With my love to all around you, I am, as ever, Yours affectionately,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
[FN: The Great Fair, held in New York for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission, and of which Mrs. Lane was the chief manager and inspiring power.]
[268] To Rev. Henry Bellows, D.D. SHEFFIELD, Dec. 31, 1863.
. . . Ah! heaven,—what is rash or wise, shortsighted or far-seeing, too fast or too slow, upon the profound and terrible question, "What is to be done with slavery?" You have been saying something about it, and I rather think, if I could see it, that I should very much agree with you. Bryant and I had some correspondence about it a year ago, and I said to him; "If you expect this matter to be all settled up in any brief way, if you think that the social status of four millions of people is to be successfully placed on entirely new ground in five years, all historical experience is against you."
However, the real and practical question now is, How ought the Government to proceed? Upon what terms should it consent to receive back and recognize the Rebel States? I confess that I am sometimes tempted to go with a rush on this subject,—since so fair an opportunity is given to destroy the monster,—and to make it the very business and object of the war to sweep it out of existence. But that will be the end; and for the way, things will work out their own issues. And in the mean time I do not see that anything could be better than the cautious and tentative manner in which the President is proceeding.
One thing certainly has shaken my old convictions about the feasibility of immediate emancipation, and that is the experiment of emancipated labor on the Mississippi and about Port Royal. But the severest trial of emancipation, as of democracy,—that is, of freeing black men as of freeing white men,—may not be found at the start, but long after.
[269] To the Same.
SHEFFIELD, Feb. 12, 1864.
REVEREND AND DEARLY BELOVED, THOU AND THY PEOPLE,—We are so much indebted to you all for our four pleasant days in the great city, that I think we ought to write a letter to you. We feel as if we had come out of the great waters; the currents of city life run so strong, that it seems to us as if we had been at sea; so many tall galleys are there, and such mighty freights are upon the waves, and the captains and the very sailors are so thoroughly alive, that—that—how shall I end the sentence? Why, thus, if you please,—that it seems to me as if I ought to be there six months of the year, and that somebody ought to want me to do something that would bring me there. But somebody,—who is that? Why, nobody. You can't see him; you can't find him; Micawber never caught him, though he was hunting for him all his life,—always hoped the creature would turn up, though he never did.