London, December 13, 1861
Your letter to papa announcing your metamorphosis took us as you may suppose a good deal by surprise. I endorsed it at once. As you say, one of us ought to go, and though of the three as a mere matter of accidental position I might have preferred that it should be John, still, as a question of greater or lesser evil perhaps it’s best that it should be you. If we come home, perhaps I may try it myself a little, but if we stay abroad, or if I come home alone, I do not suppose I shall be compelled to do so. At the same time, as a personal matter, I’m sorry you’re going, especially as I have, since the last shock, become satisfied that we must sooner or later yield the matter. As a mere question of independence I believe the thing to be settled. We cannot bring the South back. As a question of terms and as a means of thoroughly shaking the whole southern system, I ‘m not sorry to see the pressure kept up. . . .
You can imagine our existence here. Angry and hateful, as I am of Great Britain, I still can’t help laughing and cursing at the same time as I see the accounts of the talk of our people. What a bloody set of fools they are! How in the name of all that’s conceivable could you suppose that England would sit quiet under such an insult. We should have jumped out of our boots at such a one. And there’s Judge Bigelow parading bad law “at the cannon’s mouth,” and Governor Andrew all cock-a-hoop, and Dana so unaccustomed confident, and Mr. Everett following that “Great authority” George Sumner into a ditch, “blind leader of the blind “! Good God, what’s got into you all? What do you mean by deserting now the great principles of our fathers, by returning to the vomit of that dog Great Britain? What do you mean by asserting now principles against which every Adams yet has protested and resisted? You’re mad, all of you. It’s pitiable to see such idiocy in a nation. There’s the New York Times which I warned only in my last letter against such an act, and its consequences; and now I find the passage erased, and editorial assurances that war was impossible on such grounds. Egad, who knew best, Raymond or I? War is not only possible but inevitable on that ground; and we shall be forced to declare it. England can compel us to appear to act as the aggressors in future as now.
Thurlow Weed is here and hard at work on public opinion. He is excessively anxious about the meeting of Congress and thinks we shall be talked into a war. I have had some talk with him and like him very much. . . . The Government has not yet condescended to send us one single word as to the present question. I wonder what Seward supposes a Minister can do or is put here for, if he is n’t to know what to do or to say. It makes papa’s position here very embarrassing. . . .
