To Miss Nancy Storrow: May 17, 1844 Dear Aunty:

It was strange to me to reappear in Cambridge society after four years absence. Of course one half the people were the same under whose shadow or by whose side I grew up, and the other half entirely new arrivals. Especially the youthful beaux were mysteries to me. Whence had they arisen, all decked in white cravats, too? . . . Yet I seemed to recognize in each smooth face lineaments not unfamiliar, and I grant the soundness of the system revealed to me by Maria Fay.

Miss Maria Fay was one of the Cambridge belles in Higginson's youth and lived in the fine old mansion now occupied by Radcliffe College and known as Fay House.

Mr. Higginson lived and preached in Worcester for about ten years before the Civil War called him away. Extracts from journals and letters of this period are apt to be undated and fragmentary and are often arranged according to subject rather than date. They are not chronicles of Worcester life, but rather a record of absences. To an old parishioner: Worcester, June.

. . . We are kept sound asleep all the time by the heavy scent of roses and pinks and syringas. Add to this in seven small volumes, and you will understand what Lotos-Eaters we have become.

Did you ever read Sir Charles ? It is a new experience to me and surpasses my best hopes. The heroines write as many letters every day as you write Sundays. Sir Charles, I find, to be a human being, whose grandeurs and graces fill me with reverence. And Lady G. you would find a piece of wickedness to whom you would instantly swear eternal friendship. Her matrimonial squabbles are as fresh and modern as David's and Dora's, though of a more piquant character. I cannot conceive of your not reading it every summer. ..

Sir Charles has such beautiful ways; he goes to a house where single young ladies reside and a lover for each always happens in; then he immediately gives them five thousand pounds and they are married immediately. All those, however, who were married previously are found quarrelling; these he reconciles and gives them three thousand pounds.

During the same visit, he wrote:

. . . H. W. B. is charming at home, a sort of great, happy child, and so his wife and Mr. S. treated him. They were as liberal and friendly as possible, and I talked all my heresies without fear. I wish you could have heard them roar with laughter when I quoted Mr. Emerson's remark that Evangelical doctrines were like the measles and the whooping-cough — important to those who have them and interesting to those who have had them; but not important or even very intelligible to those who have not H. W. B. also told me with infinite amusement of W. H. C.'s anxiously warning him not to underrate certain theological doctrines-a Channing warning a Beecher!

Of a later trip to Brooklyn, Higginson wrote:

I stayed with Sam Longfellow from Thursday night to Monday night. The former night was stormy, and I was invited to repeat the lecture, which I did to quite a different audience, on Monday. Henry Ward Beecher announced it from his pulpit on Sunday, very cordially, and told his people he wished it could be given in his church, which indeed he had previously proposed to me. Besides this, I spoke twice on Sunday to large audiences, though it was quite stormy.

Sam dwells in clover with one of those elderly ladies who are born to coddle young bachelor divines, Mrs. Jackson. He has a large, charming study, a chaos of books and works of art, with a great magnificent chest of drawers, from the Palazzo d'oro in Venice which he happened upon with his usual luck; it is the handsomest piece of carved furniture I ever saw and had stood out of doors a whole winter when he captured it. Here dwells Sam, always nursing some little lumbago or dyspepsia of his own, and interchanging visits with Mrs. Jackson, similarly occupied in her parlor, while a pretty little grandchild and a pretty young lady protegee, who supervises him, vibrate between the apartments. The parishioners are also devoted and speak as earnestly of the importance of retaining Mr. Longfellow in Brooklyn as the Beecherites might of Beecher. The new church is a little box of choice art . . . stone-colored stucco ( for surface ) with a sort of basement of brick, painted red ( for purposes of color ). The brick is now very dirty, or, as Sam tenderly prefers to term it, distained ; there is also a distained little steeple or spire in the background. . . . This structure they enjoy to the utmost, and Sam now projects a little evening service, of music and reading Scripture, without a sermon, which he calls vespers or even-song ; the people meekly rebel a little, especially at the even-song, and pant for a sermon, but I think he will carry it through.

