, we threw the hay over the fence to feed the cattle.

The two hired men we had were both from Indiana and late in the fall they went back, as they were afraid of freezing to death in Iowa. Our first winter, though, was not bad; in fact, it was one of the finest winters I have ever seen in Iowa, and I have now (1914) seen sixty of them in the State. The nearest schoolhouse was four miles away and overcrowded at that, so I received no schooling that winter. Father would go to the timber every day with Ben and Head, a faithful yoke of oxen, to make rails and posts, bringing home a load at night. He would reach the timber usually by daylight and very often would not get home till long after dark. I thus, with some help from my younger brothers, had to do the chores, cut the stove wood, and carry it into the house. The fine, dry winter was a great blessing to father, as he had to work every day in getting out the material with which to fence the farm the next spring.

That spring, 1855, we put in a crop on the twenty acres which we broke the summer before, sowing twelve acres to wheat and planting eight acres to corn. It was my task to harrow and smooth down that tough sod. Father had made a forty-tooth, “A-harrow,” and with Ben and Head hitched to it, I harrowed that twenty-acre field over and over. It seemed as if I walked several thousand miles in getting the twelve acres of wheat covered. Father had told me to lap the harrow about one-half each time, and in my anxiety to do so I kept calling whoa-haw to the oxen almost continuously. One day father said to me, “Bud” (for that was my nickname then), “if I had a dollar for every time you said whoa-haw, I could retire for life a rich man.”

After putting in the wheat I helped father fence in sixty acres of land with a two-rail fence, building in all one mile and sixty rods of fence. I dug the post holes and father set the posts, and then nailed on the rails while I held them in place.

The old stage road from Davenport to Cedar Rapids ran across our farm right where we had fenced it in, but the stage route had not yet been changed. One day the stage from Davenport, heavily loaded with passengers, came through and the driver, following the old road, drove right up to the new fence to find his way blocked; and in place of following the new road about twenty rods up around the corner, he with the help of some of his passengers was going to tear down the fence. Father was at work a short distance away and seeing the move they were making, simply called out to them to be careful what they were doing. That settled the matter; the driver uttered a few “damns” and then went up the new road around the corner. The first railroad engine had just entered Iowa, having been brought across the Mississippi river on the ice by the piece and then put together at Davenport. Soon thereafter the old stage route was abandoned altogether.

At that time there were few houses to be seen on all that vast prairie. From our home we could count but four or five small homes, and we could see for miles in all directions without anything to break the view. It was a mile to our nearest neighbor.

That summer father cut our first crop of wheat in Iowa with a cradle. I raked the swathes into bundles with a hand rake, while the hired man bound them into sheaves. In the fall before father had broken up a large hazel patch for a garden, and I planted a part of it in watermelons. They did well, and late in the season I sold in all $6.00 worth of melons to the “movers” going west on the old territorial road which was now turned to run close by our house. I counted that $6.00 over a great many times, and each dollar then looked as big as a base drum head does today. But alas! The six silver dollars went to a local shoemaker for making six pairs of cowhide shoes for us six boys, and that was the last I saw of the $6.00.

Our second winter in Iowa was spent in the same way as the first. There was no schoolhouse near, and for the second time I got no winter's schooling. Instead, I remained at home to do chores and “smash up” the stove wood. Father again went to the timber every day with the same yoke of oxen to make a load of rails, or posts, or to cut a load of firewood, as occasion required.

During the summer of 1856 we farmed on a larger scale than the year before, and we bought a reaper to cut our grain. Then came the cold winter of '56 and '57, with six to eight feet of snow on the level. This “winter of the deep snow” was followed by the “wet summer of '57.” Our wheat crop was so badly blighted that we took none of it to mill. We had to use old wheat for food as well as for seed the following spring. The years of 1858 and 1859 were uneventful years. The times were hard, money was very scarce, and what little there was to be had was wild-cat money in the bargain.

