The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, Abridged by Thomas J. Pressly
[Hamilton Fish is a former Governor of New York and U.S. Senator for New York. He is currently between government jobs. Fish and Strong are both on the Board of Trustees of Columbia College. Fish will later be a Lincoln supporter and will serve as Secretary of State in the administration of U.S. Grant, who is currently attempting to eke out a living selling firewood on the streets of St. Louis. – HJS]
September 25. Politics engross everybody’s thoughts and talk, more and more daily. Hamilton Fish has pronounced at last for Fremont, and favors mankind with an analysis of his motives and reasons that fills two columns of the Courier, and is hard reading. Unimportant, except as shewing what an ambitious commonplace man, with some experience and opportunity of observation, thinks is for his own interest. It’s significant like the diligence of spiders before rain, or the movements of various animals in anticipation of an earthquake or a hurricane. . . .
As for our Southern friends, they’re madder every day. Vide the Muscogee (Ga.) Herald on “Northern Society” as “made up of greasy mechanics and so on” not fit for a Southern gentleman’s body-servant. Also, somebody makes a grand allocution to the young men and braves assembled at a South Carolina militia muster, tells them that if somebody should “smite down the miscreant (John C. Fremont) beside the pillars of the Capitol, in case of his election, not a Southern regiment but would spring to the rescue” of the hypothetical Ravaillac.
Last night to Wallack’s again with Ellie; Old Heads and Young Hearts one of the best comedies I’ve seen. Blake as Jessie Rural excellent.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, Abridged by Thomas J. Pressly
I wonder if Mr. Strong ever saw performances by the popular dramatic heart-throb, John Wilkes Booth, or his renowned tragedian brother Edwin Booth.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, Abridged by Thomas J. Pressly