Windermere
September 1863

    My dear Nicholson,

        I fear that the projects of Louis Napoleon in Mexico, and the consequent sympathies of the United States with Russia against Poland and France, make an imbroglio fatal to Poland. Now that, if the Russian Empire were organized into States possessed of substantive interior nationality (as the French plan is), this would seem to be a very lamentable result. The two Western Cabinets have so acted as to ensure that Russia and the United States shall each desire the aggrandizement of the other; and if Russia take a lesson of imperial liberality from America, her empire may terrify our grand-children with excellent reason. But I believe that the interest of the nations, of the true people everywhere, will prevail over Cabinet ambitions as soon as slavery is effectually uprooted in America.