The year of 1860 was another rather dull year, though in the late summer the political excitement ran high, the main topic being the South and slavery. I united with the church in November, 1860, becoming a member of the Disciples' Church.

In 1861 there was no improvement over the past three years, and the finest wheat ever grown would not bring over thirty cents a bushel, while corn was only ten cents a bushel. That spring the Civil War broke out, and after I helped father through with the harvest, I enlisted in the army and was away from home in the war for four long years. While in the army I participated in thirty-eight battles and skirmishes, and was mustered out in July, 1865.

When I came home from the war, I helped finish the harvest and then in the fall worked with a threshing outfit. I went through the winter without any occupation and then in the spring of 1866 I decided to put in a crop. I farmed eighty acres and cleared above all expenses $600.00 in six months.

In the fall of 1866 I thought that my occupation for life should be that of a merchant and decided to go into business. I went to London, Iowa, and bought an interest in a general store. After six months of experience I found out that merchandising was not my calling and sold out, losing in the whole transaction $1,200.00, or $200.00 per month. I decided then to make farming my calling and in the spring of 1867 broke up one hundred and twenty acres of prairie. I bought the best team of horses I could find, paying $400.00 cash for them, and went to breaking prairie.

On the 9th of May, 1867, I was married to Miss Mary E. Stanton, daughter of J. W. Stanton, a prosperous farmer of my home neighborhood. In 1868 we built a house on York Prairie, two miles north of Bennett, Iowa. Here for a period of seventeen years, I was engaged in general farming and stock raising. My father died in 1877 and I settled up his estate, which was worth about $50,000.00. He owned over five hundred acres of land, all well improved, besides a large amount of personal property. In 1881 I built one of the largest barns in Cedar county at that time, requiring over one hundred thousand feet of lumber. It would stable one hundred head of cattle, had bins to hold five thousand bushels of grain, and the hayloft would hold one hundred tons of hay. In the fall of 1885 I sold my farm of two hundred acres and bought a badly run down farm of one hundred and sixty acres. My old farm was all in grass, and at my sale in September of that year I sold over one hundred head of cattle, high-grade Durhams. I rented out the new farm I had bought for a term of ten years and quit farming for good.

Being somewhat broken in health, we moved to Colfax, Iowa, that same year for the benefit of my health. We remained there until the 1st of March, 1887, when we moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where we have made our home ever since. Having no living children we decided to endow a medical chair in Drake University and gave for that purpose $25,000.00. Later we gave $5,000.00 to the Medical Library of the University, and since have given $2,000.00 to establish the Downing Prizes in Drake University.

Signed this 11th day of June, 1914, by Alexander G. Downing, in his seventy-second year and his sixtieth year in the State of Iowa.

_______________

¹ Then western Virginia.—Ed.

Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B., Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 292-7

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: July 25, 1862

More Northern papers received to-day, containing news from the South. Most fortunately, they can know nothing reliable of what is passing within Gen. Lee's lines. The responsibility of keeping his gates closed against spies rests in a great measure on myself, and I endeavor to keep even our own people in profound ignorance of what transpires there.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 146

Captain Charles Fessenden Morse, January 2, 1863

Fairfax Station, January 2, 1863.

Last Saturday night we suddenly received orders to march at a moment's notice, but we remained undisturbed that night. Sunday morning, about eight o'clock, we started off; our whole corps was posted in the Dumfries road, our brigade guarding the Wolfrun Shoals on the Oecoquan. This was all done on account of a large rebel cavalry force coming up on our left flank; we were sent out to endeavor to intercept them, but they didn't come our way; they went around north of Fairfax Court House, having a slight skirmish there. Infantry will never catch cavalry in this country, and I hope they will give up attempting it before long.

