Legationof U. S. A., Vienna, February 26, 1862.

My dear Holmes,—. . .  I take great pleasure in reading your prophecies, and intend to be just as free in hazarding my own, for, as you say, our mortal life is but a string of guesses at the future, and no one but an idiot would be discouraged at finding himself sometimes far out in his calculations.  If I find you signally right in any of your predictions, be sure that I will congratulate and applaud.  If you make mistakes, you shall never hear of them again, and I promise to forget them.  Let me ask the same indulgence from you in return.  This is what makes letter- writing a comfort and journalizing dangerous. . .  The ides of March will be upon us before this letter reaches you.  We have got to squash the rebellion soon, or be squashed forever as a nation.  I don’t pretend to judge military plans or the capacities of generals.  But, as you suggest, perhaps I can take a more just view of the whole picture of the eventful struggle at this great distance than do those absolutely acting and suffering on the scene.  Nor can I resist the desire to prophesy any more than you can do, knowing that I may prove utterly mistaken.  I say, then, that one great danger comes from the chance of foreign interference.  What will prevent that?

     Our utterly defeating the Confederates in some great and conclusive
     battle; or,

     Our possession of the cotton ports and opening them to European
     trade; or,

     A most unequivocal policy of slave emancipation.

     Any one of these three conditions would stave off recognition by
     foreign powers, until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to
     reduce the South to obedience.

The last measure is to my mind the most important.  The South has, by going to war with the United States government, thrust into our hands against our will the invincible weapon which constitutional reasons had hitherto forbidden us to employ.  At the same time it has given us the power to remedy a great wrong to four millions of the human race, in which we had hitherto been obliged to acquiesce.  We are threatened with national annihilation, and defied to use the only means of national preservation.  The question is distinctly proposed to us, Shall Slavery die, or the great Republic?  It is most astounding to me that there can be two opinions in the free States as to the answer.

If we do fall, we deserve our fate.  At the beginning of the contest, constitutional scruples might be respectable.  But now we are fighting to subjugate the South; that is, Slavery.  We are fighting for nothing else that I know of.  We are fighting for the Union.  Who wishes to destroy the Union?  The slaveholder, nobody else.  Are we to spend twelve hundred millions, and raise six hundred thousand soldiers,