Charles Francis Adams, U.S. Minister to the U.K., to his son, Charles.
Hanger Hill, Ealing, November 2, 1864
I fully concur with you in the general view you have always taken of this great contest. The more I have observed its details, the more I have become convinced that it was inevitable. My only mistake was that I undervalued the power which the other party could bring to bear upon it. Misled by the nature of their own calculations, in the variety of which I was not mistaken, I failed at first fully to measure the extent of the co-operation which might be yielded to them under certain contingencies from among ourselves. Nothing but the armament of half a million of our people for a war of extermination has prevented the success of a scheme of disintegration for the purpose of partial reconstruction on a slavery basis. Three years of slaughter have destroyed the vigor of the motive power in this scheme, at the same time that they have furnished an agency to frown domestic treason down. I am now strongly in hopes that the issue of the election will be such as to cut off the very last hope of the disintegrators. Once that event takes place, the slaveholders will very soon become more manageable. Reconstruction for the sake of saving slavery will become a dream, and the fiat which puts an end to that terrible evil will no longer be resisted. There can be no other satisfactory result.
This strife between two conflicting principles is one of the grandest that ever took place on earth. It has enlisted in its support on the two sides a greater physical power than was ever brought to bear on any other question for the same length of time. I do not except even the wars of the reformation. As an example of the popular will acting energetically and unitedly in execution of a specific purpose, it is the most extraordinary event of all time. Thus far the spectacle is sublime. The end is not yet however quite in sight. The process of restoration remains. I am however quite as hopeful of the prevalence of the same patriotism and good sense in that contingency, which has brought us on so far in safety. The heart of the people is yet sound. They may make mistakes as they have done, but they will likewise correct them afterwards in the same manner. The sky is not at all clear, but the ray of sunshine underlies all the clouds.
