John Lothrop Motley, A Memoir — Complete

by Oliver Wendell Holmes

“He says at the close of this long letter:

'I wish I could bore you about something else but American politics.
But there is nothing else worth thinking of in the world. All else
is leather and prunella. We are living over again the days of the
Dutchmen or the seventeenth-century Englishmen.'”

My next letter, of fourteen closely written pages, was of similar character to the last. Motley could think of nothing but the great conflict. He was alive to every report from America, listening too with passionate fears or hopes, as the case might be, to the whispers not yet audible to the world which passed from lip to lip of the statesmen who were watching the course of events from the other side of the Atlantic with the sweet complacency of the looker-on of Lucretius; too often rejoicing in the storm that threatened wreck to institutions and an organization which they felt to be a standing menace to the established order of things in their older communities.

A few extracts from this very long letter will be found to have a special interest from the time at which they were written.

LEGATION OF U. S. A., VIENNA, February 26, 1862.
MY DEAR HOLMES,—. . . I take great pleasure in reading your
prophecies, and intend to be just as free in hazarding my own, for,
as you say, our mortal life is but a string of guesses at the
future, and no one but an idiot would be discouraged at finding
himself sometimes far out in his calculations. If I find you
signally right in any of your predictions, be sure that I will
congratulate and applaud. If you make mistakes, you shall never
hear of them again, and I promise to forget them. Let me ask the
same indulgence from you in return. This is what makes letter-
writing a comfort and journalizing dangerous. . . The ides of March
will be upon us before this letter reaches you. We have got to
squash the rebellion soon, or be squashed forever as a nation. I
don't pretend to judge military plans or the capacities of generals.
But, as you suggest, perhaps I can take a more just view of the
whole picture of the eventful struggle at this great distance than
do those absolutely acting and suffering on the scene. Nor can I
resist the desire to prophesy any more than you can do, knowing that
I may prove utterly mistaken. I say, then, that one great danger
comes from the chance of foreign interference. What will prevent
that?
Our utterly defeating the Confederates in some great and conclusive
battle; or,
Our possession of the cotton ports and opening them to European
trade; or,
A most unequivocal policy of slave emancipation.
Any one of these three conditions would stave off recognition by
foreign powers, until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to
reduce the South to obedience.
The last measure is to my mind the most important. The South has,
by going to war with the United States government, thrust into our
hands against our will the invincible weapon which constitutional
reasons had hitherto forbidden us to employ. At the same time it
has given us the power to remedy a great wrong to four millions of
the human race, in which we had hitherto been obliged to acquiesce.
We are threatened with national annihilation, and defied to use the
only means of national preservation. The question is distinctly
proposed to us, Shall Slavery die, or the great Republic? It is
most astounding to me that there can be two opinions in the free
States as to the answer.
If we do fall, we deserve our fate. At the beginning of the
contest, constitutional scruples might be respectable. But now we
are fighting to subjugate the South; that is, Slavery. We are
fighting for nothing else that I know of. We are fighting for the
Union. Who wishes to destroy the Union? The slaveholder, nobody
else. Are we to spend twelve hundred millions, and raise six
hundred thousand soldiers, in order to protect slavery? It really
does seem to me too simple for argument. I am anxiously waiting for
the coming Columbus who will set this egg of ours on end by smashing
in the slavery end. We shall be rolling about in every direction
until that is done. I don't know that it is to be done by
proclamation. Rather perhaps by facts. . . . Well, I console
myself with thinking that the people—the American people, at least
—is about as wise collectively as less numerous collections of
individuals, and that the people has really declared emancipation,
and is only puzzling how to carry it into effect. After all, it
seems to be a law of Providence, that progress should be by a spiral
movement; so that when it seems most tortuous, we may perhaps be
going ahead. I am firm in the faith that slavery is now wriggling
itself to death. With slavery in its pristine vigor, I should think
the restored Union neither possible nor desirable. Don't understand
me as not taking into account all the strategical considerations
against premature governmental utterances on this great subject.
But are there any trustworthy friends to the Union among the
slaveholders? Should we lose many Kentuckians and Virginians who
are now with us, if we boldly confiscated the slaves of all rebels?
—and a confiscation of property which has legs and so confiscates
itself, at command, is not only a legal, but would prove a very
practical measure in time of war. In brief, the time is fast