We bivouacked that night near the Occoquan, and marched back to camp next afternoon. There was some very pretty manoeuvring, on the telegraph wires, between the two parties on Sunday. The rebels cut the wires at Burke's Station, and telegraphed to the commander of the post at Fairfax Station to “burn all stores, wagons, etc., and abandon the post.” The officer in command suspected something wrong, and telegraphed back, “I have plenty of force to hold the place, more infantry and a battery of artillery will be here in an hour.” The truth was, there was only one small regiment of infantry, the Third Wisconsin, and two pieces of artillery, and no chance of any more for a considerable time. This undoubtedly saved the station. A message was intercepted from the Quartermaster-General at Washington about a lot of mules. Stuart telegraphed back: “That last lot you sent me were not good; be more careful in future,” and signed his own name to it. This raid accomplished nothing in our vicinity, and could be repeated any number of times; they know every road in the country, and every house contains a friend and spy to them. We could do the same thing in Massachusetts, though I hope we shall never have the opportunity. There is considerable fear felt in some quarters that this cavalry is to be followed up by a large force. Isn't it shameful that, at this late day, anybody should be trembling for the safety of Washington? But so it is! I don't know but what it would be better for the whole country if Washington was taken and burned. What we need is to feel that we are fighting for our lives and liberties; that is the way the rebels feel: they think that if they don't win, they will lose every liberty. Our people seem to be in an indifferent state, not caring much about it either way; they would like to see the South conquered, if it could be done by any moderate means; but when it comes to every man and woman making some great sacrifice, they don't think it worth while, and would rather have a disgraceful peace than a continuance of the war. They don't seem to see that in case of such a peace, to be a native of the North would be sufficient to disgrace a man, and that we should always be considered a whipped nation. Abroad, a Northern man would be despised, and rightly. I feel much stronger about the war than I ever have before, and certainly hope that I shall never live to acknowledge such a nation as the Southern Confederacy.

SOURCE: Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865, p. 115-7

Reverend Dr. Charles Hodge to the Editor of the Southern Presbyterian, January 3, 1861

Princeton, Jan. 3d, 1861.

My Dear Sir: — I received last evening a copy of the Southern Presbyterian, for Dec. 29th, 1860, containing a notice headed “The Princeton Review on the State of the Country.” The article in the Review thus denominated, you characterize as “an unfortunate, one-sided and lamentable attack upon the South.” I think, my dear sir, that it will promote the cause of truth and brotherly love which we both have at heart, if you will permit the Editor of the Review to state to your readers in few words the design of the article on which you pronounce so unfavorable a judgment.

It was intended to produce two effects within the limited range of its influence; first, to convince the South that the mass of Northern people are not abolitionists or hostile to the rights and interests of the South; and second, to convince the North that the course adopted by the abolitionists is unjust and unscriptural. You say that the writer of the article in question “affirms that the aggressions or grievances of which the South complains have no real existence.” The article, however, says that the South has “just grounds of complaint, and that the existing exasperation towards the North is neither unnatural nor unaccountable.” It says that “the spirit, language and conduct of the abolitionists is an intolerable grievance.” It says that “tampering with slaves is a great crime. That it is a grievance that would justify almost any available means of redress.” It admits that all opposition to the restoration of fugitive slaves, whether by individuals, by mobs or legislative enactments, is immoral, and that the South has a right to complain of all such opposition. It admits that the territories are the common property of the country, and that the South has the same rights to them that the North has, and it calls for an equal division of these territories on the plan of the Missouri compromise. The article does not deny the reality of the grievances complained of, but it denies that those grievances are justly chargeable on the people of the North. It endeavors to prove, by a simple process of arithmetic, that the abolitionists against whom these charges justly lie, are comparatively a mere handful of the people of the North. Southern men and ministers of the highest eminence pronounce the abolition party to be not only Antichristian but atheistic, to be perjured and instinct with the spirit of the French revolutionists, and then the North is pronounced to be thoroughly abolitionized. We know this to be untrue. We know this to be a false judgment pronounced upon thousands and hundreds of thousands of pious, God-fearing people. We hold it, therefore, to be a solemn duty to all concerned to show that such judgment is altogether unfounded, in fact. Such is the main design of the article in question. Whatever may be thought of its execution, the design must of necessity commend itself to every good man. If Southern men knew the North as we know it, they would no more think of secession than they would of suicide. We have done what we could out of a pure conscience to convince the South that we are not hostile to its rights and interests. If our Southern brethren take this in evil part we shall deeply regret it, but cannot repent of what has the full assent of our reason and conscience.