... I took tea with the Millses, some leading people in Sam's parish. Then he invited Brownlee Brown, who wrote the fine article in the last Atlantic, The ideal tendency, to come down from Newburg and dine with me, but he did not appear. I spent part of a day with Octavius Frothingham at Jersey City. Then I moused about New York a good deal and saw various things I wished to see. I saw nothing so good, however, as a scene Frothingham reported to me, between two little street-sweeping boys, whom he passed at dusk the night before, it being terribly rainy and muddy. Come, Bill, said one, ain't it about time to close up for the night? Bill consented, and F. lingered to see in what the process of closing up consisted. It consisted in the two little wretches deliberately hoeing back over the crossing all the mud they had cleared off, so as to give a fair chance for next day's operations

My lecture stirred them up a good deal in Brooklyn and brought special appeals and insults to Sam from his flock (he being unable, because of lumbago, to attend). Some of them came home with me afterwards and tormented him with proffers of gymnasiums and chest expanders. One enthusiastic youth implored him to become a fireman.

Last Thursday I went to New Haven which is the most superb nursery of elms I know anywhere. . ... I got there early and had a charming walk to the top of East Rock. I stayed with the Elliots. . .. They live in the old Roger Sherman house with painted tiles. My lecture took immensely with the college boys.

Last week we had Rarey here . .. but the most interesting parts — his personal simplicity and earnestness, and the expression in the horses' faces, render it perfectly fascinating. I feared he might be conceited, might mystify and be grand, but he seemed like a perfectly single-minded reformer, like Wendell Phillips, and his one desire seemed to be to show at each step how utterly simple and intelligible the whole process was.

Yesterday I was walking and crossed a pasture, where the cows all came around me attracted by some boughs I had and which I had to hold out of their reach; they were very gentle and timid, though trustful, and I had to keep very quiet, like Rarey. They seemed to wish to understand me — licked my arm to see if I were a branch and rubbed against me to see if I were a stump, and I did not know how to explain myself. I stood in a circle of six... they made a halo, or cow-low about me.

In 1855 the Worcester pastor with a few friends took a trip to Mount Katahdin. This jaunt he described in a current number of Putnam's magazine. These bits of description are taken from his letters home: Mattawaumkeag, Maine, Stopping to tea September 5, 1855

We see Katahdin gloriously all day-pale blue, finer than Monadnock, with vast scars of slides down the sides. All say we can go to the mountain easily and partway up, at least.

Another mountain excursion involved a visit to the Adirondack camp of sundry Worcester friends:

Worcester, September 11. 1859 Dearest Mother:

Last night brought me back from my pleasant nine days trip to the Adirondack. It was somewhat hurried, but the region is fascinating and it was perfectly delightful to me to be in the woods again. I cannot compare it with my trip to Katahdin very well, that being entirely a pedestrian affair and this almost entirely boating. On the whole the Katahdin region is wilder, though both have been lumbered over too much for thorough wilderness. Still, there we were beyond houses for five days, while there is hardly any one of the lovely Adirondack lakes without one or more clearings somewhere upon it, where supplies or shelter can be got in case of need. There we shouldered our packs and were reduced to a minimum of comforts for that reason; here we had boats for carrying everything and lived in comparative luxury; the party having, for instance, got milk every day, thus obviating Mr. Emerson's grand objection to the wilderness, that the cows were not driven in. On the other hand, the style of camping was not so agreeable as in Maine, closed tents being used and the fires not kept up all night. Indeed, I personally only camped out one night, the others being more or less under shelter. ... As to scenery there was no one mountain comparable in lonely glory to Katahdin, nor did I ascend any, but there was a far greater variety of mountain background. . . . After all this comparison with Katahdin, remains the perpetual boating, a thing ever fascinating to those who enjoy it all, gliding on from lake to lake, like Evangeline, beneath cliffs and wooded islands, under overhanging boughs just tinged with autumn, and through dawning and dying days; large lakes with rippling waves ( chibogles, as the boatmen say) breaking their darkness into blue; little fairylike ponds with outlets inscrutable; creeks losing themselves in bushes; the fascinating Raquette River, soft and shaded as the Artichoke, down which for many miles we travelled; with tall pine trees left by the lumberers, cedars hung with long white moss, and mounds of trailing grapevines. The immediate banks are seldom so high as one expects, but the backgrounds are always beautiful.

