14 chose the more difficult course: The Tsar rejected romantic nationalism as a solution to Russia’s problems. See Alfred J. Rieber, “Alexander II: A Revisionist View,” JMH, vol. 43, no. 1 (March 1971), 57.
15 future lay with freedom: Was Alexander a genuine liberal, or did he undertake liberal reforms merely because he thought they would be good for Russia, and in particular for the Russian army, which had been defeated in the Crimean War? The question seems to me an academic one; but for a different view, see Rieber, “Alexander II: A Revisionist View,” 52-55; The Politics of Autocracy: Letters of Alexander II to Prince A. I. Bariatinskii, 1857-1864, ed. Alfred J. Rieber (Paris: Mouton, 1966); and Larissa Zakharova, “Autocracy and the Reforms of 1861-1871 in Russia: Choosing Paths of Development,” trans. Daniel Field, RGR, 20-21.
15 a daring one: RGR, vii; Rieber, “Alexander II: A Revisionist View,” 48; Bunce, “Domestic Reform and International Change: The Gorbachev Reforms in Historical Perspective,” IO, vol. 47, no. 1 (Winter 1993), 116.
15 dined with the autocrat: Hamilton, The Vanished Pomps of Yesterday, 120.
15 Harriet Lane: Philip Shriver Klein, President fames Buchanan: A Biography (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), 274-75, 333
115 beautiful lady: Julia Taft Bayne, Tad Lincoln’s Father (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 8.
16 neither orders nor actions: The one decisive act which President Buchanan undertook during the “Secession Winter,” the dispatching of The Star of West to supply Major Anderson’s garrison at Fort Sumter, was itself a halfhearted one. The President refused to send a navy ship to South Carolina for fear of offending the Southerners. When The Star of the West, having failed to perform its task, turned back, Buchanan gave up.
17 two antipathetic creeds: David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3-418; John Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Riverside Press, 1898), ii, 18, 23, 29; John Buchan, Two Ordeals of Democracy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), 6. For a different perspective, see Edward Pessen, “How Different from Each Other Were the Antebellum North and South?” AHR, vol. 85, no. 5 (December 1980), 1119-1149.
17 Cavaliers: MCCW, 308, 333; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 197.
17 more than eighty percent: George C. Rogers, Jr., “Who Is a South Carolinian?” SCHM, vol. 89, no. 1 (January 1988), 6.
17 paternal theories: “In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, and fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have a class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand”—James Henry Hammond, “Speech on the Admission of Kansas, under the Lecompton Constitution,” March 4, 1858, in Hammond, Selections from the Speeches and Letters of the Hon. James Henry Hammond of South Carolina (New York: John F. Trow, 1866), 318.
18 “a good—a positive good”: Richard Hofstadter, The American Mitkal Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: Vintage, 1974), 101.
18 his sympathies lay: According to one diplomat, Buchanan “defended slavery on the ground of humanity. The blacks, he said, if not a complete race of apes, were at any rate a race who, from their permanent childishness, required, in their own interests, to be under continual guardianship”—Count Charles Frederick Vitzthum von Eckstædt, Saint Petersburg and London in the Years 1852-1864, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1887), ii, 167.
19 the superior organization: The technical advances made by liberal thinkers in Germany are described by F. A. Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 196-204.
19 Music, the Ancient Greeks believed: Plato, Republic, 401d-402a.
19 “God knows”: LRW, iii, 48.
19 “to the very depths”: LRW, iii, 107-08.
19 He was eager: LRW, iii, 85, 94-95.
19 “I have enormous”: LRW, iii, 77.
19 “I feel myself”: LRW, iii, 79.
19 the first performance: LRW, iii, 109-10.
19 a German: LRW, 48, 74,
20 nephew: The mother of Napoleon III, Hortense de Beauharnais, was the wife of Louis Bonaparte, the younger brother of Napoleon the Great. Hortense was also the great Napoleon’s stepdaughter: she was a child of the first bed of Josephine de Beauharnais, who was afterwards Napoleon’s consort. Hortense, it was said, was not strictly faithful to Louis Bonaparte, and doubts concerning the paternity of Napoleon III cast a shadow over his dynastic claims.
