West, Lewis H. (b. 1829) to Weir

Mentions that Weir had gout. Weir had sent West a letter relaying a gloomy political scene in the North, and West responds saying "having passed the largest part of my life afloat, I am not much of a judge of the political feelings of people at home, but I cant for a moment believe that the masses at the North are sunk to the degradation you intimate. I have always thought that we are a people who are the easiest cast down by want of immediate success, and unduly elated by the first symptoms of it." Referencing the New York draft riot he says they were lucky it "occurred while everybody was in the seventh heaven of ecstasy. They will be much more likely to take the right view of it, than they would after a defeat." Says "I cant believe that the 'irrepressible conflict' feeling that made Lincoln president, after a slow but sure growth of thirty years, is all at once set back by a year of failure." Says the war "will go on until slavery is swept away. In looking back through the last two years, I cannot tell when the change of my opinions as to the nature of the war, took place, it has been so gradual ... Now the object of the war is clear enough; for the Union as it ought to be until slavery is utterly destroyed, and the power of the present ruling class at the South gone forever ... You will say that I am an out and out abolitionist, and I confess it." Goes on to talk about the battle around Charleston and laments not being involved. In Bull's Bay, he took advantage of the knowledge a contraband on board had and was able to land in a small inlet.