The Evening Post -- The message -- The administration caught
napping -- McDowell -- Congress slowly feels its way -- Seward's
great facility of labor -- Not a Know-Nothing -- Prophesies a
speedy end -- Carried away by his imagination -- Says "secession
is over" -- Hopeful views -- Politeness of the State department
-- Scott carries on the campaign from his sleeping room -- Bull
Run -- Rout -- Panic -- "Malediction! Malediction!" -- Not a
manly word in Congress! -- Abuse of the soldiers -- McClellan
sent for -- Young blood -- Gen. Wadsworth -- Poor McDowell! --
Scott responsible -- Plan of reorganization -- Let McClellan
beware of routine.
It seems to me that the destinies of this admirable people are in
strange hands. Mr. Lincoln, honest man of nature, perhaps an empiric,
doctoring with innocent juices from herbs; but some others around him
seem to be quacks of the first order. I wish I may be mistaken.
The press, the thus called good one, is vacillating. Best of all, and
almost not vacillating, is the New York Evening Post. I do not speak
of principles; but the papers vacillate, speaking of the measures and
the slowness of the administration.
The President's message; plenty of good, honest intentions; simple,
unaffected wording, but a confession that by the attack on Sumpter,
and the uprising of Virginia, the administration was, so to speak,
caught napping. Further, up to that day the administration did not
take any, the slightest, measure of any kind for any emergency; in a
word, that it expected no attacks, no war, saw no fire, and did not
prepare to meet and quench one.
It were, perhaps, better for Lincoln if he could muster courage and
act by himself according to his nature, rather than follow so many, or
even any single adviser. Less and less I understand Mr. Lincoln, but
as his private secretary assures me that Lincoln has great judgment
and great energy, I suggested to the secretary to say to Lincoln he
should be more himself.
Being _tete-a-tete_ with McDowell, I saw him do things of details
which in any, even half-way organized army, belong to the speciality
of a chief of the staff. I, of course, wondered at it. McDowell, who
commands what in Europe would be called a large corps, told me that
General Scott allowed him not to form a complete staff, such a one as
he, McDowell, wished.
And all this, so to speak, on the eve of a battle, when the army faces
the enemy. It seems that genuine staff duties are something altogether
unknown to the military senility of the army. McDowell received this
corps in the most chaotic state. Almost with his own hands he
organized, or rather put together, the artillery. Brigades are
scarcely formed; the commanders of brigades do not know their
commands, and the soldiers do not know their generals--and still they
consider Scott to be a great general!
The Congress, well-intentioned, but entangled in formulas, slowly
feels its way. The Congress is composed of better elements than is the
administration, and it is ludicrous to see how the administration
takes airs of hauteur with the Congress. This Congress is in an
abnormal condition _for the task of directing a revolution_; _a
formula can be thrown in its face_ almost at every bold step. The
administration is virtually irresponsible, more so than the government
of any constitutional nation whatever. What great things this
administration could carry out! Congress will consecrate, legalize,
sanction everything. Perhaps no harm would have resulted if the Senate
and the House had contained some new, fresher elements directly from
the boiling, popular cauldron. Such men would take a _position_ at
once. Many of the leaders in both Houses were accustomed for many
years to make only opposition. But a long opposition influences and
disorganizes the judgment, forms not those genuine statesmen able to
grasp great events. For such emergencies as are now here, terrible
energy is needed, and only a very perfect mind resists the enervating
influence of a protracted opposition.
Suggested to Mr. Seward that the best diplomacy was to take possession
of Virginia. Doing this, we will find all the cabinets smooth and
friendly.
I seldom saw a man with greater facility of labor than Seward. When
once he is at work, it runs torrent-like from his pen. His mind is
elastic. His principal forte is argument on _any_ given case. But the
question is how far he masters the variegated information so necessary
in a statesman, and the more now, when the country earnestly has such
dangerous questions with European cabinets. He is still cheerful,
hopeful, and prophesies a speedy end.
Seward has no Know-Nothingism about him. He is easy, and may have many
genuine generous traits in his character, were they not compressed by
the habits of the, not lofty, politician. At present, Seward is a moral
dictator; he has Lincoln in his hand, and is all in all. Very likely he
flatters him and imposes upon his simple mind by his over-bold,
dogmatic, but not over-correct and logical, generalizations. Seward's
finger is in all the other departments, but above all in the army.
