The message -- Emancipation -- State papers published -- Curtis
Noyes -- Greeley not fit for Senator -- Generalship all on the
rebel side -- The South and the North -- The sensationists -- The
new idol will cost the people their life-blood! -- The Blairs --
Poor Lincoln! -- The Trent affair -- Scott home again -- The war
investigation committee -- Mr. Mercier.
McClellan is now all-powerful, and refuses to divide the army into
corps. Thus much for his brains and for his consistency.
The message--a disquisition upon labor and capital; hesitancy about
slavery. The President wishes to be pushed on by public opinion. But
public opinion is safe, and expects from the official leader a decided
step onwards. The message gives no solution, suggests none, accounts
not for the lost time--foreshadows not a vigorous, energetic effort to
crush the rebellion; foreshadows not a vigorous, offensive war. The
message is an honest paper, but says not much.
The question of emancipation is not clear even in the heads of the
leading emancipationists; not one thinks to give freeholds to the
emancipated. It is the only way to make them useful to themselves and
to the community. Freedom without land is humbug, and the fools speak
of exportation of the four millions of slaves, depriving thus the
country of laborers, which a century of emigration cannot fill again.
All these fools ought to be sent to a lunatic asylum.
To export the emancipated would be equivalent to devastation of the
South, to its transformation into a wilderness. Small freeholds for
the emancipated can be cut out of the plantations of rebels, or out of
the public lands of each State--lands forfeited by the rebellion.
State papers published. The instructions to the various diplomatic
agents betray a beginner in the diplomatic career. By writing special
instructions for each minister, Mr. Seward unnecessarily increased his
task. The cause, reasons, etc., of the rebellion are one and the same
for France or Russia, and a single explanatory circular for all the
ministers would have done as well and spared a great deal of labor.
Cavour wrote one circular to all cabinets, and so do all European
statesmen. So, as they are, the State papers are a curious
agglomeration of good patriotism and confusion. So the Minister to
England is to avoid slavery; the Minister to France has the contrary.
All this is not smartness or diplomacy, but rather confusion,
insincerity, and double-dealing. One must conclude that Lincoln and
Seward have themselves no firm opinion. The instructions to Mexico
would sound nobly-worded but for the confusion and the veil ordered to
be thrown upon the cause of secession. That to Italy, above all to
Austria, has a smack of a schoolmaster displaying his information
before a gaping boy. It is offensive to the Minister going to Vienna.
It may be suspected that some of these instructions were written to
make capital at home, to astonish Mr. Lincoln with the knowledge of
Europe and the familiarity with European affairs. All this display
will prove to Europeans rather an ignorance of Europe. The
correspondence on the Paris convention is splendid, although the
initiative taken by Seward on this question was a mistake. But he
argued well the case against the English and French reservations.
Never any government whatever treated so tenderly its worst and most
dangerous enemies as does this government the Washington
secessionists, spies for the enemy, and spreading false news here to
frighten McClellan.
The old regular, but partly worn-out Republican leaders throttle and
neutralize the new, fresh, vigorous accessions. So Curtis Noyes, one
of the most eminent and devoted men, could not come into the Senate
because Greeley wished to be elected.
No living man has rendered greater services to the people during the
last twenty years than Greeley; but he ought to remain in his
speciality. Greeley is no more fit for a Senator than to take the
command of a regiment. Besides, the events already run over his head;
Greeley is slowly breaking down.
McClellan is beset with all kinds of inventors, contractors, etc. He
mostly endorses their suggestions, and on this authority the most
extravagant orders are given by the War Department. All this ought to
be investigated. Somebody back of McClellan may be found as being the
real patron of these leeches.
If the genius or capacity of a commander consists not only in closely
observing the movements of the enemy, but likewise in penetrating the
enemy's plans and in modifying his own in proportion as they are
deranged by an unexpected movement or a rapid march, then the
generalship is altogether on the other side, and on ours not a sign,
not a breath of it.
A civil war is mostly the purifying fire in a nation's existence. It
is to be hoped that this great convulsion will purify the free States
by sounding the death-knell of these small intriguing politicians. The
American people at large will acquire earnestness, knowledge of men,
and clear insight into its own affairs. Tricky politicians will be
discarded, and true men backed by majorities.
The South has for its leaders the chiefs who for years organized the
secession, who waged everything on its success, as life, honor,
fortune, and who incite and carry with them the ignorant masses.
The reverse is in the North. Mr. Lincoln was not elected for
suppressing the rebellion, nor did he make his Cabinet in view of a
terrible national struggle for death or life. Neither Lincoln nor his
Cabinet are the inciters or the inspiring leaders of the people, but
only expressions--not _ad hoc_--of the national will. This is one
reason why the administration is slower than the people, and why the
rebel administration is quicker than ours.
