Charles Francis Adams to His Son
London, July 31, 1863
It is intensely painful in the midst of such great prosperity here to read the shocking details of slaughter and destruction in our newspapers. Still more annoying is it to think how by the folly of these rogues we are playing into the hands of the malevolent in Europe. The privileged classes all over Europe rejoice in the thoughts of the ruin of the great experiment of popular government. I yet trust they count without their host. No thanks, however, to the madmen who try to work this mischief. The penalty we are paying for the great error of our ancestors is a most tremendous one. All I can pray for is that we do so once for all. To permit our posterity to run the risk of repeating it for the same fault on our part would be criminal indeed.
The London Times last Monday graciously allowed the people of England to believe that Vicksburg had actually fallen. The notion that General Lee was in possession of Washington and Baltimore is not quite so strong as it was, but I am not sure that it has been dissipated yet by any positive denial in that press. There was a general sense of the happening of some lamentable disaster here, the nature and extent of which had not been fully defined. The clearest evidence of this was found in the stock market, where a panic took place among the holders of the rebel loan. It fell from three per cent discount to seventeen, and has not stopped yet. I should not be surprised if some bankruptcies were to follow. People here must pay something for their pro-slavery sympathies. What a pity that the sum of their losses could not have been applied to the emancipation of the slaves! In that case England would have maintained her character for philanthropy, which has gone down, as it is, quite as far and as fast as the rebel loan. . . .
