Ashfield, 10 August, 1864.
. . . George Curtis spent last Sunday with us, and desired
me not to forget to send you his love. He was very pleasant and gave us very
animated and interesting accounts of the Baltimore Convention, and of the visit
of the Committee of the Convention to the President. He is firm in his
confidence in the excellence of Mr. Lincoln's judgment, and in his strong
common sense. He agreed with me in thinking that Woodman's1 stories of his
interference with military affairs might have such foundation that they could
not be called false, but that they would bear a very different aspect did we
know the whole concerning them. Mr. Lincoln is obliged to carry on this war as
a civil as well as a military leader, and civil considerations may often compel
him to act in a manner which would be very unwise were he guided by purely
military conditions.
I dare say you have heard that Arthur Sedgwick2
has been taken prisoner. We have heard nothing directly from him. . . . This is a pretty severe experience for
him, — and for his sisters, especially for Sara, but she bears it with great
strength and cheerfulness.
Curtis has promised me an article on Hawthorne, and we must
squeeze some dull article out of the next number to get it in. I like Howells'
paper on Modern Italian Dramatists. It is pleasantly written and full of
agreeable information. I hope you have asked him to write again. I have been
writing a short article on Goldwin Smith. . . .
_______________
1 Probably Governor Andrew's intimate friend,
Cyrus Woodman.
2 Mrs. Norton's brother was a first Lieutenant in
the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteers.
SOURCE: Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters
of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 275-6
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