Battalions Strengthened by Ideas

This entry is from Lucy Larcom:  Life, Letter and Diary edited by Daniel Dulany Addison.

Larcom was a former mill worker, poet, teacher and abolitionist.  Here is any entry from her diary wherein she discusses a lecture she heard by Charles Sumner, who was known as a powerful orator and the leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts.

October 22. [1861] I heard Charles Sumner on the Rebellion : my first sight and hearing of the great anti-slavery statesman. He was greeted with tremendous applause, and every expression of opposition to slavery was met with new cheers. . . . .

One idea which he presented seemed to me to be worth all the rest, and worth all the frothy spoutings for "Union" that we hear every day; it was that our battalions must be strengthened by ideas, by the idea of freedom. That is it. Our men do not know what they are fighting for; freedom is greater than the Union, and a Union, old or new, with slavery, no true patriot will now ask for. May we be saved from that, whatever calamities we may endure!

Charles Sumner, photograph by Brady from Library of Congress Collection

That Arch Enemy of All True Prosperity

Today's entry is from Lucy Larcom: Life, Letters and Diary by Daniel D Addison.  This is an excerpt from an entry in her diary dated September 5, 1861.

 Larcom was a former mill worker, poet, teacher and abolitionist, and well acquainted with John Greenleaf Whittier.  In this quote she laments the war's ravages, and suggests it can not end until the real issue, slavery,  is dealt with.  But she says it with a passion hard to surpass.

. . . .But is it right to wrap one's own being in this mantle of peace, while the country is ravaged by war ? — its garments rolled in blood, brother fighting against brother to the death? The tide of rebellion surges higher and higher, and there is no sadder proof that we are not the liberty-loving people that we used to call ourselves, than to learn that there are traitors in the secret councils of the nation, in forts defended by our own bravest men ; among women, too : " Sisters ! oh, Sisters! Shame o' ladies ! " A disloyal woman at the North, with everything woman ought to hold dear at stake in the possible fall of this government, — it is too shameful! I hope every one such will be held in "durance vile " until the war is over.

But will it end until the question is brought to its true issue, — liberty or slavery ? I doubt it: and I would rather the war should last fifty years, than ever again make the least compromise with slavery, that arch-enemy of all true prosperity, that eating sin of our nation. Eather [sic] divide at once, rather split into a thousand pieces, than sink back into this sin!

Lucy Larcom from A Portrait Catalogue of the Books Published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1906