I left Worcester on Friday, reached Keesville that night, rode forty-six miles on Saturday through a dark and dusty iron region to Martin's on the Lower Saranac, the end of civilization; there took boat and guide on Sunday afternoon, the morning being too windy, and went in pursuit of my party. Fifteen miles that night brought me to a log house, Steve Martin's; the next day we partly spent off the right track in going up Follansbee brook and pond in pursuit of them, but we saw that pretty pond, where the philosophers went last year, but a party of ladies and gentlemen from New Haven were camping and deer-hunting that morning ; then back to the Raquette River again and down to Stetson's, the most picturesque of log houses, where a handsome and intelligent household charmed us; here we had something to eat for the first time since morning and found that our party were still ten miles farther after rowing and paddling twenty-five; on we pushed under the moonlight, and at nine stole upon them at their camp-fire and were enthusiastically received-that is, I and my guide and his dog. . . . They had quite given me up, but had had a jovial time in spite of much rain; indeed, everything is jovial and successful which Tom Earle leads. They were camped in the most charming place on Tupper's Lake, opposite the Bog River Falls, which flow into the head of the lake, lovely as Trenton. The next day we stayed only for another unsuccessful deer hunt and then turned homeward and had two delightful days of boating back to Martin's, reaching there Wednesday night, and they leaving Thursday morning, while Edward Spring and I stayed another day to penetrate to the new Philosophers' Camp at Amperzand Pond and see Stillman, the artist, who had invited us all. You who have not seen Eddy Spring, son of Marcus, do not know how sweet and chivalrous and handsome and charming a young man of twenty-two can be, but I found him the most delightful of companions. Amperzand Pond is a region of romance; you go seven miles by water up a secret brook, then four miles' hard climbing through wild and beautiful woods; suddenly the path ends, between great trees, in the loveliest of lakes with no sign of human life. In despair you discharge your rifle, and suddenly a boat comes out from a wooded point, and receives you as guests in fairyland. Stillman is the presiding spirit; he stays there all summer and paints while the other artists and savants who make up the Adirondack Club (or Amperzanders as the boatmen call them) come and go. This summer there have been James Lowell, Estes Howe, Judge Hoar, Horace Gray; and Emerson and Longfellow and others are now coming. John Holmes came, carried in an armchair through the forest by four men; they said it was hard, but he was so funny. They are just buying the pond and its whole surroundings, to keep them sacred from lumbering and injury, and have taken this out-of-the-way place to avoid company and disturbance; besides, it is by far the most beautiful lake we saw, the mountains coming closer and steeper round it than in any other place we saw, and they are laying out rude paths to all the points of interest in the neighboring wilderness, while their camps and dining-room and kitchen of logs and bark are perfectly picturesque and show exquisite taste of arrangement. Stillman was hospitable, though not quite satisfactory, and dined us on venison boiled and broiled, cranberries and guava jelly, and by and by we came away and let the wilderness close around the lonely artist.

Coming back we stopped to see the finest of all the fine arts, most graceful of all things ever done by man -fly-fishing as practised by a great master, Henry K. Brown, the sculptor, Larkin Mead's teacher, of whom he will like to hear. . . . The next morning we left Martin's, got to Burlington that night, and home the next (Saturday); and now the lakes and mountains are fading into dreams.

In 1855 the Higginsons sailed for Fayal for the benefit of Mrs. Higginson's health. Worcester, July

. . .For companions on the voyage we may have Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dabney ... very pleasant people. There seem plenty of entertainments there — oranges, music, whaleships, Catholic priests, and a steep mountain. Pico half as high again as Mount Washington.

There were terrible winter storms at Fayal and many disabled ships were seen. An extract from the journal describes some of these wrecks. January 16, 1856

During our enjoyment of the storm ... we knew that it must end in disaster.

... A man came across the island to tell Mr. Dabney that two distressed vessels were in sight. He at once ordered out the Hortense, a schooner of his which happened to be in port, and while they were fitting her out with provisions, spare sails, spars, etc., another messenger came from the north signal station, announcing that the vessels were a brig and a schooner, both American. In an hour they both came slowly in by the north passage, as predicted, only that the schooner turned out a barque, partially dismantled.

The brig came to anchor before dark, and as her stern swung round we read with the glass the familiar name of Newburyport, the vessel being the venerable Keying, one of old Captain Cushing's great brigs. ... In Captain Cook, who came ashore the next day, I recognized a familiar face, and I could safely congratulate my former townsman for his success in weathering the storm with only the loss of a bowsprit and topmast and some damage to the rudder. He was also favored above all the succeeding vessels by being admitted to quarantine. . . .

The poor barque was less fortunate, and when I went alongside of her in the customhouse boat on Saturday, she was certainly a sad spectacle. She was the Warren of Thomaston, Maine, Captain Condry, from Philadelphia, with flour and grain; and as we approached her she seemed like one of Herman Melville's ghostly ships. She lay deep in the water, her starboard bulwarks almost wholly broken away, no vestige left of bowsprit and foremast, only the lower mainmast and mizzenmast standing. . .. Two women and a baby were on the quarterdeck; and to crown all the sufferings, she had no bill of health and was refused quarantine.

