Charles Francis Adams, Jr., To Henry Adams
Boston, Tuesday, September 17, 1861
As I hear nothing more of your coming home I hope you have forgotten that folly. The few of your friends in the army here, like Billy Milton and Howard Dwight, opened their eyes wide with astonishment at the suggestion. Just now I certainly hope that you have n’t left, as I send you by this mail a couple of copies of yesterday’s and today’s Courier, in which you will find two leaders headed “English Views,” written by me and which, if you have any opening yet in the English press you may turn to advantage as extracts from the American. The letter of the Times correspondent of 30th August printed in last Saturday’s Times (N.Y.) seemed to intimate that the wind now lay in this quarter and American views to the point might, I thought, be of use. These articles were written, however, before I saw that letter, or the Times (London) editorials in the same direction. I offered these articles to Charles Hale who declined to publish them editorially, and so I sent them to the Courier; but Hale remembered my line of thought and reproduced it in his leader of last Monday, which I also send you. So, for once, the Courier and the Advertiser were brought close together on the same day.
Here we feel immeasurably better and not only are things outwardly more encouraging, but I am informed from private correspondents of military men in Washington that the appearance is not deceptive, an immense improvement has taken place and military men are most sanguine of the future.
I wait anxiously to hear from you. By the way, in case you think favorably of my suggestion of an English article on the American press, did you notice a few days ago an article in the N.Y. Times about the Herald, in which Bennett was called “the old liar,” “a skunk,” a “stink-pot,” etc., etc. How would the two read if the editorial of the celebrated Potts in the Eatanswill Gazette about the “buff-ball in a buff neighborhood” and that were put side by side? Which would be the caricature? . . .
