| | 12 Conduit Street
Regent Street
London
December 10 [1863]
To Hon. A. A. Boteler
My good friend
I suppose from your unbroken silence that you cannot have received
any of my letters. I wrote to you from Bermuda and also from London
on my arrival here. How anxiously I look for letters from home it
would be impossible for me to tell you. All the accounts come through
the Yankee press--Just now we have the news of Bragg's disastrous
defeat and falling back from Lookout Mountain - with loss of 60 pieces
of artillery small arms &c. and 8000 prisoners - I give a wide margin
to this for the usual exageration. But the effect is most depressing.
This news has brought down the Confederate loan from 60 to 31. My
friend you know not the importance of sending correct information,
which can be used so as to counteract the Yankee accounts. I believe
that all classes here except the Abolitionists sympathize with us
and are
only held back from recognizing us for fear of war with the United
States. The invasion of Canady is the great bugbear. Remove this
and all will flow smoothly. I am myself sanguine of the events of
the next few months. The Mexican question is so intimately connected
with our own that the one is a sequence of the other. I attach no
importance to Lord John's hostility, he has not been as I learn
more civil to the Yankee emisaries than our own. I would write you
many interesting particulars but the publication of the late intercepted
letters is a good warning to me to be careful. If you will get from
Mr. Benjamin a cipher and use my name as the key, I can then tell
you many things--your letters to me will not need the same chance
as the mails going out seem to escape. Direct to Maj Walker at Bermuday
and he will forward them to here - You don't know how my heart grows
sick when the mail comes without letters for me, and it is important
that I should have news as I have the means of placing it in proper
quarters. Tomorrow morning I leave at an early hour for Paris, where
I expect to have a nice time. I have been occupied for the last
two days so incessantly that I have not had time to think. Your
predictions have been more than fulfilled--for no stranger has ever
been received more kindly than
have I, and from this time forward I'm bound to dispute the charge
against the English of coldness or inhospitability. I wish I could
write fully and freely but the fear of seeing myself in the NY Herald
restrains my desire to tell you many things. I trust that I should
be at home before the winter is over.
Meanwhile, I trust that my friends will not forget me or believe
that even amidst the enjoyments of my present existance that I can
for a moment be oblivious of the friends I have left behind, or
of the noble devoted heroes who are engaged in the death struggle
for freedom--No, my friend, it is the first and last thing thought
and mingles with every impulse of my soul. God grant that the events
now culminating here may be as I hope for our advantage. A crisis
here I believe impending. The rates of interest 8 and 9 percent
is ominous and my belief is that the pressure here will expediate
the financial crisis among the Yankees.
The rumor here today is rife that Bunning has been captured and
that Lee has defeated Mead. I hope for some favourable results -
Pray write to me and tell me anything about anybody. Especially
if you can about my poor wounded soldier as you doubtless know that
I must feel great anxiety to know. Tell Col. [illegible] that I
must write a long letter to him. Also give Col. [illegible] my best
regards. Tell him that my friend has written him that he never received
the letter intended to him.
I repeat -- I wish that I could write you freely - but patience
and forbearence is yet to be exercised, for alas we cannot realize
the acts resorted to by our enemies to make apparent that our cause
is hopeless nor can you know the profound ignorance which exists
relative to our resources-yet I have strong hope the educated and
thinking classes are all with us and the living by hard suffering
will be thought.
Do not forget me and believe me with most sincere regards your friend
R O'N G - |