All this I learned from the captain, questioning him in behalf of the customhouse officers. I shall never forget the quiet, rather dogged calmness with which the poor fellow told his losses, one by one, too inured to despair even to court sympathy. Did you do anything to lighten ship? Threw overboard five hundred barrels of flour. Any water in hold? Four feet. Pumps choked. Cargo damaged? All of it. How many in your crew? Six left (with a glance round), three lost in the gale. So we left him, at last, with an inward thrill of sympathy and of detestation at the inhuman strictness of the quarantine laws which kept that sympathy from being actively exhibited. Five days are passed, and she is not yet admitted.

. . . During Monday the vessels pitched fearfully, and communication between them and the shore was almost wholly suspended. It grew dim and dark and misty, and as the wind howled round our windows in the night, we thought of that poor mother and baby.

All this time, however, a sadder tragedy was preparing. During the gloom and the gale of Monday, there swept slowly in at the southern entrance, seen dimly through the mist, the half spectral figure of a great American ship, with topgallant-masts and bowsprit lost.... Slowly, slowly she passed by, now clearly visible at some three miles distance, now half concealed; and my fancy is still haunted by her weary and helpless look, as she disappeared behind the northern headland and drifted out to sea. Nothing could be done for her. Mr. Dabney in vain attempted to induce the captain of an English schooner to go out to her to supply spars and sails and to stay by her. An American captain, he said, would have gone, but this more cautious individual refused to weigh anchor. And the night closed wearily round us, thinking of the doomed and wandering ship.

On Tuesday morning the wind had changed. What was that which stood out against the horizon, six miles off, at the northern edge of the rocky Pico? A glass revealed it; the ship had been blown back again and gone ashore in the night. . . . She had struck at the very worst points on the shore, inaccessible for boats, and far from any village. The surf was not unusually high, and only very rarely seemed to break over her. There she lay, and whether the crew were saved, no one could judge; though it seemed, on the whole, probable. The prospect of saving her cargo seemed small, indeed.

Those acquainted with the reputation of the Dabney family will not be surprised to hear that in two hours after the vessel was seen, two of the gentlemen of the family had set sail in a boat, furnished with provisions and clothing for a fortnight. ... I felt greatly disappointed at being absolutely prevented, by circumstances, from joining this expedition.

. . During [the same] morning an American barque rounded the southern point, which proved to be the Sumter, Captain Humphrey, which had left Charleston soon after the Keying and was now leaking badly with the pumps choked. She was soon followed by a French barque of the same size and in similar condition; making the sixth distressed vessel. But the wind was directly ahead for them, and it was pathetic to watch hour after hour and see the great wounded creatures spreading their wings in vain and toiling with the harbor full in sight unable to gain it. It is singular how one personifies a vessel; my sympathies seem to be much more with her, individually, than with any person on board. It shows how live a thing a ship is, thus to condense into itself all the anxieties and sorrows she bears.

After his return from Fayal, Mr. Higginson was plunged into the Kansas troubles. The following letters to his mother explain themselves: Worcester, June 26, 1856

I have a momentary lull, having yesterday sent off my second party to Kansas. ... The first had forty-seven and our Committee will send no more, leaving it for the State Committee, which was appointed yesterday, chiefly on my urging. ...

At Chicago they show an energy which disgraces us; have arrangements and men already and need only money. The night I came from Brattleboroa, Friday, we had letters from Chicago, and our Finance Committee voted them fifteen hundred dollars and voted to add three thousand dollars more, unless I could raise this second party by Wednesday, which I did. Saturday, the day after, I was sent to Boston, with the same letters, to urge the Boston Committee to send money to Chicago. With great difficulty I got five minutes each from Pat Jackson and several other merchants, and at two they came together for ten minutes and voted to send two thousand dollars, Ingersoll Bowditch being happily absent, who had just told me he should come and oppose it entirely. I saw the telegraphic despatch written and came back.

That very night we got a telegraphic despatch from Chicago, imploring us to send that precise sum, for the relief of a large party of emigrants, detained at Iowa City for want of means. The two despatches crossed on the way.

