Inauguration day -- The message -- Scott watching at the door of
the Union -- The Cabinet born -- The Seward and Chase struggle --
The New York radicals triumph -- The treason spreads -- The
Cabinet pays old party debts -- The diplomats confounded -- Poor
Senators! -- Sumner is like a hare tracked by hounds -- Chase in
favor of recognizing the revolted States -- Blunted axes -- Blair
demands action, brave fellow! -- The slave-drivers -- The month
of March closes -- No foresight! no foresight!
For the first time in my life I assisted at the simplest and grandest
spectacle--the inauguration of a President. Lincoln's message good,
according to circumstances, but not conclusive; it is not positive; it
discusses questions, but avoids to assert. May his mind not be
altogether of the same kind. Events will want and demand more
positiveness and action than the message contains assertions. The
immense majority around me seems to be satisfied. Well, well; I wait,
and prefer to judge and to admire when actions will speak.
I am sure that a great drama will be played, equal to any one known in
history, and that the insurrection of the slave-drivers will not end
in smoke. So I now decide to keep a diary in my own way. I scarcely
know any of those men who are considered as leaders; the more
interesting to observe them, to analyze their mettle, their actions.
This insurrection may turn very complicated; if so, it must generate
more than one revolutionary manifestation. What will be its
march--what stages? Curious; perhaps it may turn out more interesting
than anything since that great renovation of humanity by the great
French Revolution.
The old, brave warrior, Scott, watched at the door of the Union; his
shadow made the infamous rats tremble and crawl off, and so Scott
transmitted to Lincoln what was and could be saved during the
treachery of Buchanan.
By the most propitious accident, I assisted at the throes among which
Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet was born. They were very painful, but of the
highest interest for me, and I suppose for others. I participated some
little therein.
A pledge bound Mr. Lincoln to make Mr. Seward his Secretary of State.
The radical and the puritanic elements in the Republican party were
terribly scared. His speeches, or rather demeanor and repeated
utterances since the opening of the Congress, his influence on Mr.
Adams, who, under Seward's inspiration, made his speech _de lana
caprina_, and voted for compromises and concessions,--all this spread
and fortified the general and firm belief that Mr. Seward was ready to
give up many from among the cardinal articles of the Republican creed
of which he was one of the most ardent apostles. They, the
Republicans, speak of him in a way to remind me of the dictum, "_omnia
serviliter pro dominatione_," as they accuse him now of subserviency
to the slave power. The radical and puritan Republicans likewise dread
him on account of his close intimacy with a Thurlow Weed, a Matteson,
and with similar not over-cautious--as they call them--lobbyists.
Some days previous to the inauguration, Mr. Seward brought Mr. Lincoln
on the Senate floor, of course on the Republican side; but soon Mr.
Seward was busily running among Democrats, begging them to be
introduced to Lincoln. It was a saddening, humiliating, and revolting
sight for the galleries, where I was. Criminal as is Mason, for a
minute I got reconciled to him for the scowl of horror and contempt
with which he shook his head at Seward. The whole humiliating
proceeding foreshadowed the future policy. Only two or three
Democratic Senators were moved by Seward's humble entreaties. The
criminal Mason has shown true manhood.
The first attempt of sincere Republicans was to persuade Lincoln to
break his connection with Seward. This failed. To neutralize what was
considered quickly to become a baneful influence in Mr. Lincoln's
councils, the Republicans united on Gov. Chase. This Seward opposed
with all his might. Mr. Lincoln wavered, hesitated, and was bending
rather towards Mr. Seward. The struggle was terrific, lasted several
days, when Chase was finally and triumphantly forced into the
Cabinet. It was necessary not to leave him there alone against Seward,
and perhaps Bates, the old cunning Whig. Again terrible opposition by
Seward, but it was overcome by the radicals in the House, in the
Senate, and outside of Congress by such men as Curtis, Noyes, J. S.
Wadsworth, Opdyke, Barney, &c., &c., and Blair was brought in. Cameron
was variously opposed, but wished to be in by Seward; Welles was from
the start considered sound and safe in every respect; Smith was
considered a Seward man.
From what I witnessed of Cabinet-making in Europe, above all in France
under Louis Philippe, I do not forebode anything good in the coming-on
shocks and eruptions, and I am sure these must come. This Cabinet as
it stands is not a fusion of various shadowings of a party, but it is
a violent mixing or putting together of inimical and repulsive forces,
which, if they do not devour, at the best will neutralize each other.
Senator Wilson answered Douglass in the Senate, that "when the
Republican party took the power, treason was in the army, in the navy,
in the administration," etc. Dreadful, but true assertion. It is to be
seen how the administration will act to counteract this ramified
treason.
What a run, a race for offices. This spectacle likewise new to me.
The Cabinet Ministers, or, as they call them here, the Secretaries, have
old party debts to pay, old sores to avenge or to heal, and all this by
distributing offices, or by what they call it here--patronage. Through
patronage and offices everybody is to serve his friends and his party,
and to secure his political position. Some of the party leaders seem to
me similar to children enjoying a long-expected and ardently wished-for
toy. Some of the leaders are as generals who abandon the troops in a
campaign, and take to travel in foreign parts. Most of them act as if
they were sure that the battle is over. It begins only, but nobody, or
at least very few of the interested, seem to admit that the country is
on fire, that a terrible struggle begins. (Wrote in this sense an
article for the National Intelligencer; insertion refused.) They, the
leaders, look to create engines for their own political security, but no
one seems to look over Mason and Dixon's line to the terrible and with
lightning-like velocity spreading fire of hellish treason.
