A writer of tenderer sympathies and nicer discrimination, takes a more kindly and a wiser view:—
"About the whole question of the war, Hawthorne's mind was, I think, always hovering between two views. He sympathized with it in principle; but its inevitable accessories—the bloodshed, the bustle, and above all, perhaps, the bunkum which accompanied it—were to him absolutely hateful.... To any one who knew the man, the mere fact that Hawthorne should have been able to make up his mind to the righteousness and expediency of the war at all, is evidence of the strength of that popular passion which drove the North and South into conflict."
But it was not Hawthorne's silence that provoked to fiercest expression the safe zeal of certain literary loyalists. This last sketch from that pen, the secret of whose magic was never communicated, and which, precious in itself, is invaluable because the last, was published in the summer of 1862—less than two years before its author's death. Its title, "Chiefly about War Matters," suggests its character. It was, in fact, a series of pictures of scenes in and about Washington at this stage of the great contest.
The present writer attempts nothing here like a review of this remarkable essay, entirely worthy as it was of its subject and its author's genius; it is simply my purpose to call the reader's attention to a production, which, more than anything else in Hawthorne's writings, has kindled the hostile criticism of shallow and uncongenial minds.
So quaintly characteristic is its commencement that I am tempted to give its opening paragraphs in full:—
"There is no remoteness of life and thought, no hermetically scaled seclusion, except, possibly, that of the grave, into which the disturbing influences of this war do not penetrate. Of course, the general heart-quake of the country long ago knocked at my cottage-door, and compelled me, reluctantly, to suspend the contemplation of certain fantasies to which, according to my harmless custom, I was endeavoring to give a sufficiently lifelike aspect to admit of their figuring in a romance. As I make no pretensions to statecraft or soldiership, and could promote the common weal neither by valor nor counsel, it seemed at first a pity that I should be debarred from such unsubstantial business as I had contrived for myself, since nothing more genuine was to be substituted for it.
"But I magnanimously considered that there is a kind of treason in inoculating one's self from the universal fear and sorrow, and thinking one's idle thoughts in the dread time of civil war; and could a man be so cold and hard-hearted, he would better deserve to be sent to Fort Warren than many who have found their way thither on the score of violent but misdirected sympathies.
"I remember the touching rebuke administered by King Charles to that rural squire, the echo of whose hunting-horn came to the poor monarch's ear on the morning before a battle, where the sovereignty and constitution of England were at stake. So I gave myself up to reading newspapers, and listening to the click of the telegraph, like other people, until after a great many months of such pastime, it grew so abominably irksome that I determined to look a little more closely at matters with my own eyes."
It was in the early days of March that Hawthorne, in company with his friend and publisher, Wm. D. Ticknor, left Boston on a visit to Washington and the seat of war, then in its immediate vicinity.
The sketches of natural scenery are touched with the same pencil that gave us the charming picture of daily life at the Old Manse.