20 “into the pure air”: Such was Adolf Hitler’s characterization of Wagner’s music—Frederic Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics (Woodstock, NY: Overlook, 2003), 237.
20 “typically German”: See the program notes to various recordings of Tannhäuser.
20 Jockey Club: LRW, iii, 67, 72, 110, 115-19, 123.
21 “The row”: LRW, iii, 113.
21 “literally hissed”: Ibid.
21 prophet of the German revolution: Wagner, Adolf Hitler said, was “the greatest prophetic figure the German people has had”—Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 243.
2. Rebels Born
22 Lazarus Powell: Biographical Sketch of the Hon. Lazarus W. Powell (of Henderson, Kentucky) (Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Yeoman Office, 1868), 18-26, 31-32, 35, 55.
23 “Let there be”: Lincoln to Lyman Trumbull, December 10, 1860, SW, 1859-1865, 190 (emphasis in original).
23 the Southern men: Hunter after Lincoln’s election declared himself a “Southern man”—William S. Hitchcock, “Southern Moderates and Secession: Robert M. T. Hunter’s Call for Union,” JAH, vol. 59, no. 4 (March 1973), 871.
23 in the early days: Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It, 98-99.
24 parity in the Senate: Ibid., 109-10.
24 “Bluff Ben” Wade: A. G. Riddle, The Life of Benjamin F. Wade (Cleveland: William W. Williams, 1886), 17.
24 “squirrel rifles”: T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and the Radicals (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972), 65.
25 “Disappointment!”: David Herbert Donald, “We Are Lincoln Men”: Abraham Lincoln and His Friends (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 147.
25 He bore the reputation: Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward, 2 vols. (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1967), Ü, 82-83.
25 Seward’s zeal: “Seward’s reputation for radicalism was in large measure undeserved”—Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 222.
25 proclaimed the virtues of moderation: The historian Glyndon Van Deusen has argued that Seward in November 1860 “felt compromise was not the answer” and changed his mind only in December, when he proposed that the territories be divided into two parts, with “New Mexico coming in as a slave state, the rest of the territory north of the compromise parallel being free”—Glyndon G. Van Deusen, William Henry Seward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 243. Such an interpretation, if accepted, would add another layer of perversity to Seward’s actions: unconvinced of the need for territorial compromise in November, he embraced it, in December, only after he learned that Lincoln was dead against it. It is more likely, however, that Seward was sympathetic to a revival of the Missouri line in November, when Weed first floated the idea in the Albany Evening Journal. In early December the rumor spread that Seward “wanted to make a great compromise like Clay and Webster!” Seward to Weed, December 3, 1860, in Thurlow Weed Barnes, Memoir of Thurlow Weed (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884), 308. When Seward was summoned to a Republican caucus and asked w
hether he had authorized the proposals in the Albany Evening Journal, he pointedly refused to answer the question. “I kept my temper,” he wrote to Weed. “I told them they would know what I think and what I propose when I do myself…. The Republican Party to-day is as uncompromising as the Secessionists in South Carolina. A month hence each may come to think that moderation is wiser.” Seward to Weed, December 3, 1860, in Ibid., 308.
