Adams Family Civil War letters; US Minister to the UK and his sons.

London, May 20, 1862

It has rained every day at some time in the day for eight or ten days. People begin to look dismal and croak about the crops. To Great Britain every day of sunshine lost is equal to an expense of just so many thousand pounds. The islands never produce bread-stuffs sufficient for the consumption of the people annually. They must beg some millions of quarters of wheat at any rate. In bad years they buy just so much more. Hence it is that at this season every bad day sensibly affects the price of stocks. No country ever had a more sensitive thermometer of the weather. But if this be true in ordinary times, how much more so in this season. The supply of cotton is rapidly and steadily declining. And the poor operatives of Lancashire are coming nearer and nearer to the time of starvation for want of work. If upon the top of this there should come a dearth of bread, it is not difficult to understand the extent of the social distress that may ensue. So there are miseries quite as acute as those of war which now afflict us.

In the meanwhile things are looking better rather than worse with us. The game of secession looks as if it might be nearly played out. The country is just putting forth its power whilst the rebel armies are gasping for breath. I have been here now more than a year, during which time I have gone through nearly every variety of emotion in connection with this war. The time is approaching, I trust, when this anxiety will disappear, and with it the uncertainty of my own situation. Doubtless others may succeed, of an equally serious nature. We shall have upon us the dangerous and critical task of restoration of the civil and a diminution of the military power. All this is very likely. But at any rate that condition presents a different face to external nations. It does not materially impair the entireness of the national position. I shall therefore accept the transition with cheerfulness and accommodate myself to the new state with more cheerfulness than to the old….

London, May 16, 1862

Before this reaches you I suppose you will be in motion, and I hope that the war will be at an end. It would be a mere piece of unjustifiable wantonness for the Southern generals to defend Charleston, if they are defeated in Virginia. So, although I would like to see you covered with glory, I would be extremely well satisfied to hear that you had ended the campaign and ridden into Charleston without firing a shot or drawing a sabre.

Last Sunday afternoon, the day after my letter to you had gone, telling how hard it was to sustain one’s own convictions against the scepticism of a nation, I returned from taking a walk on Rotten Row with my very estimable friend Baron Brinken, and on reaching home, I was considerably astounded at perceiving the Chief in an excited manner dance across the entry and ejaculate, “We’ve got New Orleans.” Philosopher as I am and constant in a just and tenacious virtue, I confess that even I was considerably interested for the moment. So leaving Sir Charles Lyell regarding my abrupt departure through one eye-glass with some apparent astonishment, I took a cab and drove down to Mr. Weed. Meeting him in the street near his hotel, I leaped out of the cab, and each of us simultaneously drew out a telegram which we exchanged. His was Mr. Peabody’s private business telegram; mine was an official one from Seward. We then proceeded together to the telegraph office and sent a despatch to Mr. Dayton at Paris, and finally I went round to the Diplomatic Club and had the pleasure of enunciating my sentiments. Here my own agency ended, but Mr. Weed drank his cup of victory to the dregs. He spread the news in every direction, and finally sat down to dinner at the Reform Club with two sceptical old English friends of our side and had the pleasure of hearing the news-boys outside shout “Rumored capture of New Orleans” in an evening extra, while the news was posted at Brookes’s, and the whole town was in immense excitement as though it were an English defeat.

Indeed the effect of the news here has been greater than anything yet. It has acted like a violent blow in the face on a drunken man. The next morning the Times came out and gave fairly in that it had been mistaken; it had believed Southern accounts and was deceived by them. This morning it has an article still more remarkable and intimates for the first time that it sees little more chance for the South. There is, we think, a preparation for withdrawing their belligerent declaration and acknowledging again the authority of the Federal Government over all the national territory, to be absolute and undisputed. One more victory will bring us up to this, I am confident. That done, I shall consider, not only that the nation has come through a struggle such as no other nation ever heard of, but in a smaller and personal point of view I shall feel much relieved and pleased at the successful career of the Chief.