* * * It nowhere advocates coercion in the present crisis. It deprecates all appeal to force, and urges acquiescence in the recommendation of a convention of the States, that disunion, if it must come, may at least be peaceably effected.

Your friend and fellow-servant,

Editor Of The “Princeton Review.”

SOURCE: Archibald Alexander Hodge, The Life of Charles Hodge, p. 462-3

Dr. John Leighton Wilson to Dr. Charles Hodge, December 19, 1860

23 Centre Street, N. Y., December 19, 1860.

Dr. Hodge:

My Dear Brother, — Your article on the “State of the Country” did not reach me until yesterday. I have read it and re-read it, and I do not regard it as a “fire-brand,” as Dr. Boardman does. If it contains some things that would irritate the Southern people, it also contains much to soothe and command their respect. Dr. Thornwell, I understand, is preparing an article on the same subject, and I would not, if I could, abridge your liberty. [Then follow many pages.] But I will not pursue this subject further. Perhaps I have already said a great deal more than you bargained for, or are ready to read. I desire and pray most earnestly for the preservation of the whole Union. If the North will concede what is just, and what the South imperatively needs, the Union may be saved. Otherwise, we go to pieces. There are certain things in your article which the North ought to hear, and there are others which the South ought to hear. But whether upon the whole it will do more good or harm, I am not prepared to say. One thing I know, if my heart and your arm were united, and we could carry out our desires, the North would soon be compelled to relinquish some of her unjustifiable positions. As it is, my only hope is in God, and I love to lay the matter before him.

Yours as ever, truly and affectionately,

J. Leighton Wilson.

SOURCE: Hampden C. DuBose, Memoirs of Rev. John Leighton Wilson, D.D., p. 243-4

The Duke of Argyll to Mary Benjamin Motley, August 20, 1861

Inveraray, August 20, 1861.

My Dear Mrs. Motley: Many thanks for the inclosed. You need not apologize for sending me letters containing details. All that I have seen in your husband's letters tends to increase our warm esteem and regard for him. I was sure he would feel the Manassas affair very keenly, and we feel much for him. It seems certain that the defeat was made far worse by the exaggeration of the press, though Russell's account in the "Times" is so far confirmatory of the papers. But Russell never reached the real front of the Federal line, and consequently saw nothing of the troops that behaved well.

I think your husband's argument against Lord Russell's advice (at least as that advice is quoted) is excellent. It does seem probable that to have allowed secession without a fight would have led to the complete disintegration of the Northern States.

I fear you have now before you a long war. It is clear that a regular trained army must be formed before the subjugation of the South can be rendered possible, and I confess I am not so hopeful of the result as I once was.

You may set Mr. Motley's mind at rest, I think, as regards any possibility of our interfering — provided, of course, the contest is carried on with a due regard to the law of nations and the rights of neutrals. But we have been in some alarm lest the government were about to adopt measures which that law does not recognize. I hope that danger also has passed away.

May I ask you to direct the inclosed letter to your husband?

