He came to America in June, 1860. For several years the mutterings of
rising war between the States had been growing louder. In June of 1856
he had written to Bridge, expressing great hope that all would yet turn
out well. But so rapidly did the horizon blacken, that later in the same
year he declared that "an actual fissure" seemed to him to be opening
between the two sections of the country. In January, 1857:--
"I regret that you think so doubtfully of the prospects of the Union;
for I should like well enough to hold on to the old thing. And yet I
must confess that I sympathize to a large extent with the Northern
feeling, and think it is about time for us to make a stand. If compelled
to choose, I go for the North. New England is quite as large a lump of
earth as my heart can really take in.... However, I have no kindred with
nor leaning toward the Abolitionists."
He felt, no doubt, that the vital principle of The Union from the
beginning had been compromise, mutual concession, and if it was to be
severed, preferred that it should be peacefully. Still, his moods and
wishes varied as did those of many careful watchers at that time; and he
saw too clearly the arguments on either side to hold fixedly to one
course. In the December after his return, secession began; and for more
than a year following he could not fix his attention upon literary
matters. He wrote little, not even his journal, as Mrs. Hawthorne has
told us, until 1862. Accustomed to respond accurately to every influence
about him, with that sensitized exterior of receptive imagination which
overlay the fixed substance of personal character,--so that, as we have
seen, even a change of climate left its impress on his productions,--it
was not strange that the emotions of horror and pain, the passion of
hate, the splendid heroism which charged the whole atmosphere about him,
now, should absorb his whole sensibility, and paralyze his imagination.
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