You can judge of the probable effect of this last victory at New Orleans from the fact that friend Russell of the Times (who has not yet called) gravely warned the English nation yesterday of the magnificent army that had better be carefully watched by the English people, since it hated them like the devil and would want to have something to do. And last night I met Mr. John Bright at an evening reception, who seemed to feel somewhat in the same way. “Now,” said he, “if you Americans succeed in getting over this affair, you must n’t go and get stuffy to England. Because if you do, I don’t know what’s to become of us who stood up for you here.” I did n’t say we would n’t, but I did tell him that he need n’t be alarmed, for all he would have to do would be to come over to America and we would send him to Congress at once. He laughed and said he thought he had had about enough of that sort of thing in England. By the way, there is a story that he thinks of leaving Parliament.

This last week has been socially a quiet one and I have seen very little of the world, as I have no time to frequent the Club. I don’t get ahead very fast in English society, because as yet I can’t succeed in finding any one to introduce me among people of my own age. It’s the same way with all the foreigners here, and a young Englishman, with whom I talked on the subject, comforted me by acknowledging the fact and saying that as a general thing young Englishmen were seldom intimate with any one unless they had known him three or four years. He gave a practical illustration of the principle by never recognizing me since, although we sat next each other three hours at a dinner and talked all the time, besides drinking various bottles of claret. With the foreigners I do much better, but they are generally worse off than I am in society. Except for a sort of conscientious feeling, I should care little for not knowing people at balls, especially as all accounts, especially English, declare young society to be a frantic bore….

Now as to your letter and its contents on the negro question. I’ve not published it for two reasons. The first is that the tendency here now is pro-slavery and the sympathy with the South is so great as to seek justification in everything. Your view of the case, however anti-slavery, is not encouraging nor does it tend to strengthen our case. If published, especially if by any accident known to be by you, it might be used to annoy us with effect.

My second reason, though this alone would not have decided me, is that it seems to me you are a little needlessly dark in your anticipations. One thing is certain; labor in America is dear and will remain so; American cotton will always command a premium over any other yet known; and can be most easily produced. Emancipation cannot be instantaneous. We must rather found free colonies in the south such as you are now engaged in building up at Port Royal; the nucleus of which must be military and naval stations garrisoned by corps d ‘armee, and grouped around them must be the emeriti, the old soldiers with their grants of lands, their families, their schools, churches and Northern energy, forming common cause with the negroes in gradually sapping the strength of the slave-holders, and thus year after year carrying new industry and free institutions until their borders meet from the Atlantic, the Gulf, the Mississippi and the Tennessee in a common center, and the old crime shall be expiated and the whole social system of the South reconstructed. Such was the system of the old Romans with their conquered countries and it was always successful. It is the only means by which we can insure our hold on the South and plant colonies that are certain of success. It must be a military system of colonies, governed by the Executive and without any dependence upon or relation to the States in which they happen to be placed. With such a system I would allow fifty years for the South to become ten times as great and powerful and loyal as she ever was, besides being free.

Such are my ideas and as the negroes would be extremely valuable and even necessary to the development of these colonies, or the Southern resources at I trust they will manage to have a career yet.

London, May 10, 1862

People here were quite struck aback at Sunday’s news of the capture of New Orleans. It took them three days to make up their minds to believe it. The division of the United States had become an idea so fixed in their heads that they had shut out all the avenues to the reception of any other. As a consequence they are now all adrift. The American problem completely baffles their comprehension. The only wish I have is that they would let it alone. But strange to say, that is the very last thing to which they are inclined. Some future historian of ours may have an amusing task in extracting from the Times of the last year its daily varying prognostications on this subject. A friend of ours, Sir Charles Lyell, was sitting with your mother on Sunday when I came in, and remarking how frequently he had found the American news of the next day flatly contradicting the Times’s affirmations at a given moment. “Now,” said he, “last week they proved conclusively that the United States could not control the Mississippi and seize New Orleans. I should not wonder if tomorrow’s steamer were to show the contrary.” And thereupon I showed him a telegram just received from Mr. Seward, by the steamer Canada, announcing the capture of that city. “There now,” said he, “is it not just as I said?” Even the Americans here get soon impregnated with the spirit of doubt. It was not without difficulty that I could get some of them to credit that the Government of the United States was transmitting trustworthy information.