This two thousand dollars, with our remittance, and our two parties of emigrants (which would not have gone till by this time if I had not gone to work on it the first night I came) are absolutely all that has yet been done by New England for Kansas, in this time of imminent need. This I say to show you how ill-prepared we are for such emergencies. The busy give no time and the leisurely no energy, and there is no organization. I should except the Committee here, which has done admirably, and that in Concord, Massachusetts, and Dr. Howe, Sam Cabot, Charles Higginson, and a few others in Boston.

There is talk now of sending Dr. Howe to Kansas with a large sum of money, and this will be the best thing possible, but it should have been done a fortnight ago.

To a friend: Nebraska City, September 16, 1856

I know you will particularly like a word from the Border. ... Various camping grounds are scattered along from twenty-five miles north to the same distance south, of various parties, and in a day or two more it will be Boot, saddle, to horse, and away, as Browning has it. Only just at this moment things look discouragingly safe, and the men are beginning to fear marching in without a decent excuse for firing anything at anybody. But we shall take in arms and ammunition and flour and groceries and specie, and shall be welcomed even if we go through safe. As one approaches Kansas, it becomes more and more the absorbing topic and every one here talks it all day, while waiting for real estate to rise. Then comes a cloud of dust on the western road and two or three horsemen come riding wearily in, bearded and booted and spurred and red-shirted, sword and pistol by their side --only the sword is a bowie-knife — wild, manly-looking riders, and they are the latest from Kansas and we get them quickly into a private room to hear the news-how the road is peaceful just now, and they need flour and lead woefully at Lawrence, and how four hundred men chased seven hundred.

. . . The wells are nearly dry, though I can't conceive that enough has ever been drawn from them to produce the effect, and the dirtiest thing in the landscape is the river .. The most discouraging thing I have heard for liberty in Kansas is that the Kansas River is just like the Missouri.

Governor Geary aimed to take a neutral stand between conflicting elements, his orders being to stop the fighting in Kansas. His course did not commend itself to the radical abolitionists, but his later career as an officer in the Union forces of the Civil War led Mr. Higginson, at least, to change his estimate of Geary's character.

This letter was written to one of the Dabney family with whom he had been in close relations in Fayal: Steamboat Cataract, aground on a bank in the Missouri River, October 9, 1856

I know you would enjoy going to Kansas, for it is as genuine a sensation as we expect it to be; things and people are very real there. It is precisely like waking up some morning and stepping out on the Battle of Bunker Hill; one learns in a single day more about Greeks and Romans and English Puritans and Scotch Jacobites, and Hungarians and all heroic peoples, than any course of history can teach. The same process is producing the same results before your eyes, and what is most striking the same persons whom you saw a year ago in Boston, indolent and timid, are here transformed to heroes. Perhaps this brings down the dignity of our courage a little, showing it to be the child of circumstances, but still one sees great differences of temperament in Kansas as elsewhere. What struck me most was the unconscious buoyancy of the people. Living in the midst of danger, they recognize it as the normal condition of existence, and talk of it in the sort of way that sailors do. In the intervals of dinner (if dinner there be), they talk over the last fight as if it were a picnic. In fact it was plain that the excitement had become a necessary stimulus to them, and during the partial peace which existed while I was there, they confessed that they missed something. Women complained that there was n't much to talk about. At Lawrence, when the evening drum beat to call out the guard (of United States troops, placed there by Governor Geary, for protection) somebody would always exclaim, That sounds good! And the patience is about as remarkable as the courage. People would describe their way of living, sick wife and children perhaps ... and always end, But we shall live or die in Kansas. Of course there are exceptions; but the more men sacrifice there, the more they seem to love the country. The difficulty is, that there is not much left to sacrifice; everybody has grown poor. I hope nothing from Governor Geary; he means well and has energy of will, but no energy of character; he can take efficient single steps, but not carry out any systematic plan of action. ... I have less hope that Kansas will be a free State than before I came here. Before this last interference of Governor Geary, the Kansas men under General Lane (who is a very remarkable man) had driven out the Missourians in all directions; but it is their policy not to resist the United States Government, and the Missourians are always ready to take the slightest advantage which that affords them. After the Presidential election the invaders will make a desperate effort; their success is certain if Buchanan is elected, and probably if Fremont is.

. . . On board I have thus far met no annoyance, though there is a company of young Virginians and Carolinians returning to their homes; they are of the race of poor white folks, commonly. My copy of Dred occasions some remarks. I trust your father will feel a becoming reverence when I say that I am a General in the Kansas Army, having been immediately presented with a commission to that effect by the redoubtable Jim Lane himself, the Marion of the age. I keep it as a valuable autograph, or to be used on my next visit to Kansas.

