Thursday, December 23, 2010

Dear Girls: Mother and Abby have just come down from Fishkill, Mother declaring that she feels like a different person in consequence of her visit. We are none of us making a time over Christmas presents this year. Abby has had a little bureau just to fit shirts made for Mr. Prentiss, who was in high delight while they lived abroad because he had a drawer to keep his things in. No calls will be received at No. 8 this New Year and indeed I don’t think there will be many made, people are so depressed about the times.

The papers today report from Washington that “alarming news has been received from Charleston. Apprehensions of immediate collision with the Federal government are entertained. Influential Northern men are doing their utmost to avert the calamity. The intention of the people of North Carolina is to seize the forts and arsenals and to prevent the government from collecting the revenues. Despatches have been received stating that the forts would be taken in less than twenty-four hours. The Cabinet is in council. It has not transpired what course the government will pursue. A naval fleet will probably be despatched to Charleston. The amendment of the Constitution to settle the controversy between North and South forever, by a division of the country from ocean to ocean on the parallel of the Missouri line, is the great subject of discussion.” Notwithstanding all this trouble, and the secession ordinance which was published on Saturday, “the stocks of the North have gone up steadily for some days both before and after the fulmination of the ordinance. Never was the strength of the business condition of the northern and central states more decisively proved than now.” I hope you are interested in all this; politics are the only things talked of among all classes of men and women here in this country, now, and foreign affairs relating to the “state of Europe” are comparatively of no importance. In fact, all interest given to Italy centres in the “Casa Zuccara” and especially on our ‘Donna and child. We only wish the Southerners could see how prosperous and happy we look, on the outside at least! “O, yes, Doctor,” one of them said the other day to Dr. Hodge, “it’s a beautiful city this of yours, but in a little while the grass will be growing in the streets.” Lenox’s reports from down town are that it is suggested that the governors of the states should have the troops of the different states in readiness for any emergency, since the South is busy making its preparations, and thus far we have been doing nothing. I took the news word for word from the paper this morning, from the Washington correspondent, and you must take it for what it is worth. People think it worse than anything thus far, though Mr. Seward predicts that in sixty days the troubles will have past away. Only think how jolly! There’s an ordinance in Charleston forbidding the sale of Boston crackers and including farina.

Several pleasant surprises came to lessen the depression of this Christmas. Mr. Martin, a young gentleman returning from Rome, brought to Mother a promised ring — “a Mosaic of a carrier pigeon, which lifted up and displayed a shining curl of the new little baby’s hair,” and Abby writes: “ Uncle Edward¹ gave me some of Father’s early water-colors, interesting to us —the work of a boy of fourteen,—and when Mother and I drove in after spending the day with him what do you think we found besides?— a box with a scarlet camel’s hair shawl for Mother with Cousin William Aspinwall’s best wishes.” (This shawl is now Alice’s.)

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¹ Our dear Uncle and guardian, Edward John Woolsey, of Astoria, L. I.