The Exhibition does not as yet draw such great crowds as were expected. Things are a little out of joint. The Queen secludes herself and does not get over her grief. The Prince of Wales is sent on his travels to get him out of the way. The ministry have no power in Parliament, and yet the opposition are afraid to take their places. Napoleon does not know what to do with the Pope. The Kung of Prussia does not know what to do with his subjects. Everything seems a little mal à propos and yet goes on somehow. Cotton goes, but does not come. The operatives are getting poorer and poorer, and yet there is so much capital in the city that interest is at two and one-half per cent. The country really seems to be rolling in wealth, and yet there are miserable beggars in rags assailing you at every corner. Such is a summary of European life so far as London is concerned….

London, May 8, 1862

One always begins to doubt at the wrong time and to hesitate when one should strike hardest. Knowing this my infirmity, I have made it my habit here abroad to frown it down with energy and to persuade myself, when seeing most cause for anxiety, that the moment of suspense was nearest to its end. It needs to be here, among a people who read everything backwards that regards us, and surround us with a chaos of croaking worse than their own rookeries, to understand how hard it is always to retain one’s confidence and faith. The late indecisive military events in America are looked upon here as the sign of ultimate Southern success. I preach a very different doctrine and firmly believe that the war in its old phase is near its end. I do not see how anything but great awkwardness on our part can prevent the main southern army from being dispersed or captured in Virginia. But there is no doubt that the idea here is as strong as ever that we must ultimately fail, and unless a very few weeks show some great military result, we shall have our hands full again in this quarter. There is no fear of armed intervention, or even, I think, of immediate recognition; but a moral intervention is not impossible, or rather, it is inevitable without our triumph before July. By moral intervention I mean some combined representation on the part of the European powers, in friendly language, urging our two parties to come to an understanding. If this catches us still in Virginia, it will play mischief. The worst of it is that the Governments here are forced to it. The suffering among the people in Lancashire and in France is already very great and is increasing enormously every day without any prospect of relief for months to come. This drives them into action, and has at least the one good side that if we do gain decisive advantages so as to make the Southern chances indefinitely small, we shall have Europe at our control and can dictate terms.

On the other hand, if it is right to suppose that we shall soon end the war, I am afraid we have got to face a political struggle that will be the very deuce and all. The emancipation question has got to be settled somehow, and our accounts say that at Washington the contest is getting very bitter. The men who lead the extreme Abolitionists are a rancorous set. They have done their worst this winter to over-ride the Administration rough-shod, and it has needed all Seward’s skill to head them off. If we are completely victorious in the field, we shall see the slave-question come up again worse than ever, and Sumner and Chandler and Trumbull and the rest are just the men to force a new explosion. Gradual measures don’t suit them, and yet without their support it will be hard to carry gradual measures. I have immense confidence in Seward however, and there is said to be the most perfect confidence between him and the President, so that we shall go into the struggle with a good chance of carrying it through.

As for this country, the simple fact is that it is unanimously against us and becomes more firmly set every day. From hesitation and neutrality, people here are now fairly decided. It is acknowledged that our army is magnificent and that we have been successful and may be still more so, but the feeling is universal against us. If we succeed, it will still be the same. It is a sort of dogged, English prejudice, and there is no dealing with it.

Socially, however, we do not feel it to any unpleasant degree. People are very polite, and we seem to be in a good set and likely to get on well. The season has begun and we have engagements in plenty. I hope, with time, to get well into society, though just now I am hovering on the outskirts of it. My greatest achievement in this career came off the other night when we were invited to the old Dowager Duchess of Somerset’s, who is decidedly original, and to my unutterable horror, I found myself performing for the first time in my life, a double-shuffle in the shape of a Scotch reel, with the daughter of an unbelieving Turk for a partner. For twenty minutes I improvised a dance that would have done honor to Taglioni. When I got through, in a state of helpless exhaustion and agony of mind, I was complimented by the company on my success.

Last night who should I meet at a little reception, but our friend Russell, the Special Correspondent of the London Times. Some one offered to introduce me to him and I consented with pleasure. He was a little embarrassed, I thought, but very good natured. I said I was sorry he had returned, whereat he laughed and remarked that personally he was glad, but he regretted having lost the chance of showing his goodwill to us by describing our successes. I only was with him a moment, and he closed the conversation by saying that if I thought it would be agreeable to my father, he would like to call upon him. I assented to this the more willingly because I am told that Russell declares on all sides that he is wholly a Northerner and always has been, and that between his private opinions and his opinions as suited to the doctrines of the Times, there is a decided difference.

