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

London, July 26, 1861

You say that you wanted to go off with Gordon’s regiment. I tell you I would give my cocked hat and knee-breeches to be with them at this moment. I don’t understand being sorry for them. I have no doubt that barring a few lives and legs and arms lost, they’ll all like it and be the better for it. And as for the lives and legs, if they estimate theirs as low as I do mine, the loss won’t amount to much. Pain is the only thing I should fear, but after all, one’s health is just as likely to be benefitted as to be hurt by a campaign, bullets and all, so that this does n’t count. My own task however lies elsewhere and I should be after all hardly the material for a soldier; so that I do my own work and resign the hope of becoming a hero.

My good old Nick Anderson is a Lieut. Colonel, I see. How I’d like to see him. I suppose Rooney Lee has some command also, so it’s as likely as not that he and Nick may come in contact. There never was any friendship between them. Indeed they always hated each other, so that the collision would not be so painful to either of them as it might be. There are so many of our friends in the army now and under fire, that I watch with curiosity the lists of casualties. It won’t be long before something happens, I suppose. . . .

London, July 18, 1861

I Have engaged a house¹ which will I hope be more convenient. It is not in quite so fashionable or so noisy a situation, but it is amply and in some respects richly furnished, and is in a very good neighborhood. My engagement is only for a year, and even that may be shortened if the Earl of Derby should come into the ministry. For my landlord, who is in Parliament, hopes to get back to the same place he had before, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in which contingency he will want his house in May next. In the exact condition of our affairs I have not considered the arrangement so bad as I might otherwise have done. Our relations with this country are now in a promising condition. I have no idea that anybody means war. But a blockade which shuts up the cotton crop is not unlikely to try the nerves of our friends a little, and to elicit causes of difference that may prove difficult to settle. . . .

I think I have attained a tolerable idea of the texture of London society. I have seen most of the men of any reputation, literary or political. The conclusion is not favorable, so far as the comparison with other periods is concerned. Lord Palmerston, Mr. Gladstone, Lord John Russell and Lords Derby and Ellenborough are the orators. Mr. D’Israeli perhaps might be included. Thackeray, Senior, Monckton Milnes, Grote, Lord Stanhope, and Mr. Reeve, the editor of the Edinburgh Review, constitute pretty much the literature. Perhaps I should include Milman. Gladstone and Cornewall Lewis are the scholar politicians. Intermixed with all these are men of education, if not of eminence, who contribute a share to the common stock of society. But I have not yet been to a single entertainment where there was any conversation that I should care to remember. This is not much of a record as compared with the early part of the present or the close of the last century, with the days of Queen Anne, or of Elizabeth. The general aspect of society is profound gravity. People look serious at a ball, at a dinner, on a ride on horseback or in a carriage, in Parliament or at Court, in the theatres or at the galleries. The great object in life is social position. To this end domestic establishments are sustained to rival each other. The horses must be fine, the carriage as large and cumbrous as possible, the servants as showy in livery as anybody’s, the dinners must be just so, the china of Sevres and the plate of silver, the wines of the same quality and growth, not because each person takes pleasure in the display, but because everybody else does the same thing. And so it is through all the economy of social life. The difference is only in the amount of wealth applicable to each particular instance. Yet with all this there is a studied avoidance of all appearance of ostentation. It is not the fashion to parade titles, scarcely even to use them. I do not think I have heard even the most ordinary forms of address to the nobility resorted to more than a dozen times or so. At one dinner I was surprised to hear a lady spoken to several times as “Duchess” rather than “your Grace.” But etiquette is rigid. A white cravat at dinner is indispensable, as well as patent leather shoes, and each person has his distinct place according to the rules which are laid down in the books, in which he must fulfil all his duties to every other person in every, the most exact particular.

Some people say this is true of the London season only. When these same people go to their estates in the country the case is altered. There they are easy and sociable. It may be so, but I doubt it. The Englishman is formal by nature, and he is made so by education. The only question with him is upon the greater or the less. His kindness is all according to rule. If he invites you to his house, he does not think it any part of his duty to put you at your ease there. You must work your own way to acquaintance. He will not help you unless you ask him to do so, and if you do, you subject yourself to a chance of being repelled, unless your situation is such as to make your acquaintance deemed desirable. This is the reason why strangers make so little headway in incorporating themselves into society, and why they seek other countries to dwell in. I know of many Americans in London, but I see scarcely any in the places I am invited to, and these owe their admission to some exceptional recommendation rather than civility or good will. . . .