I am, my dear Mrs. Motley,

Yours very sincerely,

Argyll.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 200-1

Diary of Judith W. McGuire: April 27, 1862

The country is shrouded in gloom because of the fall of New Orleans! It was abandoned by General Lovell — necessarily, it is thought. Such an immense force was sent against the forts which protected it, that they could not be defended. The steamer Mississippi, which was nearly finished, had to be burnt. We hoped so much from its protection to the Mississippi River. Oh, it is so hard to see the enemy making such inroads into the heart of our country! It makes the chicken-hearted men and women despondent, but to the true and brave it gives a fresh stimulus for exertion. I met two young Kentuckians to-night who have come out from their homes, leaving family and fortunes behind, to help the South. After many difficulties, running the blockade across the Potomac, they reached Richmond yesterday, just as the news of the fall of New Orleans had overwhelmed the city. They are dreadfully disappointed by the tone of the persons they have met. They came burning with enthusiasm; and anything like depression is a shock to their excited feelings. One said to me that he thought he should return at once, as he had “left every thing which made home desirable to help Virginia, and found her ready to give up.” All the blood in my system boiled in an instant. “Where, sir,” said I, “have you seen Virginians ready to give up their cause?” “Why,” he replied, “I have been lounging about the Exchange all day, and have heard the sentiments of the people.” “Lounging about the Exchange? And do you suppose that Virginians worthy of the name are now seen lounging about the Exchange? There you see the idlers and shirkers of the whole Southern army. No true man under forty-five is to be found there. Virginia, sir, is in the camp. Go there, and find the true men of the South. There they have been for one year, bearing the hardships, and offering their lives, and losing life and limb for the South; it is mournful to say how many! There you will find the chivalry of the South; and if Virginia does not receive you with the shout of enthusiasm which you anticipated, it is because the fire burns steadily and deeply; the surface blaze has long ago passed away. I honour you, and the many noble young Kentuckians who have left their homes for the sake of our country, but it will not do for Kentucky to curl the lip of scorn at Virginia. Virginia blushes, and silently mourns over her recreant daughter, and rejoices over every son of hers who has the disinterestedness to leave her and come to us in this hour of our bitter trial.”

I do not believe that this young man really means, or wishes, to return; he only feels disheartened by the gloom caused by our great national loss.

SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee, During the War, p. 108-9

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes: Sunday, November 3, 1861

Camp Ewing, Virginia. — Yesterday and today it has been rainy, stormy, and disagreeable. I came up to my regiment yesterday as lieutenant-colonel. The men and officers seem pleased with my promotion. All regret the loss of Colonel Matthews and say that if I go their interest in the regiment is gone. The paymaster has paid me up to the 31st [of] August, four hundred and ninety-six dollars. Lieutenant Richardson has also collected for me two hundred and fifty dollars of money lent the company officers. I can send home seven hundred dollars and still have two months' pay due me. I have been very economical in order to a fair start for my family. I shall now feel relieved from anxiety on that score and will be more liberal in my expenditures.

A Mr. Ficklin, of Charlottesville, Virginia, a brother-in-law of Mrs. Colonel Tompkins, came with her bearing a flag of truce. He staid with us last night. He is an agreeable, fair-minded, intelligent gentleman of substance, formerly and perhaps now a stage proprietor and mail-carrier. He says he entertains not the shadow of a doubt that the Confederate States will achieve independence. He says the whole people will spend and be spent to the last before they will yield. On asking him, “Suppose on the expiration of Lincoln's term a state-rights Democrat shall be elected President, what will be the disposition of the South towards him?” he replied hesitatingly as if puzzled, and seemed to feel that the chief objection to the Union would be removed. So it's Lincoln, Black Republican, prejudice, a name, that is at the bottom of it all. His account of things goes to show that great pains have been taken to drill and discipline the Rebel troops, and that their cavalry are especially fine.

All the sick sent over Gauley last night. A new lot appear today. We have had three deaths by the fever.

I now enter on new duties. I must learn all the duties of colonel, see that Colonel Scammon does not forget or omit anything. He is ready to all but so forgetful. He loves to talk of West Point, of General Scott, of genteel and aristocratic people; and if an agreeable person is found who will seem to be entertained, he can talk by the hour in a pleasant way to the omission of every important duty.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 136-7

Major Wilder Dwight: July 26, 1861

Harper's Ferry, July 26, 1861.