I think it is about time for us now to begin to expect another breeze here in London and the usual panic and expectation of departure. If you were at home I should write particulars, but as I’ve never yet had one of my letters to you acknowledged or answered since you ‘ve been at Port Royal, and as I ‘ve written pretty regularly every fortnight, there’s no great encouragement to trust secrets to paper. So much, however, is pretty well known. Since we made our great step from Kentucky into Alabama, our Government has been pressing the European Governments energetically to withdraw themselves from their belligerent position. But anyone who knows English sentiment and politics now, knows that there is not the remotest chance of any such step. The sympathy of the Administration, of the Lords, of the Commons and of the people throughout the country may be dormant perhaps; I hope it is, though I believe it’s not; but beyond a doubt it is not with our Union. I have no fear that there will be any hostile acts on the part of this country, but before Parliament closes, which may be in June, you may be sure that the Ministry will do nothing that is likely to provoke attack; least of all anything so unpopular as the throwing over of the South would be. Meanwhile the contest between the two gentlemen here is getting to be flavored with as copious dashes of vinegar as you would wish to see. About once a week the wary Chieftain sharpens a stick down to a very sharp point, and then digs it into the excellent Russell’s ribs. The first two or three times the joke was borne with well-bred politeness and calm indifference; but the truth is, the stick’s becoming so sharp that now things are being thrown round with considerable energy, and our friend Russell is not in entirely a good temper. The prospect at this moment is that the breeze will soon change into settled rough weather and perhaps we shall have a regular storm. For if we conquer in Virginia, I hope and trust that Seward will give this Government the option of eating their words, or being kicked. And I don’t know whether I should derive a keener satisfaction from seeing them forced to overthrow their whole political fabric as regards the South, at our demand, or from seeing our Minister here take his leave of the country until they are able at last to bring their stomachs down to that point without further prompting….

London, April 17, 1862

The successes, which I was so earnestly praying for in my letter to you, have come and have had all the effect I anticipated. There is just now nobody who professes to think well of the South. Neither will there be any more until the war varies. Of course, our position here becomes comparatively easy and comfortable. The quantity of official work has sensibly declined, and I can look round to interest myself in the scenes that are more immediately before me.

But just as the public work diminishes, as men cease to offer themselves as soldiers, or to propose all sorts of contracts for ships, cannon, rifles, and every imaginable death dealing invention, my correspondence has taken a wholly new direction. Good Mr. Peabody, having made more money than he can hold, takes it into his head to give to the poor of the city of London an endowment of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. To carry out his idea he conveys the sum to five gentlemen, the minister of the United States being ex officio one of them. No sooner did my name appear in the papers than all the poor women of the city begin to pelt me with applications for aid, and all the useful societies present their claims for consideration. The consequence is that I bid fair to become the most widely known American envoy that ever came here, and furthermore that all the army of beggars in this great Babylon feel as if they had a special right to importune me. Such is fame! In the meantime the great question how the most beneficially to apply this enormous sum is about to be imposed upon us, and I am to bear one-fifth of the responsibility of a decision. Whichever way it is made the cry of the disappointed majority which expect a dividend of a sovereign apiece will be loud and long. I know not that I should take this view so coolly, if I did not feel that it cannot be long before I bid my friends here farewell, and devolve all cares as well as honors upon a successor. That successor will devolve all the odium of the action taken upon his predecessor, so that both will be safe; and again I shall exclaim, such is fame!