approaching, I think, when 'Thorough' should be written on all our
banners. Slavery will never accept a subordinate position. The
great Republic and Slavery cannot both survive. We have been defied
to mortal combat, and yet we hesitate to strike. These are my poor
thoughts on this great subject. Perhaps you will think them crude.
I was much struck with what you quote from Mr. Conway, that if
emancipation was proclaimed on the Upper Mississippi it would be
known to the negroes of Louisiana in advance of the telegraph. And
if once the blacks had leave to run, how many whites would have to
stay at home to guard their dissolving property?
You have had enough of my maunderings. But before I conclude them,
may I ask you to give all our kindest regards to Lowell, and to
express our admiration for the Yankee Idyl. I am afraid of using
too extravagant language if I say all I think about it. Was there
ever anything more stinging, more concentrated, more vigorous, more
just? He has condensed into those few pages the essence of a
hundred diplomatic papers and historical disquisitions and Fourth of
July orations. I was dining a day or two since with his friend
Lytton (Bulwer's son, attache here) and Julian Fane (secretary of
the embassy), both great admirers of him,—and especially of the
“Biglow Papers;” they begged me to send them the Mason and Slidell
Idyl, but I wouldn't,—I don't think it is in English nature
(although theirs is very cosmopolitan and liberal) to take such
punishment and come up smiling. I would rather they got it in some
other way, and then told me what they thought voluntarily.
I have very pleasant relations with all the J. B.'s here. They are
all friendly and well disposed to the North,—I speak of the
embassy, which, with the ambassador and—-dress, numbers eight or
ten souls, some of them very intellectual ones. There are no other
J. B.'s here. I have no fear at present of foreign interference.
We have got three or four months to do our work in,—a fair field
and no favor. There is no question whatever that the Southern
commissioners have been thoroughly snubbed in London and Paris.
There is to be a blockade debate in Parliament next week, but no bad
consequences are to be apprehended. The Duke de Gramont (French
ambassador, and an intimate friend of the Emperor) told my wife last
night that it was entirely false that the Emperor had ever urged the
English government to break the blockade. “Don't believe it,—don't
believe a word of it,” he said. He has always held that language to
me. He added that Prince Napoleon had just come out with a strong
speech about us,—you will see it, doubtless, before you get this
letter,—but it has not yet reached us.
Shall I say anything of Austria,—what can I say that would interest
you? That's the reason why I hate to write. All my thoughts are in
America. Do you care to know about the Archduke Ferdinand
Maximilian, that shall be King hereafter of Mexico (if L. N. has his
way)? He is next brother to the Emperor, but although I have had
the honor of private audiences of many archdukes here, this one is a
resident of Trieste.
He is about thirty,—has an adventurous disposition,—some
imagination,—a turn for poetry,—has voyaged a good deal about the
world in the Austrian ship-of-war,—for in one respect he much
resembles that unfortunate but anonymous ancestor of his, the King
of Bohemia with the seven castles, who, according to Corporal Trim,
had such a passion for navigation and sea-affairs, “with never a
seaport in all his dominions.” But now the present King of Bohemia
has got the sway of Trieste, and is Lord High Admiral and Chief of
the Marine Department. He has been much in Spain, also in South
America; I have read some travels, “Reise Skizzen,” of his—printed,
not published. They are not without talent, and he ever and anon
relieves his prose jog-trot by breaking into a canter of poetry. He
adores bull-fights, and rather regrets the Inquisition, and
considers the Duke of Alva everything noble and chivalrous, and the
most abused of men. It would do your heart good to hear his
invocations to that deeply injured shade, and his denunciations of
the ignorant and vulgar protestants who have defamed him. (N.B.
Let me observe that the R. of the D. R. was not published until long
after the “Reise Skizzen” were written.) 'Du armer Alva! weil du
dem Willen deines Herrn unerschiitterlich treu vast, weil die
festbestimmten grundsatze der Regierung,' etc., etc., etc. You
can imagine the rest. Dear me! I wish I could get back to the
sixteenth and seventeenth century. . . . But alas! the events
of the nineteenth are too engrossing.
If Lowell cares to read this letter, will you allow me to “make it
over to him jointly,” as Captain Cuttle says. I wished to write to
him, but I am afraid only you would tolerate my writing so much when
I have nothing to say. If he would ever send me a line I should be
infinitely obliged, and would quickly respond. We read the “Washers
of the Shroud” with fervid admiration.
Always remember me most sincerely to the Club, one and all. It
touches me nearly when you assure me that I am not forgotten by
them. To-morrow is Saturday and the last of the month.—[See
Appendix A.]—We are going to dine with our Spanish colleague. But
the first bumper of the Don's champagne I shall drain to the health
of my Parker House friends.

