Memoir and Letters of Francis W. NewmanSieveking, I. Giberne (Isabel Giberne)
Religion
Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman
Sieveking, I. Giberne (Isabel Giberne)
Newman, Francis William, 1805-1897
Late in September, 1864, he is again writing on American turmoils:--
"_Next June_, 1865, the debt of the U.S. will be about 400 million
sterling, only half of what England had at the end of the great French
War, when her population was not two-thirds nor her means one-fifth of the
U.S., who (if once freedom and order is established over the whole Union)
will be a focus of immigration three times as attractive as ever, with
wealth multiplying twice as rapidly as ever.... I have no anxiety about
anything _but the policy which is to prevail in victory_.... It is
frightful to me to hear President Lincoln avow that (against the morality
of his heart) his official duty is to do nothing for the coloured race
except under compulsion and to save the whole Republic from foundering. He
knows they are subjects of the Union, and _owe allegiance_ to it, to the
point of laying down their lives for it; yet he does not know that those
who owe allegiance have an indefeasible right to protection. He is
conquering rebellious States, and does not know that the conqueror is
thenceforward RESPONSIBLE for the institutions which he permits in those
States, and believes it to be his official duty to respect the old
institutions however inhuman, however against Republican
Constitutionalism, and even when a violation of a treaty with France....
It is too clear that Lincoln will be a great drag upon everything decisive
in policy, and especially where decision is most necessary, i.e. in
vesting in the coloured race _power to defend their own rights_. When the
war ends, it will be very difficult to hinder the Northern enthusiasm from
collapsing and foolish statesmen from doing necessary work by halves."
In May, 1865, Newman writes these strong words: "President Lincoln was
dead against the confiscation of estates, and bent upon restoring a
powerful landed aristocracy, with a wretched dependent peasantry free in
name only.... A far sterner nature than his was wanted, which understands
that Justice to the oppressed must go before Mercy to the guilty; and I
believe they have got the right man in Andrew Johnson."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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