The opposition made to Seward is not courageous, not open, not
dignified. Such an opposition betrays the weakness of the opposers,
and does not inspire respect. It is darkly surreptitious. These
opponents call Seward hard names, but do this in a corner, although
most of them have their parliamentary chair wherefrom they can speak.
If he is bad and mischievous, then unite your forces and overthrow
him; if he is not bad, or if you are not strong enough against him, do
not cover yourself with ridicule, making a show of impotent malice.
When the Senate confirmed him, every one throughout the land knew his
vacillating policy; knew him to be for compromise, for concessions;
knew that he disbelieved in the terrible earnestness of the struggle,
and always prophesied its very speedy end. The Senate confirmed Seward
with open eyes. Perhaps at the start his imagination and his
patriotism made him doubt and disbelieve in the enormity of
treason--he could not realize that the traitors would go to the bitter
end. Seemingly, Seward still hopes that one day or another they may
return as forlorn sheep. Under the like impressions, he always
believed, and perhaps still believes, he shall be able to patch up the
quarrel, and be the savior of the Union. Very probably his
imagination, his ardent wishes, carry him away, and confuse that clear
insight into events which alone constitutes the statesman.
Suggested to Sumner to demand the reduction of the tariff on certain
merchandises, on the plea of fraternity of the working American people
with their brethren the operatives all over Europe; by it principally
I wished to alleviate the condition of French industry, as I have full
confidence in Louis Napoleon, and in the unsophisticated judgment of
the genuine French people. The suggestion did not take with the
Senate.
When the July telegraph brought the news of the victory at Romney
(Western Virginia), it was about midnight. Mr. Seward warmly
congratulated the President that "_the secession was over_." What a
far-reaching policy!
When the struggle will be over, England, at least her Tories,
aristocrats, and politicians, will find themselves baffled in their
ardent wishes for the breaking of the Union. The free States will
look tidy and nice, as in the past. But more than one generation will
pass before ceases to bleed the wound inflicted by the lies, the
taunts, the vituperations, poured in England upon this noble,
generous, and high-minded people; upon the sacred cause defended by
the freemen.
These freemen of America, up to the present time, incarnate the
loftiest principle in the successive, progressive, and historical
development of man. Nations, communities, societies, institutions,
stand and fall with that principle, whatever it be, whereof they are
the incarnation; so teaches us history. Woe to these freemen if they
will recede from the principle; if they abandon human rights; if they
do not crush human bondage, this sum of all infamies. Certainly the
question paramount to all is, to save and preserve pure
self-government in principle and in its direct application. But
although the question of slavery seems to be incidental and
subordinate to the former, virtually the question of slavery is twin
to the former. Slavery serves as a basis, as a nurse, for the most
infamous and abject aristocracy or oligarchy that was ever built up in
history, and any, even the best, the mildest, and the most honest
oligarchy or aristocracy kills and destroys man and self-government.
From the purely administrative point of view, the principle whose
incarnation is the American people, the principle begins to be
perverted. The embodiment of self-government fills dungeons,
suppresses personal liberty, opens letters, and in the reckless
saturnalias of despotism it rivals many from among the European
despots. Europe, which does not see well the causes, shudders at this
_delirium tremens_ of despotism in America.
Certainly, treason being in ebullition, the holders of power could not
stand by and look. But instead of an energetic action, instead of
exercising in full the existing laws, they hesitated, and treason,
emboldened, grew over their heads.
The law inflicted the severest capital punishment on the chiefs of the
revolt in Baltimore, but all went off unharmed. The administration one
day willingly allows the law to slide from its lap, and the next
moment grasps at an unnecessary arbitrary power. Had the traitors of
Baltimore been tried by court-martial, as the law allowed, and
punished, few, if any, traitors would then have raised their heads in
the North.
Englishmen forget that even after a secession, the North, to-day
twenty millions, as large as the whole Union eight years ago, will in
ten years be thirty millions; a population rich, industrious, and
hating England with fury.
Seward, having complete hold of the President, weakens Lincoln's mind
by using it up in hunting after comparatively paltry expedients.
Seward-Scott's influence neutralizes the energetic cry of the country,
of the congressmen, and in the Cabinet that of Blair, who is still a
trump.
