Newman's next communication to his friend alludes to the Permissive Bill, and assures him that there is no fear that it can ever "hinder legal methods of getting liquor (for medicine, for chemistry, for art)." He adds: "The sole question is, whether by an agent of the public authority, who makes no gain by an increased sale (which we think the sound mode), or by a trafficker who gains by pushing the sale."
As regards America: "I now understand that the darkest moment for the North—the repulse of Burnside at Fredericsburgh—was the only thing that at last decided Mr. Lincoln to issue his proclamation of freedom…. He has been born and bred under a slave-owner's interpretation of the Constitution and of the negro-temperament, and … seems to persist in his publicly avowed preference of gradual abolition. Could he have had his way, I predicted, and would still predict, twenty years of misery, confusion, with probably new war unfavourable to the North. Garrison has done his worst to aid the President, but Sumner and Wendell Phillips have (as I now take courage to believe) checkmated him. He will NEVER get his Louisiana and Arkansas reconstruction approved by Congress, and colour- legislation will be declared to be a violation of 'Republicanism.'… Yet Mr. Lincoln is a better President every half-year, and I fully count will at last give way to truth and necessity with a good grace.
"I have been actively working up my Handbook of Arabic. I also design a skeleton dictionary of Arabic-English. I have got a valuable book from Algiers (if it had but vowel points!). But I cannot publish until I have money to spare. Meanwhile I work hard to mature and perfect."
Late in September, 1864, he is again writing on American turmoils:—
"Next June, 1865, the debt of the U.S. will be about 400 million sterling, only half of what England had at the end of the great French War, when her population was not two-thirds nor her means one-fifth of the U.S., who (if once freedom and order is established over the whole Union) will be a focus of immigration three times as attractive as ever, with wealth multiplying twice as rapidly as ever…. I have no anxiety about anything but the policy which is to prevail in victory…. It is frightful to me to hear President Lincoln avow that (against the morality of his heart) his official duty is to do nothing for the coloured race except under compulsion and to save the whole Republic from foundering. He knows they are subjects of the Union, and owe allegiance to it, to the point of laying down their lives for it; yet he does not know that those who owe allegiance have an indefeasible right to protection. He is conquering rebellious States, and does not know that the conqueror is thenceforward RESPONSIBLE for the institutions which he permits in those States, and believes it to be his official duty to respect the old institutions however inhuman, however against Republican Constitutionalism, and even when a violation of a treaty with France…. It is too clear that Lincoln will be a great drag upon everything decisive in policy, and especially where decision is most necessary, i.e. in vesting in the coloured race power to defend their own rights. When the war ends, it will be very difficult to hinder the Northern enthusiasm from collapsing and foolish statesmen from doing necessary work by halves."
In May, 1865, Newman writes these strong words: "President Lincoln was dead against the confiscation of estates, and bent upon restoring a powerful landed aristocracy, with a wretched dependent peasantry free in name only…. A far sterner nature than his was wanted, which understands that Justice to the oppressed must go before Mercy to the guilty; and I believe they have got the right man in Andrew Johnson."
In February of the year 1866, a great trouble and anxiety fell upon Newman while he and his wife were staying at Hastings. For nine or ten days she seemed to be dying. "We got her through the acute crisis…. I resigned her a full month ago, and have since not dared to hope that she can do anything but linger. Nevertheless her life is less distressing and more worth having than it was. She moves from her bed into an arm-chair; sits at table for dinner…. She talks cheerfully, and can enjoy seeing her sisters. When I look at her I fancy she is pretty well;… yet I feel that she might be carried off very suddenly. Indeed, this was her mother's case, who had the very same combination of disease, and retained much muscular strength to the last. We had two physicians at Hastings, and here she is under Dr. Garth Wilkinson. I have no complaint against any of the physicians: they seem to me all to have done all they could; but nothing that anyone has done has been of any use. It was by nursing, not by medicine, that she was saved through critical days and nights. The physician said she could not live forty-eight hours, and so we believed: and at her request I sent him away…. I have written so many letters that I forget to whom I have written: and it was indeed a tumultuous existence at Hastings. I have now a good night nurse and cannot say that I want anything; but a great shadow overspreads me."
The Doctor had evidently miscalculated Mrs. Newman's strength and recuperative power, however, for in June of the same year:—
"I am happy to say that she" (Mrs. Newman) "now looks very like herself, though feebler and liable (I fear) to relapse. But she is not only in comparative health, but gives a hope of acquiring more soundness in the next three months. I give up this house" (10 Circus Road, N.W.) "in a very few days, and have taken a house in Clifton—1 Dover Place—but it will not be ready for us until 1st August."
Nearly three months later, he writes:—