Mr. Seward to Mr. Dayton, December 1, 1862

Mr. Seward to Mr.
Dayton

Sir: It is expected that you will not suffer
the cloud that has recently arisen, as it were, from under your own
feet, to excite any alarm about the good fortune of our country. It is
to the condition of affairs at home, not the condition of opinion in
Europe, that we must look if we would understand the prospects of our
country. The great problem of domestic slavery in the United States
presented itself for solution when the war began. It is in process of
solution, and so the war goes on. It is not yet solved, and so the war
is not yet ended. The people of the United States are intensely engaged
in the difficult task. If it questions and rejects one process of
solution after another, that does not prove that it is abandoning the
task. On the contrary, it is the very act of performance of the task
itself. If the performer seem slow, let the observer ask where or when
did any nation advance faster in a labor so complex and so difficult.
The President’s message will carry the public mind still more directly
and more earnestly on its great work. The war would have had no terrors
for the people if they had not feared that the Union could not endure
the trial of solving that problem. Apprehensions of that kind are
beginning now to be dismissed. In all the elements of strength, power,
and stability, the Union is stronger when Congress meets to-day than it
was when Congress met a year ago. In all the same elements the
insurrection is weaker. Revolutions do not revive their strength or
their energy. They must succeed at first, or at least gain advantage
continually, or they must perish. A year ago it seemed that any foreign nation might assail and
destroy us at a blow. I am sure that no one foreign nation would now
conceive such an attempt, while combination of several powers for that
purpose is impossible.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,