Charles Francis Adams to his son
London, June 17,[1] 1864
As I write the date, my mind very naturally recurs to the time when, as a people, we were first subjected to the baptism of blood, under the necessity of maintaining a great idea. The sufferings of that period, terrible as they proved, were amply compensated for by the blessings enjoyed by the generation succeeding. One slight precaution only was neglected, or its importance undervalued. The consequences we now see and feel in the events that are passing in front of Richmond. As I read the sad accounts of the losses experienced by both sides in the strife, the warning words of Jefferson will ring in my ears: “I tremble for my country, when I reflect that God is just.” The moral evil which we consented to tolerate for a season has become a terrific scourge, that brings the life blood at every instant of its application. How long this chastisement is to be continued, it is idle to attempt to predict. Only one thing is clear to me, and that is the paramount duty to future generations of not neglecting again to remove the source of that evil. It is this that completes the great idea for which the first struggle was endured. It is this, and this only, that will compensate for the calamities that attend the second. There is not an event that takes place in the slave-holding states that does not confirm me in the conviction that the social system they have fostered has become a standing menace to the peace of America. The very ferocity and endurance with which they fight for their bad principle only contribute to prove the necessity of extirpating it in its very root. This is not simply for the good of America but likewise for that of the civilised world. The sympathy directed in Europe with this rotten cause among the aristocratic and privileged classes, is a sufficient proof of the support which wrongful power hopes to obtain from its success. For these reasons, painful as is the alternative, I am reconciled to the continuance of the fearful horror of the strife. Looking back on the progress made since we began, it is plain to my mind that the issue, if persevered in, can terminate only in one way. There is not a moment in which the mere force of gravitation does not incline one scale of the balance more and more at the expense of the other. In resistance to this neither labor nor skill will in the long run avail. The laws of nature are uniform. The question with the South is only of more or less of annihilation by delay. Yet I cannot conceal from myself the nature of the penalty which all of us are equally to pay for our offense before God. If the great trial have the effect of purifying and exalting us in futurity, we as a nation may yet be saved. The labor of extricating us from our perils will devolve upon the young men of the next generation who shall have passed in safety through this fiery furnace. I am now too far advanced to be able to hope to see the day of restoration, if it shall come. But it may be reserved for some of my children — indeed, for you if it please God, you survive the dangers of the hour. Great will be the responsibility that devolves upon you! May you acquit yourselves of it with honor and success! The great anniversary has inspired me to write you in this strain. I feel that even at this moment events may be happening in America which will make the memory of it still more dear to the sons of human liberty and free institutions all over the world. I accept the omen. May it be verified.
In this old world to which I now turn there is less to stimulate the imagination or to rouse the hopes of the observer. The contention here is now not so much for principle as place. The Conservative-liberal wishes to obtain the office held by the Liberal-conservative. The juggle of names only signifies that neither is in earnest. The day is one of truce between ideas. “Jeshurun has waxed fat.” And the octogenarian leader who represents him, like old Maurepas in ante-revolutionary France, thinks to settle every difference with a joke. Such men thrive in periods of transition. But the time is coming when all these frivolities will pass away, and the great national problem of privilege only to the select few will come up and demand a stern solution.
[1] Underlined — the date of the battle of Bunker Hill.
