Governor Curtin’s actions during the succeeding years of the struggle were such that he, Governor Morton of Indiana and Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, were pre-eminently the great war governors, the three governors uppermost in men’s minds.
Governor Curtin’s untiring work on behalf of the soldiers of his state is well known and universally remembered. It is perhaps not so well known that he founded the first Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home in the United States, that of Pennsylvania.
Some time after the war he went to St. Petersburg, as Minister Plenipotentiary, where he gained the respect and esteem of Alexander II. At his last interview the Emperor presented him a full length portrait of himself. This portrait, painted in oil, was made expressly for Governor Curtin, and was sent to his home in Pennsylvania by the Russian government.
While at St. Petersburg, Prince Gortschakoff took the governor into the archives of the foreign office, and showed him the correspondence which took place between the Emperor Napoleon III and Alexander II of Russia concerning the recognition of the independence of the Confederate states. The Emperor Napoleon addressed an autograph letter to Alexander II, stating that the government of Her Britannic Majesty and his government were ready to acknowledge the independence of the Confederate States of America, and invited him to join with them. To this the Emperor of Russia answered, also in an autograph letter, that the people of the United States had a government of their own choice, and that they were using their best blood and treasure to defend it, and not only would he not do anything to oppose them, but he would reserve freedom of action to proceed as he deemed necessary under the circumstances. Soon after, the Russian fleets appeared in New York and San Francisco.
Governor Curtin read the two letters of the emperors himself, and gave me the contents, the substance of which I have just given.
Very sincerely yours,
Jeremiah Curtin.
The potent action of Russia in our hour of bloody stress, which held the hands of England and Napoleon the Little, speaks louder than the strident clamor of the American ingrates, who, forgetting our debt to the Muscovite, would make us the ally of the Briton, the deadly enemy of our friend and of us. Under the Providence of God, the action of Alexander II saved this republic from being torn asunder, and we were base indeed, if in these days we were to turn from the friend of our hour of need to take the hand red with the blood of a hundred helpless races.
THE “ANGLO-SAXON” SHIBBOLETH CONDEMNED.
BY HON. WILLIAM McADOO,[[4]] NEW YORK CITY.