London, April 11, 1862

Modest and unassuming as I am, you know, society is not the place for pleasure to me. Even at the Club I talk distantly with Counts and Barons and numberless untitled but high-placed characters, but have never arrived at intimacy with any of them. I am a little sorry for this because there are several very nice fellows among them, and all are polite and seem sufficiently social. Then, too, my unfortunate notoriety, which, I told you of, in a letter that I trust and pray may not be lost, some three months ago, tells against me, though it certainly has brought me into notice. I have no doubt that if I were to stay here another year, I should become extremely fond of the place and the life. There is, too, a certain grim satisfaction in the idea that this people who have worn and irritated and exasperated us for months, and among whom we have lived nearly a year of what was, till lately, a slow torture, should now be innocently dancing and smiling on the volcano, utterly unconscious of the extent of hatred and the greediness for revenge that they’ve raised. When the storm does finally burst on them, they will have one of their panics and be as astonished as if they ‘d never heard of anything but brotherly love and affection between the two nations. Of course it would be out of the question for me to hint at the state of things to them. I have only to smile and tell gross lies, for which God forgive me, about my feelings towards this country, and the kindness I have received here, which, between ourselves, so far as the pure English go, has been brilliantly conspicuous for its almost total absence. Only a fortnight ago they discovered that their whole wooden navy was useless; rather a weakness than a strength. Yesterday it was formally announced and acknowledged by Government, people and press, that the Warrior and their other new iron ships, are no better than wood, nor can any shot-proof sea-going vessel be made. In order to prove this, they ‘ve proved their Armstrong guns a failure, for he has given up the breech-loading system and been compelled to return to the old smooth-bore, muzzle-loader. So within three weeks, they find their wooden navy, their iron navy, and their costly guns, all utterly antiquated and useless.

To me, they seem to be bewildered by all this. I don’t think as yet they have dared to look their position in the face. People begin to talk vaguely about the end of war and eternal peace, just as though human nature was changed by the fact that Great Britain’s sea-power is knocked in the head. But for my private part, I think I see a thing or two. And one of these things is that the military power of France is nearly doubled by having the seas free; and that our good country the United States is left to a career that is positively unlimited except by the powers of the imagination. And for England there is still greatness and safety, if she will draw her colonies around her, and turn her hegemony into a Confederation of British nations.

You may think all this nonsense, but I tell you these are great times. Man has mounted science, and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world. Not only shall we be able to cruize in space, but I see no reason why some future generation should n’t walk off like a beetle with the world on its back, or give it another rotary motion so that every zone should receive in turn its due portion of heat and light. . . .

We are putting on the diplomatic screws. A few more victories and it will be all straight. We understand that the Nashville has been taken or destroyed, and it is today telegraphed privately to us that the crew of the Sumter are to be paid off, and her captain is coming to London. Bankrupt. The long purse, the big guns, and the men carry the day….

The Chief saw and conversed with a number of French celebrities. They are surprisingly well-disposed towards us now that we are looking up in the world. Here in London we are as comfortable as possible. The newspapers are dumb except for an occasional sneer, or assertion, which is invariably acknowledged to be false the next day. I tell you it’s not a bad thing to have seven hundred thousand fighting men behind one, to back one’s words up. I am more and more convinced every day that we are very much feared. Indeed you can imagine what the change must be when we all here know on the very highest authority that in May last it was supposed that the revolution was complete, and the recognition was a matter of course. Men who have made such a political blunder as that are apt to open their eyes wide when they find it out.

As for home affairs and your position, we are so ignorant that I shall not discourse on the subject. Of course we know all that the newspapers tell us and are waiting with a sort of feeling that is now chronic for the flash and the thunder that is soon to come from the cloud over Richmond and New Orleans. I despise a mail that does not tell of a victory, and indeed for some time past we have been pampered. But every time that the telegram comes and its yellow envelope is torn open, I feel much like taking a little brandy to strengthen me up to it. There is a nervous tremor about it that is hard to master. The 24th did well at Newbern. I wish to God I had been with it, or were with the Richmond army now. I feel ashamed and humiliated at leading this miserable life here, and since having been blown up by my own petard in my first effort to do good, I have n’t even the hope of being of more use here than I should be in the army. But I can’t get away till you come over….

Hilton Head, S.C., August 10, 1862

Affairs here are as dull as dull can be. We have had a little excitement about your old friend the Fingal, which has turned up in Savannah harbor as an ironclad of much force, but that seems to be dying out now, though I can’t help thinking that we shall some day hear from her when we least expect or desire to.

