Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

General Grant has disappointed me. His Indian policy looked candid and just on paper; but he does not seem to have taken adequate care that it should be carried out. The Modocs have formerly had a good name as peaceable neighbors; but they have been driven from place to place, and finally pushed into a barren corner, where the soil did not admit of their raising sufficient for a subsistence. They were driven to desperation by starvation, and wearied out with promises that were never fulfilled. Poor Captain Jack said, “To die by bullets not hurt much; but it hurts a heap to die by hunger.” I regret the barbarities of Captain Jack, but not more than I regret the barbarities of Phil. Sheridan. I look upon Osceola and Captain Jack both as worthy of an historical place in the list of heroes that have died for their oppressed peoples. But I may as well stop writing on this theme, for it is a hopeless task to try to delineate the “general cussedness” of governments. It is a strange thing, but it seems impossible to convince politicians that it is not “visionary” to be guided by correct principles in the administration of affairs. Their idea is, the greater the indirectness and the double dealing, the greater the statesmanship. Yet, all the time, they make loud professions of following the teaching of him who said, “Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay.” Oh, Sarah, I am so tired of shams! It is very inconvenient to be habitually direct, in such a world of indirectness.

I pitied Mr. Curtis when I read his patient answers to the “interviewers.” Really, those men, who have made a profession of audacity and impertinence, are as