The second reason, and generated by the first, is, that every rebel
devotes his whole soul and energy to the success of the rebellion,
forcibly forgetting his individuality. Our thus called leaders think
first of their little selves, whose aggrandizement the public events
are to secure, and the public cause is to square itself with their
individual schemes.
Such is the policy of almost all those at the helm here. Not one among
them is to be found deserving the name of a statesman, endowed with a
great devotion, and with a great power, for the service of a great and
noble aim. From the solemn hour that the fatherland honorably chains
him to its service, the genuine statesman exists no more for himself,
but for his country alone. If necessary, he ought to consider himself
a victim to the public good, even were the public unjust towards him.
He is to treat as enemies all the dirty, tricky, and mean passions and
men. His enemies will hate, but the country, his enemies included,
will esteem him. Such a man will be the genuine man of the American
people, but he exists not in the official spheres.
It is for the first time in history that a young, insignificant man,
without a past, without any reason, is put in such a lofty position as
has been McClellan; he is to be literally kicked into greatness, and
into showing eventually courage. All this is a psychological problem!
Kent's Commentary upon the qualifications of a President is the best
criticism upon Lincoln.
These mosquitoes of public opinion, the sensation-seekers, the
sentimental preachers, the lecturers, the amateurs of the thus called
representative men, these oratorical falsifiers of history, but
considered here as luminaries, are already at their pernicious, nay,
accursed work.
They poison the judgment of the people. These hero-seekers for their
sermons, lectures, and sensation productions, have already found all
the criteria of a hero in McClellan, even in his chin, in the back of
his horse, etc., etc., and now herald it all over the country. Curses
be upon them.
No nation has ever raised idols with such facility as do the
Americans. Nay, I do not suppose that there ever existed in history a
nation with such a thirst for idols as this people. I may be a false
prophet; but this new idol, McClellan, will cost them their
life-blood.
The Blairs are now staunch supporters of McClellan. It is
unpardonable. They ought to know, and they do know better. But Mr.
Blair wishes to be Secretary of War in Cameron's place, and wishes to
get it through McClellan.
And poor Lincoln! I pity him; but his advisers may make out of him
something worse even than was Judas, in the curses of ages.
Polybius asserts that when the Greeks wrote about Rome they erred and
lied, and when the Romans wrote of themselves they lied or boasted.
The same the English do in relation to themselves, and to Americans.
Above all, in this Trent affair, or excitement, all European writers
for the press, professors, doctors, etc., pervert facts, reason, and
international laws, forget the past, and lie or flatter, with a slight
exception, as is Gasparin.
The Trent affair finished. We are a little humbled, but it was
expedient to terminate it so. With another military leader than
McClellan, we could march at the same time to Richmond, and invest
Canada before any considerable English force could arrive there. But
with such a hero at our head, better that it ends so. Europe will
applaud us, and the relation with England will become clarified.
Perhaps England would not have been so stiff in this Trent affair but
for the fixed idea in Russell's, Newcastle's, Palmerston's, etc.,
heads that Seward wishes to pick a quarrel with England.
The first weeks of Seward's premiership pointed that way. Mr. Seward
has the honors of the Trent affair. It is well as it is; the argument
is smart, but a little too long, and not in a genuine diplomatic
style. But Lincoln ought to have a little credit for it, as from the
start he was for giving the traitors up.
The worst feature of the whole Trent affair is, that it brought back
home from France this old mischief, General Scott. He will again
resume his position as the first military authority in the country,
confuse the judgment of Lincoln, of the press, and of the people, and
again push the country into mire.
The Congress appointed a War Investigating Committee, Senator Wade at
the head. There is hope that the committee will quickly find out what
a terrible mistake this McClellan is, and warn the nation of him. But
Lincoln, Seward, and the Blairs, will not give up their idol.
Louis Napoleon said his word about the Trent affair. All things
considered, the conduct of the Emperor cannot be complained of. The
Thouvenel paper is serious, severe, but intrinsically not unfriendly.
Quite the contrary. Up to this time I am right in my reliance on Louis
Napoleon, on his sound, cool, but broad comprehension.
Mr. Mercier behaves well, and he is to be relied on, provided we show
mettle and fight the traitors. Now, as the European imbroglio is
clarified, _at them_, _at them_! But nothing to hope or expect from
McClellan. I daily preach, but in the wilderness. Prince de Joinville
made a very ridiculous fuss about the Trent affair.
Americans believe that a statesman must be an orator. Schoolboy-like,
they judge on English precedents. In England, the Parliament is
omnipotent; it makes and unmakes administrations, therefore oratory is
a necessary corollary in a statesman; but here the Cabinet acts
without parliamentary wranglings, and a Jackson is the true type of an
American statesman. Washington was not an orator, nor was Alexander
Hamilton.