[Extract of a Letter from F. W. Newman to John Nicholson.]

[Late September 1864]

        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 than 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 Northen enthusiasm from collapsing and foolish statesmen from doing necessary work by halves.