Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: I have expected to be able to inform you that General Burnside has advanced across the Rappahannock. His preparations are ready, and the movement is imminent. He has a large and fine army.
General Banks’s latest day assigned for embarkation has passed. I trust he will be on his way when this despatch leaves the coast. The Passaic has at last left her port. The Secretary of the Navy reckons confidently on the rapid completion and despatch of sufficient iron-clad auxiliaries to reduce Charleston.
The gold speculation seems to have passed its zenith, and to be decidedly declining.
More of moderation and self-reliance is manifested by the people now than at any time since the war began.
Congress has come together in, I think, a good, practical and patriotic temper. The President’s message grasps the subject of slavery earnestly and confidently. It would be unbecoming, even if it were possible, to predict the reception which his bold suggestion of gradual and compensated emancipation will meet. It is something to know, perhaps it is all that can be known now, that the great problem of the civil war maintains its importance, and secures the consideration it deserves. While the people hesitate, doubt, and divide upon each new suggestion that is made for the solution of the problem, they no longer shrink from contemplating and studying it. If they seem to the world to be slow in reaching it, the world ought to be reassured of their success by the reflection that no nation ever advanced faster in a task so complicated and so difficult. The great question heretofore has been: Can the constitutional Union endure through the trial? There is no longer any ground for despondency on that point. When we compare the military and naval conditions of the country now with what they were when Congress came together a year ago—when we compare the condition of our foreign relations now existing with that which prevailed when Congress assembled a year ago—we see evidences of strength, power, and stability which then it would have seemed presumptuous to expect.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.