The emancipation of slaves is spoken of as an expedient, but not as a
sacred duty, even for the maintenance of the Union. To emancipate
through the war power is an offence to reason, logic, and humanity;
but better even so than not at all. War power is in its nature
violent, transient, established for a day; emancipation is the highest
social and economical solution to be given by law and reason, and
ought to result from a thorough and mature deliberation. When the
Constitution was framed, slavery was ashamed of itself, stood in the
corner, had no paws. Now-a-days, slavery has become a traitor, is
arrogant, blood-thirsty, worse than a jackal and a hyena; deliberately
slavery is a matricide. And they still talk of slavery as sheltered by
the Constitution; and many once anti-slavery men like Seward, etc.,
are ready to preserve it, to compromise with the crime.
The existence of nations oscillates between epochs when the substance
and when the form prevails. The formation of America was the epoch
when substance prevailed. Afterward, for more than half a century, the
form was paramount; the term of substance again begins. The
Constitution is substance and form. The substance in it is perennial;
but every form is transient, and must be expanded, changed, re-cast.
Few, if any, Americans are aware of the identity of laws ruling the
universe with laws ruling and prevailing in the historical development
of man. Rarely has an American patience enough to ascend the long
chain from effect to cause, until he reaches the first cause, the
womb wherein was first generated the subsequent distant effect. So,
likewise, they cannot realize that at the start the imperceptible
deviation from the aim by and by widens to a bottomless gap until the
aim is missed. Then the greatest and the most devoted sacrifices are
useless. The legal conductors of the nation, since March 6th, ignore
this law.
The foreign ministers here in Washington were astonished at the
_politeness_, when some time ago the Department sent to the foreign
ministers a circular announcing to them that armed vessels of the
neutrals will be allowed to enter at pleasure the rebel blockaded
ports. This favor was not asked, not hoped for, and was not necessary.
It was too late when I called the attention of the Department to the
fact that such favors were very seldom granted; that they are
dangerous, and can occasion complications. I observed that during the
war between Mexico and France, in 1838, Count Mole, Minister of
Foreign Affairs, and the Premier of Louis Philippe, instructed the
admiral commanding the French navy in the Mexican waters, to oppose,
even by force, any attempt made by a neutral man-of-war to enter a
blockaded port. And it was not so dangerous then as it may be in this
civil war. But the chief clerk adviser of the Department found out
that President Polk's administration during the Mexican war granted a
similar permission, and, glad to have a precedent, his powerful brains
could not find out the difference between _then_ and _now_.
The internal routine of the ministry, and the manner in which our
ministers are treated abroad by the Chief at home, is very strange,
humiliating to our agents in the eyes of foreign Cabinets. Cassius
Clay was instructed to propose to Russia our accession to the
convention of Paris, but was not informed from Washington that our
ministers at Paris, London, etc., were to make the same propositions.
When Prince Gortschakoff asked Cassius Clay if similar propositions
were made to the other cosigners of the Paris convention, our minister
was obliged to confess his utter ignorance about the whole proceeding.
Prince Gortschakoff good-naturedly inquired about it from his
ministers at Paris and London, and enlightened Cassius Clay.
No ministry of foreign affairs in Europe would treat its agents in
such a trifling manner, and, if done, a minister would resent it.
This mistake, or recklessness, is to be credited principally to the
internal chief, or director of the department, and not to the minister
himself. By and by, the chief clerks, these routinists in the former
coarse traditions of the Democratic administrations, will learn and
acquire better diplomatic and bureaucratic habits.
If one calls the attention of influential Americans to the
mismanagement in the organization of the army; to the extraordinary
way in which everything, as organization of brigades, and the inner
service, the quartermaster's duty, is done, the general and inevitable
answer is, "We are not military; we are young people; we have to
learn." Granted; but instead of learning from the best, the latest,
and most correct authorities, why stick to an obsolete, senile, musty,
rotten, mean, and now-a-days impracticable routine, which is
all-powerful in all relating to the army and to the war? The Americans
may pay dear for thus reversing the rules of common sense.
General Scott directs from his sleeping room the movements of the two
armies on the Potomac and in the Shenandoah valley. General Scott has
given the order to advance. At least a strange way, to have the
command of battle at a distance of thirty and one hundred miles, and
stretched on his fauteuil. Marshal de Saxe, although deadly sick, was
on the field at Fontenoy. What will be the result of this
experimentalization, so contrary to sound reason?