General Hunter’s negro regiment was disbanded yesterday and now they have all dispersed to their old homes. Its breaking up was hailed here with great joy, for our troops have become more anti-negro than I could have imagined. But, for myself, I could not help feeling a strong regret at seeing the red-legged darkies march off; for, though I have long known that the experiment was a failure, yet it was the failure of another effort at the education of these poor people and it was the acknowledgment of another of those blunders which have distinguished all and every our experiments on slavery throughout this war. When did an educated people ever bungle so in the management of a great issue! I feel sick and almost discouraged at what I see and hear. What God made plain we have mixed up into inextricable confusion. We have had declarations of emancipation ingeniously framed so as not to free a slave and yet to thoroughly concentrate and inflame our enemy. We have wrangled over arming the slaves before the slaves showed any disposition to use the arms, and when we have never had in our lives 5000 of them who could bear arms. Why could not fanatics be silent and let Providence work for awhile. The slaves would have moved when the day came and could have been made useful in a thousand ways. As it is, we are Hamlet’s ape, who broke his neck to try conclusions….

Milne Plantation, Port Royal Island
Monday, April 6, 1862

Yours of the 14th of February reminds me of our long interrupted correspondence. My last to you, if I remember right, was from on shipboard nearly three months ago, and was of a savage tenor. This is from an old South Carolina plantation, the headquarters of our cavalry pickets, and is likely to be of an eminently pacific tone. Here I am surrounded by troopers, missionaries, contrabands, cotton fields and serpents, in a summer climate, riding immensely every day, dreadfully sick of the monotony of my present existence, disgusted with all things military and fighting off malaria with whiskey and tobacco. So far, the island of Port Royal is a small Paradise, and no men were ever so fortunate in the inception of a military career, barring the immense labor of organizing such a regiment as this and our peculiarly rigid discipline, than we have been. So far our privations have been next to nothing and our career has been more that of a winter picnic than anything else. The future I fear has less agreeable things in store for us. Still sweets cloy, and drilling in a South Carolina cotton field hour after hour daily for weeks in succession is one of those sweets which cloy early. Perpetual roll-calls too become tiresome, and the daily superintendence of the grooming of eighty-five horses is not a pleasant phase of existence. I make no objection however to my duties, though I do to my superiors. But all in the fullness of time, and when you next see me you probably won’t know me.

Just now I am on picket and also specially detailed by General Stevens to build a road, which I had the rashness to recommend in a report the other day. So this morning I diversified my cavalry pursuits by driving a gang of niggers on my new road, which connects the sea board plantations. You would n’t have known me. I had ten slaves and drove by example. My horse was tied to a tree and my pistols and coat lay near him, while I, in heavy boots and spurs and my shirt sleeves, handled a spade by the side of my sable brethren in the midst of a combination of rice-field and cotton swamp, while my sergeant, axe in hand, headed another gang in clearing away underbrush. I am happy to say such energy was not unrewarded, as I succeeded in connecting and repairing three miles of road in one day instead of two, as I calculated. I am happy to say the Africs worked well and spared me much prepared execration; but from personal experience I am qualified to assert, that an African has about as much idea of a shovel and its uses as a wild Irishman might have of a quadrant or a cotton-hoe. My work however was completed at two o’clock and I then indulged in a delicious sea bath, declared myself a half holiday and determined to devote it to you. . . .

You and his Excellency always ask for my impressions of things here and, though I have sent them to him in little, I will enlarge them to you here and you may do with them as you see fit, only don’t publish unless my views are likely to enliven the English.

Here I am on the Milne Plantation in the heart of Port Royal Island. Cotton fields, pine barrens, contrabands, missionaries and soldiers are before me and all around me. A sick missionary is in the next room, a dozen soldiers are eating their suppers in the yard under my window and some twenty negroes of every age, lazy, submissive and as the white man has made them, are hanging about the plantation buildings just as though they were not the teterrima causa of this consuming bella. The island is now just passing into its last stage of spring. The nights are cool, but the days are hot enough to make the saddle no seat of comfort. The island, naturally one of the most delightful places in the world, is just now at its most delightful season. The brown unhappy wastes of cotton fields unplanted this year and with the ragged remnants of last years crop, still fluttering in the wind, do not add to its beauty, but nothing can destroy the charm of the long plantation avenues with the heavy grey moss drooping from branches fresh with young leaves, while the natural hedges for miles along are fragrant with wild flowers. As I canter along these never ending avenues I hear sounds and see sights enough to set the ornithologist and sportsman crazy. The mocking-bird is never silent, and the varieties of plumage are to the uninitiated infinite, while hares and grey squirrels seem to start up under your horse’s feet; wild pigeons and quail from every field, and duck and plover from every swamp. Nor are less inviting forms of animal life wanting, for snakes cross your path more frequently than hares and, even now, the soldiers under my window are amusing themselves with a large turtle, a small alligator and a serpent of curious beauty and most indubitable venom, a portion of the results of their afternoon’s investigations.