25 the most uncompromising: Harry V. Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959), 25. Lincoln was quietly prepared to compromise on several lesser questions; but on the critical question of territorial slavery he was uncompromising. See Kenneth M. Stampp, “Lincoln and the Strategy of Defense in the Crisis of 1861,” JSH, vol. 11, no. 3 (August 1945), 299, and Harold Holtzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), xix, 30. New Mexico, the apparent exception to this uncompromising policy, in fact proves the rule. David Herbert Donald noted that Lincoln was “willing for New Mexico to be admitted without prohibition of slavery, ‘if further extension were hedged against.’ But on one point he was immovable: the extension of slavery into the nationalterritories”—David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 270; David M. Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 223. New Mexico, Lincoln knew, was not the key to compromise: the key to compromiselay in the application of the Missouri line principle, not merely to territory now held by the United States, but here afteracquired by it. Lincoln could therefore offer the sop of New Mexico to the compromisers in his party without jeopardizing his revolution. His determination not to compromise any significant point was real. He believed that “the Missouri line extended [to territory now held or hereafter acquired], or Douglas’s and Ely Thayer’s popular sovereignty would lose us everything we gained by the election.” Lincoln to Weed, December 17, 1860, in Barnes, Memoir of Thurlow Weed, 310-11. Lincoln said that, were he to consent to the extension of the Missouri line, the Fire Eaters would soon demand more: “a year will not pass,” he said, “‘till we shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the Union.” Lincoln to James T. Hale, January 11, 1861, in Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, 160, 233.
26 dispatched an emissary: Lincoln had earlier extended an invitation to Weed to come to Springfield. Barnes, Memoir of Thurlow Weed, 293; Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, 240; Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, 69.
26 Weed arrived: LDD, ii, 302 ; Floyd S. Barringer, Historic Homes of Springfield (Springfield, IL: privately printed, 1966), 68; Thurlow Weed, Autobiography of Thurlow Weed, ed. Harriet A. Weed (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883), 604; Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, 240.
26 He seemed genuinely to hope: John M. Taylor, William Henry Seward: Lincoln’s Right Hand (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 128.
26 But on one subject: Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, 165-69.
26 gave Weed a paper: Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward, ii, 10.
26 Seward could not bear: Taylor, William Henry Seward, 127.
27 pornography: LGT, 58-59.
27 Empire style: Alexander, Grand Duke of Russia, Once a Grand Duke (New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corp.-Farrar & Rinehart, 1932), 60.
27 cherry-colored robe: LGT, 128.
27 It was Alexander’s habit: Ibid.
28 intimates of the court: Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (New York: Metropolitan, 2002), 72-74.
28 “Here, boys”: LGT, 34.
29 cut off his hand: Bernard Pares, A History of Russia, 5th ed. (New York: Vintage, 1965), 363.
30 “She is the woman”: W. E. Mosse, Alexander Hand the Modernization of Russia, rev. ed. (New York: Collier, 1970), 30.
30 had at first been happy: Hodgetts, The Court of Russia in the Nineteenth Century, ii, 40-41.
30 little blue dress: Van der Kiste, The Romanovs 1818-1959, 15.
30 a mistress: MR, 144; LGT, 173; Stephen Graham, Tsar of Freedom: The Life and Reign of Alexander II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935), 70.
30 The priest was compliant: Mosse, Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia, 39.
30 shrank from the reproaches: Ibid.
30 Count Adlerberg: MR, 149; Sidney Harcave, Years of the Golden Cockerel: The Last Romanov Tsars 1814-1917 (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 175; Mosse, Alexander II and. the Modernization of Russia, 38.
31 By adopting: Compare Norman Peirera, “Alexander II and the Decision to Emancipate the Russian Serfs, 1855-1861,” CSP, vol. 22 (March 1980), 99-115. See also Daniel Field, The End of Serfdom: Nobility and Bureaucracy in Russia, 1855-1861, 95.
31 Editorial Commission: Zakharova, “Autocracy and the Reforms of 1861-1871 in Russia: Choosing Paths of Development,” RGR, 29-30; Field, The End of Serfdom, 164-65.
31 practical sagacity: Pares, A History of Russia, 365.
31 no deep knowledge: Field, The End of Serfdom, 166.
31 Nicholas Milyutin: W. Bruce Lincoln, Nikolai Milyutin: An Enlightened Bureaucrat of the Nineteenth Century (Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1977), 3, 5, 15.
31 zealous reformer: Milyutin’s liberal credentials are open to question; he seems to have owed much to the traditions of the French Enlightenment, in which reform was regarded as the province of enlightened mandarins in the service of the state—Rieber, “Alexander II: A Revisionist View,” JMH, vol. 43, no. 1 (March 1971), 53.