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¹ No. 5 Mansfield Street, belonging to Sir William Robert Seymour Vesey Fitzgerald

Boston, July 9, 1861

Yesterday we [the Battalion] went out to escort Gordon’s regiment off — the one raised by the subscription of the Boston gentlemen. There were, as I have told you, lots of my friends in it, and I should have been, sorry not to have bid them good-bye; but not till they were gone did I find that the one I should most wished to have seen was gone, and I did n’t even see him as the train went off. For Stephen Perkins joined as a Second Lieutenant at the last minute, and I did n’t know the fact till he was on his way to Virginia. It made me feel quite badly and I have n’t got over it yet. Off they all went, however, and apparently in good spirits and full of life and hope, and the last I saw of the train, Wilder Dwight, rapidly disappearing on its last platform, was waving his hat and dancing a saraband at me, which I returned from the pile of gravel on which we were drawn up, with my whole heart. Sam Quincy was swept by me as he stood on the lower step of a platform looking at his old friends in the cadets, but I did not catch his eye. He looked much as usual. When Hal Russell passed he caught my eye and went through a war dance, with that eager look on his face which a man has when bidding good-bye to old friends on his way to the wars, and when he only recollects pleasant things about them; but Stephen Perkins I did n’t see, even as the train went by. They’re on their way now and I certainly envy them very much. Next comes Frank Palfrey and then there is n’t much of any one to go after that. John Palfrey has come home, by the way, sick — a typhoid fever, but the symptoms are said to be mild. He was over-worked in the sun, surveying, but they do not seem to be apprehensive. Caspar Crowninshield has got home from Washington and expects a commission in the regular army, and, I have little doubt, will get it. . . .

Boston, July 2, 1861

There is little news politically, for I am no longer in the way of getting it. There is a marked improvement in the general feeling and in the tone of the press towards England and my apprehensions of trouble would have entirely subsided but that I cannot but fear future trouble on account of this blockade. I fear that it is not effective and that some blundering British admiral will undertake to raise it for that reason, and this will surely lead to trouble. Neither do I believe that our blockade is likely to be effective in less than a hundred days. There are rumors, and pretty well authenticated, that Seward is losing ground in Washington and in New York very fast. Sumner has been here fiercely denouncing him for designing, as he asserts, to force the country into a foreign war, and Mr. George Morey tells me that to checkmate this, Sumner intends on the opening of Congress to make a speech on our foreign relations in which he will declare his entire satisfaction with the position of England and France. .. .

London, Tuesday, July 2,1861

My letters in the [New York] Times will give you pretty much all I have to say about politics. They are very correctly printed; at least the three first which are all that have reached me. There is no doubt in my mind that all the trouble with England arose from a mere blunder of the Ministry resulting from the suddenness of the change in affairs with us. Here it seems to have been thought with reason that the dissolution of the Union would go as it were by default, without much resistance, and the Ministry and even our warmest friends thought that this would be best for us as well as for themselves. The English are really on our side; of that I have no doubt whatever. But they thought that as a dissolution seemed inevitable and as we seemed to have made up our minds to it, that their Proclamation was just the thing to keep them straight with both sides, and when it turned out otherwise they did their best to correct their mistake. America seems clean daft. She seems to want to quarrel with all the world, and now that England has eaten her humble-pie for what was, I must say, a natural mistake from her point of view, I cannot imagine why we should keep on sarsing her. It certainly is not our interest and I have done and shall do all I can, to bring matters straight. As a counterpart to my letters in the Times, I am looking round here for some good paper to take you as its American correspondent. I don’t know that I can get one, but certainly it will be a good while before a fair chance is likely to happen. When it does I will let you know.