We are here waiting on Providence, and holding on to this corner of Virginia by the skin of our teeth. I am not uneasy, for I do not care whether it comes or not; but why Beauregard with his large force should not kick our broken column into Maryland I do not see. This is not a cheerful view, but it is reasonable at least. You conclude, do you not? that the South has still got the start of us in preparation and in energy. Hope now hangs on McClellan, who has a prestige that will enable him to revive the spirit that belongs to our army. Manassas shows three things: First, our infantry, even in its present loosely organized condition, is better than theirs; our foot-soldiers will face and drive theirs. Second, our artillery outweighs theirs; and batteries are to be silenced, not stormed. Third, cavalry gives them great advantage. We must have more cavalry. In fact, we must create and organize a well-appointed army and armament: our “rash levied numbers” are mere numbers, not forces.

I seem to myself, here on the spot, to realize afresh the immensity of our task. I pity the statesman who is to recreate liberty and order upon the ashes of this civil war. You cannot form any idea of the real significance of civil war, without being in the midst of its experience, as we have been. I do hope that the Union will have power to shorten it, and I regard the disaster of last Sunday chiefly important because it checks the reaction which was restoring men in these Border States to their courage and allegiance. Panic and terrorism are doing their worst here, and they are terrible agencies in such times as these.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 57-8

Major Rutherford B. Hayes to Sardis Birchard, October 19, 1861

Camp Tompkins, Near Gauley Bridge, October 19, 1861.

Dear Uncle: — It is late Saturday night. I am away from my regiment at General Rosecrans' headquarters and feel lonesome. The weather is warm, threatening rain. We are waiting events, not yet knowing whether we are to stay here or go to some other quarters for the winter. I can't help suspecting that important events are looked for near Washington which may determine our course for the winter. All things in that direction have, to my eye, a hopeful look. A victory there if decisive will set things moving all over. We know the enemy we have been after is heartily sick of this whole business, and only needs a good excuse to give it up. A party of our men, bearing a flag of truce, spent a night with a party of Lee's men a few days ago, and the conversations they report tell the story.

Matthews has gone home for a fortnight. It is quite probable that I shall go home during the fall or winter for a short visit.

We have done no fortifying yet. We occasionally hear of a little guerrilla party and scamper after them, but no important movements are likely to occur here, unless a road should be opened from Washington to Richmond.

I see that Buckland is in the war. That is right. The noticeable difference between North and South in this war is, that South, the leading citizens, the lawyers and public men of all sorts, go into the fight themselves. This has not been so with us in the same degree. I am less disposed to think of a West Point education as requisite for this business than I was at first. Good sense and energy are the qualities required. . . .

Sincerely,

R. B. Hayes.

S. BlRCHARD.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 120-1

William E. Forster to John Lothrop Motley, March 30, 1861

Burnley, near Otley,

March 30, 1861.

My Dear Mr. Motley: I am very much obliged to you for both your letters, and can assure you that they, especially the longer one, will be of the greatest service to me if I take part in the debate on the 16th prox.

As I go up to London next Friday, and as I hope to see you and talk the matter over fully between then and the 16th, I will do little more now than thank you.

So far as I can judge from the newspapers, the chances of avoiding war increase. It seems to me Lincoln's policy is shaping itself into first attempting, by refraining from hostile measures, by keeping the door for return open on the one hand, and by making their exclusion on the other as uncomfortable as possible, to get the seceding States back; and, secondly, should this turn out to be impossible, to let them go peaceably, straining every nerve to keep the border States. My great fear still is, lest the Republicans should, in order to keep the border States, compromise principle; but as yet they have stood as firm as one can reasonably expect.

