Rose O'Neal Greenhow Papers

Letter to Alexander Boteler, December 10, 1863

London, England. From Rose Greenhow to Alexander Boteler. Letter in quiring about previous unanswered letters to Boteler, worried that they may have been intercepted. She requests to hear news of the war from a Confederate perspective which she can use to counter Yankee accounts. (Rose Greenhow Papers, Special Collections Library, Duke University)

12 Conduit Street
Regent Street
London
December 10 [1863]

To Hon. A. A. Boteler

My good friend

I suppose from your unbroken silence that you cannot have received any of my letters. I wrote to you from Bermuda and also from London on my arrival here. How anxiously I look for letters from home it would be impossible for me to tell you. All the accounts come through the Yankee press--Just now we have the news of Bragg's disastrous defeat and falling back from Lookout Mountain - with loss of 60 pieces of artillery small arms &c. and 8000 prisoners - I give a wide margin to this for the usual exageration. But the effect is most depressing. This news has brought down the Confederate loan from 60 to 31. My friend you know not the importance of sending correct information, which can be used so as to counteract the Yankee accounts. I believe that all classes here except the Abolitionists sympathize with us and are

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only held back from recognizing us for fear of war with the United States. The invasion of Canady is the great bugbear. Remove this and all will flow smoothly. I am myself sanguine of the events of the next few months. The Mexican question is so intimately connected with our own that the one is a sequence of the other. I attach no importance to Lord John's hostility, he has not been as I learn more civil to the Yankee emisaries than our own. I would write you many interesting particulars but the publication of the late intercepted letters is a good warning to me to be careful. If you will get from Mr. Benjamin a cipher and use my name as the key, I can then tell you many things--your letters to me will not need the same chance as the mails going out seem to escape. Direct to Maj Walker at Bermuday and he will forward them to here - You don't know how my heart grows sick when the mail comes without letters for me, and it is important that I should have news as I have the means of placing it in proper quarters. Tomorrow morning I leave at an early hour for Paris, where I expect to have a nice time. I have been occupied for the last two days so incessantly that I have not had time to think. Your predictions have been more than fulfilled--for no stranger has ever been received more kindly than

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have I, and from this time forward I'm bound to dispute the charge against the English of coldness or inhospitability. I wish I could write fully and freely but the fear of seeing myself in the NY Herald restrains my desire to tell you many things. I trust that I should be at home before the winter is over.

Meanwhile, I trust that my friends will not forget me or believe that even amidst the enjoyments of my present existance that I can for a moment be oblivious of the friends I have left behind, or of the noble devoted heroes who are engaged in the death struggle for freedom--No, my friend, it is the first and last thing thought and mingles with every impulse of my soul. God grant that the events now culminating here may be as I hope for our advantage. A crisis here I believe impending. The rates of interest 8 and 9 percent is ominous and my belief is that the pressure here will expediate the financial crisis among the Yankees.

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The rumor here today is rife that Bunning has been captured and that Lee has defeated Mead. I hope for some favourable results -

Pray write to me and tell me anything about anybody. Especially if you can about my poor wounded soldier as you doubtless know that I must feel great anxiety to know. Tell Col. [illegible] that I must write a long letter to him. Also give Col. [illegible] my best regards. Tell him that my friend has written him that he never received the letter intended to him.

I repeat -- I wish that I could write you freely - but patience and forbearence is yet to be exercised, for alas we cannot realize the acts resorted to by our enemies to make apparent that our cause is hopeless nor can you know the profound ignorance which exists relative to our resources-yet I have strong hope the educated and thinking classes are all with us and the living by hard suffering will be thought.

Do not forget me and believe me with most sincere regards your friend

R O'N G --

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