One can ride indefinitely over this island and never exhaust its infinite cross-roads and out-of-the-way plantations, but you cannot ride fifteen minutes in any direction, however new, without stumbling over the two great facts of the day, pickets and contrabands. The pickets are recruits in active service without models — excellent material for soldiers and learning the trade, but scarcely soldiers yet. The contrabands were slaves yesterday and may be again tomorrow, and what slaves are any man may know without himself seeing who will take the trouble to read Olmsted’s books. No man seems to realize that here, in this little island, all around us, has begun the solution of this tremendous “nigger” question.

The war here seems to rest and, for the present, Port Royal is thrown into the shade, and yet I am much mistaken if at this minute Port Royal is not a point of greater interest than either Virginia or Kentucky. Here the contraband question has arisen in such proportions that it has got to be met and the Government is meeting it as best it may. Some ten thousand quondam slaves are thrown upon the hands of an unfortunate Government; they are the forerunners of hundreds of thousands more, if the plans of the Government succeed, and so the Government may as well now decide what it will do in case of the success of its war plans. While Government has sent agents down here, private philanthropy has sent missionaries, and while the first see that the contrabands earn their bread, the last teach them the alphabet. Between the two I predict divers results, among which are numerous jobs for agents and missionaries, small comfort to the negroes and heavy loss to the Government. Doubtless the world must have cotton and must pay for it, but it does not yet know what it is to pay for it if the future hath it in store that the poor world shall buy the next crop of Port Royal at prices remunerative to Government. The scheme, so far as I can see any, seems to be for the Government, recognizing and encouraging private philanthropy and leaving to it the task of educating the slaves to the standard of self-support, to hold itself a sort of guardian to the slave in his indefinite state of transition, exacting from him that amount of labor which he owes to the community and the cotton market. The plan may work well; if it does, it will be the first of the kind that ever has. Certainly I do not envy the slaves its operation. The position of the Government is certainly a most difficult one. Something must be done for these poor people and done at once. They are indolent, shiftless, unable to take care of themselves and plundered by every comer — in short, they are slaves. For the present they must be provided for. It is easy to find fault with the present plan. Can any one suggest a better? For me, I must confess that I cannot. I think it bad, very bad, and that it must end in failure, but I can see no other more likely to succeed.

That this is the solution of the negro question I take it no one but the missionaries and agents will contend. That is yet to come, and here as elsewhere we are looking for it, and trying to influence it. My own impression is that the solution is coming — may already in some degree be shadowed out; but that it is a solution hurried on by this war, based on simple and immutable principles of economy and one finally over which the efforts of Government and individuals can exercise no control.

This war is killing slavery. Not by any legal quibble of contrabands or doubtful theory of confiscation, but by stimulating free trade. Let any man ride as I do over this island. Let him look at the cotton fields and the laborers. Let him handle their tools and examine their implements, and if he comes from any wheat growing country, he will think himself amid the institutions and implements of the middle ages — and so he would be. The whole system of cotton growing — all its machinery from the slave to the hoe in his hand — is awkward, cumbrous, expensive and behind the age. That the cultivation of cotton is so behind that of all the other great staples is the natural result of monopoly, but it is none the less disgraceful to the world, and to give it an impulse seems to have been the mission of this war. The thorough and effectual breaking up of its so much prized monopoly will be the greatest blessing which could happen to the South, and it seems to be the one probable result of this war. Competition involves improvement in ruin, and herein lies the solution of this slavery question. Northern men with Northern ideas of economy, agriculture and improvement, are swarming down onto the South. They see how much behind the times the country is and they see that here is money to be made. If fair competition in the growth of cotton be once established a new system of economy and agriculture must inevitably be introduced here in which the slave and his hoe will make room for the free laborer and the plough, and the change will not be one of election but a sole resource against utter ruin. The men to introduce this change or any other are here and are daily swarming down in the armies of the Government, soon to become armies of occupation. A new tide of emigration has set in before which slavery has small chance.

