With England, Or
One Might Say With Europe, Against Them, Secession Must Be
Accomplished, Not On Northern Terms, But On Terms Dictated By The
South.
The choice was then for them to make; and just at that time
it seemed as though they were resolved to throw away every good
card out of their hand.
Such had been the ministerial wisdom of
Mr. Seward. I remember hearing the matter discussed in easy terms
by one of the United States Senators. "Remember, Mr. Trollope," he
said to me, "we don't want a war with England. If the choice is
given to us, we had rather not fight England. Fighting is a bad
thing. But remember this also, Mr. Trollope, that if the matter is
pressed on us, we have no great objection. We had rather not, but
we don't care much one way or the other." What one individual may
say to another is not of much moment, but this Senator was
expressing the feelings of his constituents, who were the
legislature of the State from whence he came. He was expressing
the general idea on the subject of a large body of Americans. It
was not that he and his State had really no objection to the war.
Such a war loomed terribly large before the minds of them all.
They know it to be fraught with the saddest consequences. It was
so regarded in the mind of that Senator. But the braggadocio could
not be omitted. Had be omitted it, he would have been untrue to
his constituency.
When I left Boston for Washington, nothing was as yet known of what
the English government or the English lawyers might say. This was
in the first week in December, and the expected voice from England
could not be heard till the end of the second week. It was a
period of great suspense, and of great sorrow also to the more
sober-minded Americans. To me the idea of such a war was terrible.
It seemed that in these days all the hopes of our youth were being
shattered. That poetic turning of the sword into a sickle, which
gladdened our hearts ten or twelve years since, had been clean
banished from men's minds. To belong to a peace party was to be
either a fanatic, an idiot, or a driveler. The arts of war had
become everything. Armstrong guns, themselves indestructible but
capable of destroying everything within sight, and most things out
of sight, were the only recognized results of man's inventive
faculties. To build bigger, stronger, and more ships than the
French was England's glory. To hit a speck with a rifle bullet at
800 yards distance was an Englishman's first duty. The proper use
for a young man's leisure hours was the practice of drilling. All
this had come upon us with very quick steps since the beginning of
the Russian war. But if fighting must needs be done, one did not
feel special grief at fighting a Russian.
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