Boston, November 5, 1861
By the last mail I got a letter from you intended for the press. I have not however used it as intended. . . . The great facts of the case stand out. Six months of this war have gone and in them we have done much; and by we I mean our rulers. But if we have done much with our means, the rebels have performed miracles with theirs. At the end of six months have we a policy? Are traitors weeded out of our departments? Is our blockade effective? Is the war prosecuted honestly and vigorously? To all these questions there is but one answer. The President is not equal to the crisis; that we cannot now help. The Secretary of War is corrupt and the Secretary of the Navy is incompetent; that we can help and ought to. With the rebels showing us what we can do, we ought to be ashamed not to do more. But for me I despair of doing more without a purification of the Cabinet. With Seward I am satisfied, and so is the country at bottom, for our foreign affairs are creditable. Chase will do and to Blair I make no objection. But all the rest I wish the people would drive from power. Your historical examples are not good. When was England greatest? Was it not when an angry people drove the drivellers from office and forced on an unwilling King the elder Pitt, who reversed at once the whole current of a war? I want to see Holt in the War Department and a New York shipowner in that of the Navy, or else Mr. Dana. I am tired of incompetents and I want to see Lincoln forced to adopt a manly line of policy which all men may comprehend. The people here call for energy, not change, and if Lincoln were only a wise man he could unite them in spite of party cries, and with an eye solely to the public good.
Herewith you will receive three Independents, in each of which you will find an article by me for your delectation. They answer at some length your suggestion that I am an “abolitionist.” I am also assured that they met with favor in the eyes of Wendell Phillips, which indeed I do not understand. I imagine they will not meet your and my father’s views, but on the whole I am not dissatisfied with the two last in general and the last in particular
Please notice the leader in the Independent of the 24th. I did more than I expected in influencing the editorials of the Independent.