But how is it for the African? Slavery may perish and no one regret it, but what is to become of the unfortunate African? When we have got thus far we have just arrived at the real point of interest in the “nigger” question. The slaves of whom I see so much here may be taken as fair specimens of their race as at present existing in this country. They have many good qualities. They are good tempered, patient, docile, willing to learn and easily directed; but they are slavish and all that the word slavish implies. They will lie and cheat and steal; they are hypocritical and cunning; they are not brave, and they are not fierce — these qualities the white man took out of them generations ago, and in taking them deprived the African of the capacity for freedom. My views of the future of those I see about me here are not therefore encouraging. That they will be free and free soon by the operation of economic laws over which Government has no control, I thoroughly believe; but their freedom will be the freedom of antiquated and unprofitable machines, the freedom of the hoes they use which will be swept aside to make way for better implements. The slave, however, cannot be swept aside and herein lies the difficulty and the problem. My impression from what I see is that Emancipation as a Government measure would be a terrible calamity to the blacks as a race; that rapid emancipation as the result of an economic revolution destroying their value as agricultural machines would be a calamity, though less severe; and finally, that the only transition to freedom absolutely beneficial to them as a race would be one proportioned in length to the length of their captivity, such a one in fact as destroyed villeinage in the wreck of the feudal system. Were men and governments what they should be instead of what they are, the case would be different and all would combine in the Christian and tedious effort to patiently undo the wrongs they had done, and to restore to the African his attributes. Then the work could be done well and quickly; but at present, seeing what men are, and how remorselessly they throw aside what has ceased to be useful, I cannot but regard as a doubtful benefit to the African anything which by diminishing his value increases his chances of freedom.

A revolution in cotton production springing from competition may work differently by gradually changing the status of the African from one of forced to one of free labor, but I do not regard this as probable. The census already shows not only that cotton can everywhere be cultivated by free labor, but also that the best cotton now is so cultivated, and the most probable result of a permanent reduction in the price of cotton would seem to me to be a sudden influx of free white emigration into the cotton fields of the South. Such a result would produce untold advantages to the South, to America and to the white race; but how about the blacks? Will they be educated and encouraged and cared for; or will they be challenged to compete in the race, or go to the wall, and finally be swept away as a useless rubbish? Who can answer those queries? I for one cannot; but one thing I daily see and that is that no spirit exists among the contrabands here which would enable them to care for themselves in a race of vigorous competition. The blacks must be cared for or they will perish, and who is to care for them when they cease to be of value? I do not pretend to solve these questions or do more than raise them, and their solution will come, I suppose, all in good time with the emergency which raises them. But no man who dreams at all of the future can wander over Port Royal Island at present and mark the character and condition of its inhabitants, without having all these questions and many more force themselves upon his mind. I am a thorough believer in this war. I believe it to have been necessary and just. I believe that from it will flow great blessings to America and the Caucasian race. I believe the area of freedom will by it be immensely expanded in this country, and that from it true principles of trade and economy will receive a prodigious impetus throughout the world; but for the African I do not see the same bright future. He is the foot-ball of passion and accident, and the gift of freedom may prove his destruction. Still the experiment should and must be tried and the sooner it is tried the better….

London, April 4, 1862

The late military successes have given us a season of repose. People are changing their notions of the power of the country to meet such a trial, which is attended with quite favorable consequences to us in our position. Our diplomacy is almost in a state of profound calm. Even the favorite idea of a division into two states is less put forward than it was. Yet the interest with which the struggle is witnessed grows deeper and deeper. The battle between the Merrimack and our vessels has been the main talk of the town ever since the news came, in Parliament, in the clubs, in the city, among the military and naval people. The impression is that it dates the commencement of a new era in warfare, and that Great Britain must consent to begin over again. I think the effect is to diminish the confidence in the result of hostilities with us. In December we were told that we should be swept from the ocean in a moment, and all our ports would be taken. They do not talk so now. So far as this may have an effect to secure peace on both sides it is good. . . .

We are much encouraged now by the series of successes gained, and far more by the marked indications of exhaustion and discouragement in the south. They must be suffering in every way. Never did people pay such a penalty for their madness. And the worst is yet to come. For emancipation is on its way with slow but certain pace. Well for them if it do not take them unaware.