Fighting at Bull Run. One o'clock, P. M. Good news. Gen. Scott says
that although we were 40-100 in disadvantage, nevertheless his plans
are successful--all goes as he arranged it--all as he foresaw it.
Bravo! old man! If so, I make _amende honorable_ of all that I said up
to this minute. Two o'clock, P. M. General Scott, satisfied with the
justness and success of his strategy and tactics--takes a nap.
_Evening._--Battle lost; rout, panic. The army almost disbanded, in
full run. So say the forerunners of the accursed news. Malediction!
Malediction!
What a horrible night and day! rain and cold; stragglers and
disbanded soldiers in every direction, and no order, nobody to gather
the soldiers, or to take care of them.
As if there existed not any military or administrative authority in
Washington! Under the eyes of the two commanders-in-chief! Oh,
senility, imbecility, ignominy! In Europe, a commander of a city, or
any other military authority whatever, who should behave in such a
way, would be dismissed, nay, expelled, from military service. What I
can gather is, that the enemy was in full retreat in the centre and on
one flank, when he was reinforced by fresh troops, who outflanked and
turned ours. If so, the panic can be explained. Even old veteran
troops generally run when they are outflanked.
Johnston, whom Patterson permitted to slip, came to the rescue of
Beauregard. So they say. It is _en petit_ Waterloo, with
Blucher-Johnston, and Grouchy-Patterson. But had Napoleon's power
survived after Waterloo, Grouchy, his chief of the staff, and even
Ney,[1] for the fault at Quatre-bras, would have been court-martialed
and shot. Here these blind Americans will thank Scott and Patterson.
[Footnote 1: That such would have been the presumed fate of Ney at
the hands of Napoleon, I was afterwards assured by the old Duke of
Bassano, and by the Duchess Abrantes.]
Others say that a bold charge of cavalry arrived on our rear, and
threw in disorder the wagons and the baggage gang. That is nothing
new; at the battle of Borodino some Cossacks, pouncing upon the French
baggage, created a panic, which for a moment staggered Napoleon, and
prevented him in time from reinforcing Ney and Davoust. But McDowell
committed a fault in putting his baggage train, the ambulances
excepted, on a road between the army and its reserves, which, in such
a manner, came not in action. By and by I shall learn more about it.
The Congress has made a worse Bull Run than the soldiers. Not a single
manly, heroic word to the nation and the army. As if unsuccess always
was dishonor. This body groped its way, and was morally stunned by the
blow; the would-be leaders more than the mass.
Suggested to Sumner to make, as the Romans did, a few stirring words
on account of the defeat.
Some mean fellows in Congress, who never smelt powder, abused the
soldiers. Those fellows would have been the first to run. Others,
still worse, to show their abject flunkeyism to Scott, and to humbug
the public at large about their intimacy with this fetish, make
speeches in his defence. Scott broadly prepared the defeat, and now,
through the mouths of flunkeys and spit-lickers,[2] he attempts to
throw the fault on the thus called politicians.
[Footnote 2: Foremost among them was the editor of the New York
Times, publishing a long article wherein he proved that he had
been admitted to General Scott's table, and that the General
unfolded to him, the editor, the great anaconda strategy. Exactly
the thing to be admired and gulped by a man of such _variegated_
information as that individual.
That little villianish "article" had a second object: it was to
filch subscribers from the Tribune, which broke down, not over
courageously.]
The President telegraphed for McClellan, who in the West, showed
_rapidity of movement_, the first and most necessary capacity for a
commander. Young blood will be infused, and perhaps senility will be
thrown overboard, or sent to the Museum of the Smithsonian Institute.
At Bull Run the foreign regiments ran not, but covered the retreat.
And Scott, and worse than he, Thomas, this black spot in the War
Department, both are averse to, and when they can they humiliate, the
foreigners. A member of Congress, in search of a friend, went for
several miles up the stream of the fugitive army; great was his
astonishment to hear spoken by the fugitives only the unmixed, pure
Anglo-Saxon.
My friend, J. Wadsworth, behaved cool, brave, on the field, and was
devoted to the wounded. Now, as always, he is the splendid type of a
true man of the people.
Poor, unhappy McDowell! During the days when he prepared the army, he
was well aware that an eventual success would be altogether attributed
to Scott; but that he, McDowell, would be the scapegoat for the
defeat. Already, when on Sunday morning the news of the first
successes was known, Scott swallowed incense, and took the whole
credit of it to himself. Now he accuses the politicians.