The Worcester summers were varied by occasional sojourns at Princeton, Massachusetts, and at Pigeon Cove, near Gloucester.

Princeton, June, 1853 Dearest Mother:

We do not see Wachusett — we are halfway up the ascent — but we look east and west over great valleys which need only more water to be radiantly beautiful. . . The little hamlet sleeps in profound repose — a two-horse wagon, or even a pedlar with a pack, are events for a day. We look between the two little white churches up a lane which leads to Wachusett; last night we followed this up to its first summit — a little height before the real Wachusett begins; there was the skeleton of an old church, the strong frame uninjured, though raspberry bushes flaunt through the floor, and elders look in at windows; near it an old burial ground, Wordsworth's Churchyard among the mountains. . . . The strawberries were ripening all over the lonely hill-top, and five children with cows and tin kettles and the baby in a wagon — in the waning June sunset; five little sisters there were, with all bleached but their blue eyes.

Very little is known as to the training of the regiments which took part in the Civil War. From Wentworth Higginson's letters one gets an inkling of how the Massachusetts youth went to work to learn the drill. He was then living in Worcester, and on January 24, 1861, wrote: January 24, 1861.

I do not propose that the regiment which I am planning should be called anti-slavery in special, or have a platform or a policy; if others attribute these things, it is their own affair. I expect men to join me from personal sympathy with me; if they ask for pledges, of course none will be given them.

. . The only way for anti-slavery men to share in the control is to share in the sacrifices. .... All I ask, now, is an opportunity to fight, under orders, carrying with me such men as I can raise. I will risk the rest; having faith in the laws of gravitation.

Our two military companies were both ordered; one has gone to Boston, and not a person in town seemed to think of anything but seeing them off. Margaret [a niece] reports not a boy at the High School; then the male teachers vanished; then the girls.

The Worcester Highland Military Academy, mentioned above, was founded in 1856 as a means of preserving health and discipline among the boys.

The Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia was the famous regiment attacked April 19, 1861, in Baltimore on its way to defend the national capital. Four soldiers were killed in this fray. The next letter describes the regiment's return march through Worcester. They had remained in Washington after their time (three months) had expired, owing to the Bull Run disaster. August 4, 1861

Two days this week have been made exciting by the return of troops; the look of Colonel Jones's Sixth Regiment was peculiarly wild, every man wearing a little red skull cap more or less faded, with or without a tassel, surmounting the worn and faded gray uniform. I do not think that Zouaves, just from Africa, could have been a wilder spectacle than those thousand scarecrows tramping in order through our streets with a bouquet on every bayonet. Dr. Martin, whom you know, has lost thirty pounds of flesh and come back the very handsomest man who ever wore a uniform.

When the daughter of the regiment — a little Jones girl — was being placed on her horse, a black man here carried her a bouquet, saying that it was an acknowledgment for her father's hospitality in going to the defence of Washington.

Several of the men had kittens on their knapsacks.

Cameron, Lincoln's first Secretary of War, directed General Butler to employ fugitive slaves in any way that seemed desirable. It was perhaps in consequence of these orders that Butler, while in command at For tress Monroe, adroitly applied the term contraband-of-war to captured slaves.

Devens was United States Marshal at the time of the Sims case, and although his sympathies were with the fugitive slave, he felt obliged to obey the law. But he afterwards made a great effort financially and otherwise to procure freedom for Sims, and his brave career in the Civil War has been fitly recognized by naming for him the recent great soldiers' training camp at Ayer. August 2 Dearest Mother:

We take things more quietly here. The war has never cost us a minute's sleep, which Dr. Holmes thinks enviable at such a time. You and Anna croon over your Springfield Republican till you get altogether too anxious.

Our people are too excitable and felt the Manassas repulse far more than was needful. So far as the military aspects of the matter are concerned, everything looks much better to me, since that, than before, both by land and sea. As for foreign countries, it is galling that they should say such things of us, but they will unsay them when disproved. I do not think there is any danger that England or France will be anything but neutral, and that being the case, though what the newspapers say may be annoying, it is not important.

I am satisfied that we are gravitating towards a bolder anti-slavery policy, and it was foreseen that several defeats would be needed to bring us to that. The desideratum is to approach a policy of emancipation by stages so clear and irresistible as to retain for that end an united public sentiment. With the aid of favoring circumstances I think this possible, and events seem to me fortunate or otherwise in proportion as they tend this way.