To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.
SHEFFIELD, Jan. 7, 1865.
THANKS for a beautiful record of a beautiful festival [At the
"Century," New York, Nov. 5, 1864, in honor of Mr. Bryant's seventieth
birthday.] to a beautiful--but enough of this. You must have [278] had
a surfeit. 'T was all right and due, but it must have been a hard thing
to bear,--to be so praised to your very face. . . . Your reply was
admirable,--simple, modest, quiet, graceful,--in short, I don't see how
it could be better. For the rest, I think our cousin Waldo chiselled
out the nicest bit of praise that was done on the occasion.
To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.
SHEFFIELD, Feb. 24, 1865.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I was intending to write to you ten days ago, and
should have done so before now, but my mind has been engrossed with
a great anxiety and sorrow; my grandson and namesake was taken with
a fever, which went to the brain, and he died last Monday evening. I
cannot tell you--you could hardly believe what an affliction it has
been to me. He was five years old, a lovely boy, and, I think, of
singular promise,--of a fine organization, more than beautiful, and
with a mind inquiring into the causes and reasons of things, such as I
have rarely seen. . . . We meant to educate this boy; I hoped that he
would bear up my name. God's will be done!
It was of the coming Convention that I was going to write to you; but
now, just now, I have no heart for it. But I feel great interest in the
movement. Would that it were possible to organize the Unitarian Church
of America,--to take this great cause out of the hands of speculative
dispute, and to put it on the basis of a working institution. To
find a ground of union out of which may spring boundless freedom of
thought,--is it impossible? I should like to see a church which could
embrace and embody all sects.
[279]To his Daughter Mary.
SHEFFIELD, April 11, 1865.
. . . BUT I feel as if it were profane to speak of common things in
these blessed days. Did you observe what the papers say about the
manner in which they received the Great News yesterday in New York [The
surrender of the Rebel army],--not with any loud ebullition of joy, but
rather with a kind of religious silence and a gratitude too deep for
utterance? And I see that they propose to celebrate, not with fireworks
and firing of cannon, but with an illumination,--the silent shining out
of joy from every house. Last evening the locomotive of the freight
train expressed itself in a singular way. Not shutting its whistle when
it left the station, it went singing all down through the valley. For
my part, I feel a solemn joy, as if I had escaped some great peril,
only that it is multiplied by being that of millions.
To Rev. Henry W Bellows, D.D.
SHEFFIELD, April 15, 1865.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--We used to think that life in our country, under our
simple republican regime and peaceful order, was tame and uneventful;
given over to quiet comfort and prosaic prosperity; never startled by
anything more notable than a railroad disaster or a steamer burnt at
sea. Events that were typified by the sun turning to darkness and the
moon to blood, and stars falling from heaven,--distress of nations with
perplexity of men's hearts, failing them for fear,--all this seemed to
belong to some far-off country and time.
[280] But it has come to us. God wills that we should know all
that any nation has known, of whatever disciplines men to awe and
virtue. The bloody mark upon the lintel, for ten thousands of
first-born slain,--the anxiety and agony of the struggle for national
existence,--the tax-gatherer taking one fourth part of our livelihood,
and a deranged currency nearly one half of the remainder,--four years
of the most frightful war known in history,--and then, at the very
moment when our hearts were tremulous with the joy of victory, and
every beating pulse was growing stiller and calmer in the blessed
hope of peace, then the shock of the intelligence that Lincoln and
Seward, our great names borne up on the swelling tide of the nation's
gratulation and hope, have fallen, in the same hour, under the stroke
of the assassin,--these are the awful visitations of God!. . . As I
slowly awake to the dreadful truth, the question that presses upon
me--that presses upon the national heart--is, what is to become of
us? If the reins of power were to fall into competent hands, we could
take courage. But when, in any view, we were about to be cast upon a
troubled sea, requiring the most skilful and trusted pilots, what are
we to do without them? Monday morning, 17th. Why should I send you
this,--partly founded on mistake, for later telegrams lead us to hope
that Mr. Seward will survive,--and reading, too, more like a sermon
than a letter? But my thoughts could run upon nothing else but these
terrible things; and, sitting at my desk, I let my pen run, not merely
dash down things on the paper, as would have been more natural. But for
these all-absorbing horrors, I should have [281] written you somewhat
about the Convention. It was certainly a grand success. I regretted
only one thing, and that was that the young men went away grieved and
sad. . . . I think, too, that what they asked was reasonable. That is,
if both wings were to fly together, and bear on the body, no language
should have been retained in the Preamble which both parties could not
agree to. But no more now. Love to your wife and A. Yours ever,