The diplomats utterly upset, confused, and do not know what god to
worship. All their associations were with Southerners, now traitors.
In Southern talk, or in that of treacherous Northern Democrats, the
diplomats learned what they know about this country. Not one of them
is familiar, is acquainted with the genuine people of the North; with
its true, noble, grand, and pure character. It is for them a terra
incognita, as is the moon. The little they know of the North is the
few money or cotton bags of New York, Boston, Philadelphia,--these
would-be betters, these dinner-givers, and whist-players. The
diplomats consider Seward as the essence of Northern feeling.
How little the thus-called statesmen know Europe. Sumner, Seward, etc.
already have under consideration if Europe will recognize the secesh.
Europe recognizes _faits accomplis_, and a great deal of blood will
run before secesh becomes _un fait accompli_. These Sewards, Sumners,
etc. pay too much attention to the silly talk of the European
diplomats in Washington; and by doing this these would-be statesmen
prove how ignorant they are of history in general, and specially
ignorant of the policy of European cabinets. Before a struggle decides
a question a recognition is bosh, and I laugh at it.
The race, the race increases with a fearful rapidity. No flood does it
so quick. Poor Senators! Some of them must spend nights and days to
decide on whom to bestow this or that office. Secretaries or Ministers
wrangle, _fight_ (that is the word used), as if life and death
depended upon it.
Poor (Carlylian-meaning) good-natured Senator Sumner, in his earnest,
honest wish to be just and of service to everybody, looks as a hare
tracked by hounds; so are at him office-seekers from the whole
country. This hunting degrades the hounds, and enervates the patrons.
I am told that the President is wholly absorbed in adjusting,
harmonizing the amount of various salaries bestowed on various States
through its office-holders and office-seekers.
It were better if the President would devote his time to calculate
the forces and resources needed to quench the fire. Over in Montgomery
the slave-drivers proceed with the terrible, unrelenting, fearless
earnestness of the most unflinching criminals.
After all, these crowds of office-hunters are far from representing
the best element of the genuine, laborious, intelligent people,--of
its true healthy stamina. This is consoling for me, who know the
American people in the background of office-hunters.
Of course an alleviating circumstance is, that the method, the system,
the routine, oblige, nay force, everybody to ask, to hunt. As in the
Scriptures, "Ask, and you will get; or knock, and it will be opened."
Of course, many worthy, honorable, deserving men, who would be
ornaments to the office, must run the gauntlet together with the
hounds.
It is reported, and I am sure of the truth of the report, that
Governor Chase is for recognizing, or giving up the revolted Cotton
States, so as to save by it the Border States, and eventually to fight
for their remaining in the Union. What logic! If the treasonable
revolt is conceded to the Cotton States, on what ground can it be
denied to the thus called Border States? I am sorry that Chase has
such notions.
It is positively asserted by those who ought to know, that Seward,
having secured to himself the Secretaryship of State, offered to the
Southern leaders in Congress compromise and concessions, to assure, by
such step, his confirmation by the Democratic vote. The chiefs
refused the bargain, distrusting him. All this was going on for weeks,
nay months, previous to the inauguration, so it is asserted. But
Seward might have been anxious to preserve the Union at any price. His
enemies assert that if Seward's plan had succeeded, virtually the
Democrats would have had the power. Thus the meaning of Lincoln's
election would have been destroyed, and Buchanan's administration
would have been continued in its most dirty features, the name only
being changed.
Old Scott seems to be worried out by his laurels; he swallows incense,
and I do not see that anything whatever is done to meet the military
emergency. I see the cloud.
Were it true that Seward and Scott go hand in hand, and that both, and
even Chase, are blunted axes!
I hear that Mr. Blair is the only one who swears, demands, asks for
action, for getting at them without losing time. Brave fellow! I am
glad to have at Willard's many times piloted deputations to the doors
of Lincoln on behalf of Blair's admission into the Cabinet. I do not
know him, but will try to become nearer acquainted.
But for the New York radical Republicans, already named, neither Chase
nor Blair would have entered the Cabinet. But for them Seward would
have had it totally his own way. Members of Congress acted less than
did the New Yorkers.
The South, or the rebels, slave-drivers, slave-breeders, constitute
the most corrosive social decompositions and impurities; what the
human race throughout countless ages successively toiled to purify
itself from and throw off. Europe continually makes terrible and
painful efforts, which at times are marked by bloody destruction. This
I asserted in my various writings. This social, putrefied evil, and
the accumulated matter in the South, pestilentially and in various
ways influenced the North, poisoning its normal healthy condition.
This abscess, undermining the national life, has burst now. Somebody,
something must die, but this apparent death will generate a fresh and
better life.
The month of March closes, but the administration seems to enjoy the
most beatific security. I do not see one single sign of
foresight,--this cardinal criterion of statesmanship. Chase measures
the empty abyss of the treasury. Senator Wilson spoke of treason
everywhere, but the administration seems not to go to work and to
reconstruct, to fill up what treason has disorganized and emptied.
Nothing about reorganizing the army, the navy, refitting the arsenals.
No foresight, no foresight! either statesmanlike or administrative.
Curious to see these men at work. The whole efforts visible to me and
to others, and the only signs given by the administration in concert,
are the paltry preparations to send provisions to Fort Sumpter. What
is the matter? what are they about?