Seward’s tone has improved very much since that crazy despatch that frightened me so. If the Chief had obeyed it literally, he would have made a war in five minutes and annihilated our party here in no time at all. As it is we have worried through safely and are not likely to have much more trouble. There is nothing in the way of particulars to give you so far as I know, for there has been no great scene nor have I met with any very remarkable event. Our presentation was only memorable to my mind from having caused a relapse for me, which frightened me nearly to death.

As to your going to the war, I will tell you plainly how the case seems to me to stand. The Chief is unwilling to do anything about it. His idea is that the war will be short and that you will only destroy all your habits of business without gaining anything. If you will take my advice you will say no more about it; only make arrangements so as not to be taken by surprise, and when the time comes, just write and notify him. He will consent to that as a fait accompli, which he cannot take the responsibility of encouraging himself. . . .

Send us maps of the seat of war — the best ones.

Charles Francis Adams To His Son

London, June 21,1861

With respect to his [Sumner’s] language about Governor Seward I very much regret it for the sake of the public interest. He is sowing the seeds of discord where we ought to have a more perfect union. He is disseminating distrust in our Government when it depends upon confidence. I am surprised to find how very general the dislike of the Governor is in society here. The English express fear of his intentions towards them and intimate suspicions of his duplicity, whilst among Americans he finds only here and there a defender. In one or two cases I have already traced these impressions to their source in America, and I think I see the channels through which they are conducted. How much harm they may be doing cannot yet be appreciated. But if by means of them we should be plunged into a war solely from misunderstandings of our reciprocal intentions, we might come to conceive an idea of it. I believe that events are gradually working us out of this danger. But I suspect that the mischief has been considerable, and that we shall feel the effect of it in our future relations with this country for a good while to come. So far as I can, I have done my best to counteract it.

The general impression here is that there will be no war, and a little apprehension is expressed lest the reunion may be the signal for a common crusade against Great Britain. People do not quite understand Americans or their politics. They think this a hasty quarrel, the mere result of passion, which will be arranged as soon as the cause of it shall pass off. They do not comprehend the connection which slavery has with it, because we do not at once preach emancipation. Hence they go to the other extreme and argue that it is not an element of the struggle. With the commercial men the wish is father to the thought. They look with some uneasiness to the condition of the operatives at Manchester, to the downfall of Southern State stocks, to the falling off of the exports of goods and the drain of specie, to the exclusion from the seaports by the blockade, and to the bad debts of their former customers, for all which their sole panacea is settlement, somehow, no matter how. If it be by a recognition of two governments, that is as good a way as any other. On the other hand I now look to something of a war. We are in it and cannot get out. The slaveholding politicians must go down or there will be no permanent peace. I confess that in this sense I look with some anxiety to the meeting of Congress. I know not who there is now to give a right tone to its proceedings. Possibly some of the new men may come in and contribute to help on the work. Judge Thomas has a reputation as a lawyer, and he has also been a little of a legislator as long ago as when I was with him, but this is a new field. I hope and trust he may do well. . . .

Boston, June 18, 1861

Before this reaches you, you will have heard of the miserable affair at Great Bethel which has made so much noise here. You see a Quincy man was killed — young Souther, a brother of our one-armed friend. Our flags out there were hung at half mast for a day and loud swearing, there as elsewhere, was heard at and about Brigadier General Peirce. It was a bad affair and John Palfrey writes that two companies of regulars would have carried the battery with ease, but this is the beginning of our militia generalship and, alas, that this should have been a Massachusetts man. In fact our good old State, which began this war so well, is likely after going up like a rocket to come down like a stick, and she is now rapidly falling behindhand. While other states have sent out from one to twenty regiments of three year men, she has sent out her first only last week and that one under the command of Colonel Cowdin, a notorious incompetent. In fact Gordon’s regiment is the only decent one, so far as I can hear, yet organized in Massachusetts and the others are so wretchedly officered and so thoroughly demoralized already that it will be almost a miracle if the State is not soon disgraced. In fact Andrew does not show that capacity which he gave promise of and his selections of men so far have, I should say, been wretched. I hope the next batch from here which will probably be called for and organized in July and August will show an improvement, and that we shall then send out some superior men, those whom we are now sending out having previously demonstrated their incompetence. . . .