31 the finest minds: Zakharova, “Autocracy and the Reforms of 1861-1871 in Russia: Choosing Paths of Development,” RGR, 29.
31 informer: Ibid., 27; Field, The End of Serfdom, 165.
31 tool of the party: Lincoln, Nikolai Milyutin, 44-45.
31 “thickheaded scoundrel”: Field, The End of Serfdom, 165.
32 sarcastic asides: Graham, Tsar of Freedom, 42; see also Harcave, Years of the Golden Cockerel, 174.
32 “I thought”: LGT, 125.
32 dedicated emancipator: Zakharova, “Autocracy and the Reforms of 1861-1871 in Russia: Choosing Paths of Development,” RGR, 27; Field, The End of Serfdom, 166.
32 “Egeria”: Graham, Tsar of Freedom, 43.
32 a powerful ally: MR, 151.
32 Foreign visitors: Bayard Taylor to James T. Fields, February 18, 1863, in Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, ed. Hansen-Taylor and Scudder, i, 408.
32 formality: MR, 151.
32 “la petite bourgeoise”: Van der Kiste, The Romanovs 1818-1959, 13.
33 genuinely kind: MR, 151.
33 Grand Duchess Hélène Pavolvna: MR, 129, 151.
33 educated in Paris: Elizabeth Narishkin-Kurkakin, Under Three Tsars, ed. René Fölöp Miller, trans. Julia E. Loesser (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1931), 23-24.
33 reveled in the intrigue: Count Paul Vassili [Ekaterina Rzewska Radziwill], Behind the Veil at the Russian Court (London: Cassell, 1914), 40-41.
33 Thursday evenings: Narishkin-Kurkakin, Under Three Tsars, 33-34.
33 the Tsar himself: Countess Kleinmichel, Memories of a Shipwrecked World (London: Brentano’s, 1923), 60.
33 According to the rumor: Vassili, Behind the Veil at the Russian Court, 39-40.
34 “hot, fervid”: MCCW, 3.
34 “rebel born”: MCCW, 4.
34 “had been so rampant”: Ibid.
34 “was the torment”: Ibid.
34 “state unless he were”: Ibid.
34 “Can liberty”: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, in Rousseau, Political Writings, trans. Frederick Watkins (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 105.
34 “Come what would”: MCCW, 4.
35 “modest gentleman”: James Henry Hammond, Secret and Sacred: The Diaries of James Henry Hammond, ed. Carol Bleser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 214.
35 “No hope now”: MCCW, 4.
35 “a nervous dread”: Ibid.<
br />
35 to save: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 245.
35 “Western belle”: MCCW, 136.
36 read the Earl of Clarendon’s account: MCCW, 7.
36 “the born leaders”: Ibid.
36 “political intrigue”: Ibid.
36 “One of the first”: MCCW, 5 (emphasis in original).
36 “a Caesar”: MCCW, 10.
36 “There was to be”: MCCW, 11.
3. Thrust and Counter-Thrust
37 The man who is warm: Solzhenitsyn says this in A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
37 forest zone: Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime, 1.
37 his icon corner: H. Sutherland Edwards, The Russians at Home and Abroad: Sketches, Unpolitical and Political, of Russian Life Under Alexander II, 2 vols. (London: W. M. H. Allen, 1879), i, 188.
37 “red” or “beautiful” corner: Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime, 144.
37 The stove: Mary Matossian, “The Peasant Way of Life,” in The Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Russia, ed. Wayne S. Vucinich (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968), 5.
37 “Russians are merrier”: Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime, 157; Pares, A History of Russia, 31.
37 beer- and mead-loving: Edwards, The Russians at Home and Abroad, 249-50; Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime, 157; Mary Matossian, “The Peasant Way of Life,” in The Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Russia, ed. Vucinich, 13.
37 Vodka: James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (New York: Vintage, 1970), 86.
37 zakouska: Edwards, The Russians at Home and Abroad, i, 251.
37 agricultural yields: Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime, 7.
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