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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 409.: THE CIVIL WAR IN THE UNITED STATES OUR DAILY FARE (PHILADELPHIA), 21 JUNE, 1864, PP. 95-6 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXV - Newspaper Writings December 1847 - July 1873 Part IV

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

409.: THE CIVIL WAR IN THE UNITED STATES OUR DAILY FARE (PHILADELPHIA), 21 JUNE, 1864, PP. 95-6 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXV - Newspaper Writings December 1847 - July 1873 Part IV [1847]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XXV - Newspaper Writings December 1847 - July 1873 Part IV, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


409.

THE CIVIL WAR IN THE UNITED STATES

OUR DAILY FARE (PHILADELPHIA), 21 JUNE, 1864, PP. 95-6

Our Daily Fare was issued from 8 to 21 June, 1864, in connection with the Great Central Sanitary Fair of that year held in Philadelphia by the United States Sanitary Commission. Established in the spring of 1861, this was a voluntary civilian organization that supplied medical aid, financial relief, and material and spiritual comfort to the soldiers and sailors of the Union forces. Mill’s interest in their work continued: a year later, the Daily News (3 Apr., 1865, p. 3), reported from Boston papers that Mill, “who has all along been a good friend of the United States, has directed that whatever copyright may be allowed by the American publishers of his works shall be given to the Sanitary Commission or some similar object of national charity.” The Editorial Committee, to whom the letter here printed is addressed, was chaired by George W. Childs (1829-94), publisher and philanthropist, to whom Mill had earlier written (LL, CW, Vol. XV, pp. 729-30). Dated “Avignon, May 25,” and headed, “Written to the Editorial Committee of Our Daily Fare,” this letter is Mill’s only contribution to the paper. It was republished in the Daily News, 25 July, p. 5, and the Penny Newsman, 31 July, p. 1, and also in the New York Times, 10 July, p. 6, and the National Reformer, 6 Aug., p. 327. It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A letter to the Philadelphia Sanitary Paper dated May 25, 1864, reprinted in the Daily News of [July 25] and in the Newsman of July 31, 1864” (MacMinn, p. 95). The variant notes derive from collation with the Daily News and Penny Newsman, signified in the notes by “DN” and “PN”.

i am sincerely thankful to the Editing Committee for including me among those from whom they have invited a public expression of sympathy with the cause in which the Free States of America are so heroically shedding their best blood.

a The war, justifiable and laudable even if it had continued to be, as it was at first, one of mere resistance to the extension of slavery, is becoming, as it was easy to foresee it would, more and more a war of principle for the complete extirpation of that curse. And in proportion as this has become apparent, the sympathies of nearly all in Europe whose approbation is worth having, are resuming their natural course, and the cause of the North will soon have no enemies, on this side of the Atlantic, but those who prefer any tyranny, however odious, to a triumph of popular government.

b It would be unpardonable, did I omit, on an occasion like this, to express my warmest feelings of admiration for the Sanitary Commission. History has caffordedc no other example—though it is to be hoped that it will hereafter afford many—of so great a work of usefulness extemporized by the spontaneous self-devotion and organizing genius of a people, altogether independently of the Government.

d But while the present struggle has called into brilliant exercise all the high qualities which the institutions of the American Republic have made general among her citizens, it has also laid open—as e is the nature of trying times to do—all the weak points in her national habits, and in the working of her institutions. These are doubtless far better known to thoughtful Americans than they are likely to be to any foreigner, and this great historical crisis will be doubly blessed if it directs attention to them. In all states of society the most serious danger is that the national mind should go to sleep on the self-satisfied notion that all is right with it; but the great awakening of the public conscience which is taking place on the one political and social abomination which has done more than all other causes together to demoralize American politics, has probably removed all danger of this sort for one generation at least; and warrants the hope that the American people will not rest satisfied with the great advantages which no other people and no other Government fpossessf in so high a degree; but will resolve that their democracy shall not be behind any nation whatever in those elements of good government which have been thought to find a more congenial soil in other States of society and gunderg other political institutions.

John Stuart Mill

[a]PN [no paragraph]

[b]PN [no paragraph]

[c-c]DN,PN offered

[d]PN [no paragraph]

[e]DN,PN it

[f-f]DN,PN possesses

[g-g]-DN,PN