From another long letter dated August 31, 1862, I extract the following passages:—

“I quite agree in all that you said in your last letter. 'The imp
of secession can't reenter its mother's womb.' It is merely
childish to talk of the Union 'as it was.' You might as well bring
back the Saxon Heptarchy. But the great Republic is destined to
live and flourish, I can't doubt. . . . Do you remember that
wonderful scene in Faust in which Mephistopheles draws wine for the
rabble with a gimlet out of the wooden table; and how it changes to
fire as they drink it, and how they all go mad, draw their knives,
grasp each other by the nose, and think they are cutting off bunches
of grapes at every blow, and how foolish they all look when they
awake from the spell and see how the Devil has been mocking them?
It always seems to me a parable of the great Secession.
“I repeat, I can't doubt as to the ultimate result. But I dare say
we have all been much mistaken in our calculations as to time.
Days, months, years, are nothing in history. Men die, man is
immortal, practically, even on this earth. We are so impatient,
—and we are always watching for the last scene of the tragedy. Now I
humbly opine that the drop is only about falling on the first act,
or perhaps only the prologue. This act or prologue will be called,
in after days, War for the status quo. Such enthusiasm, heroism,
and manslaughter as status quo could inspire, has, I trust, been not
entirely in vain, but it has been proved insufficient.
“I firmly believe that when the slaveholders declared war on the
United States government they began a series of events that, in the
logical chain of history, cannot come to a conclusion until the last
vestige of slavery is gone. Looking at the whole field for a moment
dispassionately, objectively, as the dear Teutonic philosophers say,
and merely as an exhibition of phenomena, I cannot imagine any other
issue. Everything else may happen. This alone must happen.
“But after all this isn't a war. It is a revolution. It is n't
strategists that are wanted so much as believers. In revolutions
the men who win are those who are in earnest. Jeff and Stonewall
and the other Devil-worshippers are in earnest, but it was not
written in the book of fate that the slaveholders' rebellion should
be vanquished by a pro-slavery general. History is never so
illogical. No, the coming 'man on horseback' on our side must be a
great strategist, with the soul of that insane lion, mad old John
Brown, in his belly. That is your only Promethean recipe:—
'et insani leonis
Vim stomacho apposuisse nostro.'
“I don't know why Horace runs so in my head this morning. . . .
“There will be work enough for all; but I feel awfully fidgety just
now about Port Royal and Hilton Head, and about affairs generally
for the next three months. After that iron-clads and the new levies
must make us invincible.”

In another letter, dated November 2, 1862, he expresses himself very warmly about his disappointment in the attitude of many of his old English friends with reference to our civil conflict. He had recently heard the details of the death of “the noble Wilder Dwight.”

“It is unnecessary,” he says, “to say how deeply we were moved. I
had the pleasure of knowing him well, and I always appreciated his
energy, his manliness, and his intelligent cheerful heroism. I look
back upon him now as a kind of heroic type of what a young New
Englander ought to be and was. I tell you that one of these days
—after a generation of mankind has passed away—these youths will
take their places in our history, and be regarded by the young men
and women now unborn with the admiration which the Philip Sidneys
and the Max Piccolominis now inspire. After all, what was your
Chevy Chace to stir blood with like a trumpet? What noble
principle, what deathless interest, was there at stake? Nothing but
a bloody fight between a lot of noble gamekeepers on one side and of
noble poachers on the other. And because they fought well and
hacked each other to pieces like devils, they have been heroes for
centuries.”

The letter was written in a very excited state of feeling, and runs over with passionate love of country and indignation at the want of sympathy with the cause of freedom which he had found in quarters where he had not expected such coldness or hostile tendencies.