Worcester, January 27, 1857
I send you my speech at our Convention. You asked if I was led
into it. It was entirely my doing, from beginning to end; nobody else would
have dared to do it, because I knew of nobody at first who would take part with
me, except the Garrisonians who were Disunionists before, but I found several
rather influential persons, and the whole thing has succeeded better than we
expected.
A nice pamphlet report will soon appear. I am surprised that
you should not see the weakness of Theodore Parker's idea of preserving the
Union for the slaves, when everybody admits that but for the Union, ten
would escape where one now does, and slavery be soon abolished in the Northern
Slave States. Last week Colonel Benton was here, and when he said these things
as arguments against Disunion, everybody applauded, much to his
surprise. They say his speech did more than our Convention.
I had a note from Mr. Sumner the other day, who thinks that
Virginia will secede, first or last, and take all the States except perhaps Maryland,
which can only be held by force. If it were not for the necessity of keeping
Washington and the Mississippi, it would be well to have it so, but since those
must be kept, it is hard to predict the end. I think however that you need feel
no anxiety in Brattleboro'; I don't think the battering-rams (of which the old
lady in the Revolutionary times, according to Rose Terry, was so afraid, her
only ideas of warfare being based on the Old Testament and Josephus) will get
so far. And I think there is more danger of compromise than war, at any rate.
I don't know whether you are aware of an impression which
exists in many minds, but which I cannot attach any weight to, as yet, that the
seceding States will prefer to abolish slavery, under the direction of England
and France, rather than come under Yankee domination again. Wendell Phillips
thinks this and says the Fremonts are very confident of it. If they made such a
bargain, I think it would end the war and separate us and I don't think it
would be so formidable a result, certainly. Even as a matter of Union, it would
lead to ultimate reconstruction, for nothing but slavery can ever keep us
permanently apart. And the slaves may be better off if emancipated by their
masters than by us. Still I don't believe there is any chance of it.
Nothing could have happened better fitted to create
enthusiasm than to begin the war by such a distinct overt act from the Southern
Confederacy — and by a great disappointment. When you consider that such a man
as Mr. Ripley firmly expected to see fighting in the streets of New York with
the friends of the South there, and that the New York Mayor advocated
annexation to the Southern Confederacy, the unanimous enthusiasm there is
astonishing, compelling Bennett [of the "New York Herald"] to turn
his editorials to the Northern side, for personal safety. Nothing else has been
so remarkable as this.
SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters
and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 78-80
