BOSTON, Dec. 1860.
DEAREST FRIEND (for I think friends draw closer to one another in troublous times),—Indeed I am sad and troubled, under the most favorable view that can be taken of our affairs; for though all this should blow over, as I prevailingly believe and hope it will, yet the crisis has brought out such a feeling at the South as we shall not easily forget or forgive. To be sure, as the irritation of an arraigned conscience, we may partly overlook it, as we do the irritation of a blamed child,—as an arraigned, and, I add, not quite easy conscience; for surely conscious virtue is calmer than the South is, today. I know that other things are mixed up with this feeling of the South; but if it felt that its moral position was high and honorable and unimpeachable before the world, it would not fly out into this outrageous passion. If the ground it stood upon in former days were held now, it might be calm, as it was then; but ever since the day when it changed its mind,—ever since it has assumed that the slave system is right and good and admirable [255] and ought to be perpetual,—it has been growing more and more passionate. Well, we must be patient with them. For my part, I am frightened at the condition to which their folly is bringing them. It is terrible to think that the distrust and fear of their slaves is spreading itself all over the South country. To be sure, they, in their unreasonableness, blame us for it. They might as well accuse England; they might as well accuse all the civilized world. For the conviction that slavery is wrong, that it ought not to be advocated, but to be condemned, and ultimately removed from the world,-this conviction is one of the inevitable developments of modern Christian thought and sentiment. It is not we that are responsible for the rise and spread of this sentiment; it is the civilized world; it is humanity itself.
And now what is it that the South asks of us as the condition of union with it? Why, that we shall say and vote that we so much approve of the slave-system, that we are willing, not merely that it should exist untouched by us,—that is not the question,—but that it should be taken to our bosom as a cherished national institution.
I hope we shall firmly but mildly refuse to say it. It is the only honorable or dignified or conscientious position for us of the North. But, do you see the result of these municipal elections in Massachusetts? That does not look like firmness. There may be flinching. But so it is, under the great Providence, that the world wears around questions which it cannot sharply meet.
These matters take precedence of all others now-adays, or else my first word would have been to say how glad we were to hear that C. is well again.
Yours as ever,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
[256] To his Daughter Mary.
BOSTON, Feb. 10, 1861.
HAPPILY for my peace of mind, I have been over to the post-office this evening and got your letter. For my one want has been to know how that tremendous Thursday afternoon and night took you; that is, whether it took you off the ground, or the roof off the house. Here, it did not unroof any houses, but it blew over a carryall in Beacon Street; and when Dr. J. went out, like a good Samaritan, to help the people, it did not respect his virtue at all, but blew him over. Blew him over the fence, it was said; at any rate; landed him on his face, which was much bruised, and dislocated his shoulder. So you see I could not tell what pranks the same wind might play around the corners of certain houses or barns afar off.