Once more. Scott himself prepared the defeat. Subsequent elucidation
will justify this assertion. One thing is already certain: one of the
reasons of the lost battle is the exhaustion of troops which
fought--and the number here in Washington is more than 50,000 men.
Only an imbecile would divide the forces in such a way as to throw
half of it to attack a superior and entrenched enemy. But Scott wished
to shape the great events of the country in accordance with his
narrow, ossified brains, and with his peculiar patriotism; and he did
the same in the conduct of the war.
I am sure some day or other it will come out that this immense
fortification of Manassas is a similar humbug to the masked batteries;
and Scott was the first to aggrandize these terrible national
nightmares. Already many soldiers say that they did not see any
fortifications. Very likely only small earthworks; if so, Scott ought
to have known what was the position and the works of an enemy encamped
about thirty miles from him. If he, Scott, was ignorant, then it shows
his utter imbecility; if he knew that the fortifications were
insignificant, and did not tell it to the troops, then he is worse
than an incapable chief. Up to the present day, all the military
leaders of ancient and modern times told their troops before a battle
that the enemy is not much after all, and that the difficulties to
overcome are rather insignificant. After the battle was won,
everything became aggrandized. Here everybody, beginning with Scott,
ardently rivalled how to scare and frighten the volunteers, by stories
of the masked batteries of Manassas, with its several tiers of
fortifications, the terrible superiority of the Southerners, etc.,
etc. In Europe such behavior would be called treason.
The administration and the influential men cannot realize that they
must give up their old, stupid, musty routine. McClellan ought to be
altogether independent of Scott; be untrammelled in his activity; have
large powers; have direct action; and not refer to Scott. What is this
wheel within a wheel? Instead of it, Scott, as by concession, cuts for
McClellan a military department of six square miles. Oh, human
stupidity, how difficult thou art to lift!
Scott will paralyze McClellan as he did Lyon and Butler. Scott always
pushed on his spit-lickers, or favorites, rotten by old age. But Scott
has pushed aside such men as Wool and Col. Smith; refused the services
of many brave as Hooker and others, because they never belonged to his
flunkeys.
Send to McClellan a plan for the reorganization of the army.
1st. True mastership consists in creating an army with extant
elements, and not in clamoring for what is altogether impossible to
obtain.
2d. The idea is preposterous to try to have a large thus-called
regular army. A small number, fifteen to twenty thousand men, divided
among several hundreds of thousands of volunteers, would be as a drop
of water in a lake. Besides, this war is to be decided by the great
masses of the volunteers, and it is uncivic and unpatriotic to in any
way nourish the wickedly-assumed discrimination between regulars and
volunteers.
3d. Good non-commissioned officers and corporals constitute the sole,
sound, and easy articulations of a regiment. Any one who ever was in
action is aware of this truth. With good non-commissioned officers,
even ignorant lieutenants do very little harm. The volunteer regiments
ought to have as many good sergeants and corporals as possible.
4th. To provide for this want, and for reasons mentioned above, the
relics of the regular army ought to be dissolved. Let us have one
army, as the enemy has.
5th. All the rank and file of the army ought to be made at once
corporals and sergeants, and be distributed as much as possible among
the volunteers.
6th. The non-commissioned regulars ought to be made commissioned
officers, and with officers of all grades be distributed and merged in
the one great army.
For the first time since the armaments, I enjoyed a genuine military
view. McClellan, surrounded as a general ought to be, went to see the
army. It looks martial. The city, likewise, has a more martial look
than it had all the time under Scott. It seems that a young, strong
hand holds the ribbons. God grant that McClellan may preserve his
western vigor and activity, and may not become softened and dissolved
by these Washington evaporations. If he does, if he follows the
routine, he will become as impotent as others before him. Young man,
beware of Washington's corrupt but flattering influences. To the camp!
to the camp! A tent is better for you than a handsome house. The tent,
the fumes of bivouacs, inspired the Fredericks, the Napoleons, and
Washingtons.
Up to this day they make more history in Secessia than here. Jeff.
Davis overshadows Lincoln. Jeff. Davis and his gang of malefactors are
pushed into the whirlpool of action by the nature of their crime;
here, our leaders dread action, and grope. The rebels have a clear,
decisive, almost palpable aim; but here * *