You must excuse my saying that I do not agree with you that supposing the Union patched up again, or the border slave States left with the North, you will even then get rid of the negro question. So long as the free States remain in union with slave States, that question will every day press more and more urgently for solution. Such union will be impossible without a fugitive-slave law, and any fugitive-slave law will become every day more and more impossible to execute; and, again, slave-holding in one State, with freedom of speech and pen in the next State, will become more and more untenable. I do not doubt, however, that the question will, in case of the border States being left by themselves with the North, be solved by their freeing themselves before long from their slave population, partly by sale and partly by emancipation. Did I not think so, I would wish them to join the South.

As it is, however, unless the North degrades and enslaves itself by concession of principle, the cause of freedom must gain by present events, either in case of the cotton States returning, as they would have to do on Northern terms, or in case of their going on by themselves, when they will be far less powerful for harm than they were while backed by the whole strength of the North. I am therefore most anxious that our government should not, as yet, recognize the South, not only because I think a premature recognition would be an interference in your affairs, and an interference most unjust and unfriendly to the old Union, our ally, but because I think it would strengthen the South, and so either tend to harden her against concession to the North, or give her a fairer chance, and therefore more power for evil, in a separate start. Such recognition would also, I fear, do harm by making it less unlikely for the seceding States to join the South. I thought I ought to write this much in order to show you why I feel so interested in this matter; but the best mode of meeting the debate in the House must be left for consideration nearer the time, when I hope to see you.

Yours most faithfully,

W. E. FORSTER

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 121-3

Nassau W. Senior to John M. Forbes, November 20, 1861

13 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington, November 20,1861.

My Dear Mr. Forbes, — I am going to republish my articles in Reviews; they will form about four volumes. Among them is one, called “European and American State Confederacies,” in which I consider whether the American Union be a national union, or a confederation, whether allegiance be due to the State, or to the Union, and I decide that it is a national union, and consequently that secession is rebellion and treason. Pray look at the article: you will find it in the number for January, 1846. But I admit that the question is one of difficulty, and that there are great authorities on each side. If my opinion on this legal question be wrong, if the Union be a mere treaty like the German Bund, every American owes allegiance to his own State, and if that State secede, he would be guilty of rebellion and treason if he did not secede too. Now Lord Russell did not feel competent to decide this difficult legal question — and I think that he could not decide it. Yet it is for not deciding it at once, and declaring the seceders rebels, that you have been abusing him and us for three months. I think that on consideration you will feel that the most certain means of destroying our sympathy with the North, and turning it towards the South, were your threats that as soon as you had settled the affair with the South you would turn on us and punish us, by war, for our want of sympathy.

One thing has tended much to embitter us, your different treatment of France and of us. The conduct of the two governments has been identical, but you have been as civil to France as you have been rude to us. Now I happen to know that the French feeling is with the South. They say that the New Orleans people are their brethren. They are all friends of slavery, and I have peculiar reasons for believing that Louis Napoleon proposed to our government to join him in breaking the blockade. You know that I have access to accurate sources of intelligence, and you may believe this. My only wish, from the time that the enormous armies and the military success of the South showed (at least it so seemed to me) that you might beat, but could not conquer her, has been for the termination of the contest, and as I think that loans to either party would tend to prolong it, I own that I hope that none will be made.

We hear little from the South, but the little which we do hear leads us to think that you are mistaken in believing that there is a strong Union party there. They seem to be as determined as you are.

Can you tell me anything of our Sault Ste. Marie prospects? I suppose that the war adjourns all sales.

Ever yours,

N. W. Senior.

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 251-2

Major-General George G. Meade to Margaretta Sergeant Meade, February 13, 1865

Headquarters Army Of The Potomac, February 13, 1865.

There is no chance for peace now. The South has determined to fight another campaign, and it is to be hoped the North will be equally united, and turn out men to fill up all our present armies and form others at the same time.

Grant returned from Washington to-day. He forgot to say anything about the court of inquiry, so I have to-day telegraphed Mr. Stanton, asking him to have the proceedings published.

SOURCE: George Meade, The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Vol. 2, p. 263