Capture of New Orleans -- The second siege of Troy -- Mr. Seward
lights his lantern to search for the Union-saving party --
Subserviency to power -- Vitality of the people -- Yorktown
evacuated -- Battle of Williamsburg -- Great bayonet charge! --
Heintzelman and Hooker -- McClellan telegraphs that the enemy
outnumber him -- The terrible enemy evacuate Williamsburg -- The
track of truth begins to be lost -- Oh Napoleon! -- Oh spirit of
Berthier! -- Dayton not in favor -- Events are too rapid for
Lincoln -- His integrity -- Too tender of men's feelings --
Halleck -- Ten thousand men disabled by disease -- The Bishop of
Orleans -- The rebels retreat without the knowledge of McNapoleon
-- Hunter's proclamation -- Too noble for Mr. Lincoln --
McClellan again subsides in mud -- Jackson defeats Banks, who
makes a masterly retreat -- Bravo, Banks! -- The aulic council
frightened -- Gov. Andrew's letter -- Sigel -- English opinion --
Mr. Mill -- Young Europa -- Young Germany -- Corinth evacuated --
Oh, generalship! -- McDowell grimly persecuted by bad luck.
The capture of New Orleans. The undaunted bravery of the Navy--this
most beautiful leaf in the American history. The Navy fights without
talk and _strategy_, because it does not look to win the track to the
White House. The capture of New Orleans may lead the rebels to
evacuate Yorktown and to fool the great strategian.
It is a very threatening symptom, that no genuine harmony--nay, no
sympathy--exists between the best, the purest, the most intelligent,
the most energetic members of both the Houses of Congress and the
President, including the leading spirit of his Cabinet. The New York
Herald is the principal supporter of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward; in
the Congress their supporters are the Democrats, and all those who
wish to make concessions to the South, who ardently wish to preserve
slavery, and in any way to patch up the quarrel.
In times as trying as are the present ones, such a shameful and
dangerous anomaly must, in the long run, destroy either the government
or the nation. If it turns out differently here, the exclusive reason
thereof will be the great vitality of the people. All the deep and
dangerous wounds inflicted by the policy of the administration will be
healed by the vigorous, vital energy of the people.
"For Heaven's sake finish quick your war!" Such are the
exclamations--nay, the prayers--coming from the French statesmen, as
Fould and others, from our devoted friends, as Prince Napoleon, and
from all the famishing, but nevertheless nobly-behaving, operatives in
England. And here McClellan inaugurates before Yorktown a second siege
of Troy or of Sebastopol; Lincoln forbids the junction of McDowell
with Banks and Fremont, by which Richmond could be easily taken from
the west side, where it ought to be attacked; and Mr. Seward reads the
like dispatches and backs McClellan; Mr. S. lights his lantern in
search North and South of the Union-saving party!
Speak to me of subserviency to power by European aristocrats,
courtiers, etc.! What almost every day I witness here of subserviency
of influential men to the favored and office-distributing power, all
things compared and considered, beats whatever I saw in Europe, even
in Russia at the Nicolean epoch.
General Cameron, in his farewell speech, said that at the beginning of
the civil war General Scott told him, Cameron, that he, Scott, never
in his life was more pained than when a Virginian reminded him of his
paramount duties to his State. I take note of this declaration, as it
corroborates what a year ago I said in this diary concerning the
disastrous hesitations of General Scott.
It is said that Turtschininoff is all in all in General Mitchell's
command. Turtschininoff is a genuine and distinguished officer of the
staff, and educated in that speciality so wholly unknown to
West-Pointers. Several among the foreigners in the army are thoroughly
educated officers of the staff, and would be of great use if employed
in the proper place. But envy and know-nothingism are doubly in their
way. Besides, the foreign officers have no tenderness for the Southern
cause and Southern chivalry, and would be in the cause with their
whole heart.
By the insinuations of an anonymous correspondent in the Tribune, Mr.
Seward tries to re-establish his anti-slavery reputation. But how is
it that foreign diplomats, that the purest of his former political
friends, consider him to be now the savior of what he once persecuted
in his speeches?
At every step this noble people vindicates and asserts the vitality of
self-government, continually jeopardized by the inexhaustible errors
of the policy followed by the master-spirits in the administration.
European doctors, prophets, vindictive enemies like the London Times,
the Saturday Review, etc., and the French journals of the police, all
of them are daily--nay, hourly--baffled in their expectations--paper
money and no bankruptcy, no inflation, bonds equal to gold, etc., etc.
And all this, not because there is any great or even small statesman
or financier at the head of the administration, but because the people
at large have confidence in themselves, in their own energies; because
they have the determination to succeed, and not to be bankrupt; not to
discredit their own decisions. All these phenomena, so new in the
history of nations, are incomprehensible to European wiseacres; they
are too much for the hatred and dulness of the Europeans in France,
England, and for that of the many Europeans here.
Yorktown evacuated!--under the nose of an army of 160,000 men, and
within the distance of a rifle shot!--evacuated quietly, of course,
during several days. One cannot abstain from saying Bravo! to the
rebel generals. Their high capacity forces the mind to an involuntary
applause. Traitors, intriguers, and imbeciles applaud, extol the
results of the bloodless strategy. McClellan is used by the rebels
only to be fooled by them. It must be so. It is one proof more of the
transcendent capacity of the strategian, and, above all, of the
capacity and efficiency of the chief of the staff of the great army.
Such an operation as that of Yorktown, anywhere else, would be
considered as the highest disgrace; here, glorifications of strategy.
McClellan's bulletins from Yorktown describe the rebel fortifications
as being almost impregnable. Of course impregnable! but only to him.
Battle at Williamsburg; and McClellan and his so perfect staff
altogether ignorant of the whole bloody but honorable affair as fought
against terrible odds by Heintzelman and Hooker; but the great
Napoleon's bulletin mentions a _real_--Oh hear! hear the great
Mars!--_charge with the bayonet_, made at the other extremity of
Williamsburg, and in which from twenty to forty men were killed!
Heintzelman's and Hooker's personal conduct, and that of their troops,
was heroic beyond name. McClellan ignored the battle; ignored what was
going on, and, as it is said, gave orders to Sumner not to support
Heintzelman.
McClellan telegraphs that the enemy far outnumbers him (fears count
doubly), but that he will do his utmost and his best. This Napoleon of
the New York Herald's manufacture in everything is the reverse of all
the leaders and captains known in history: all of them, when before
the battle they addressed their soldiers, represented the enemy as
inferior and contemptible; after the battle was won, the enemy was
extolled.
From the first of his addresses to this his last dispatch from
Williamsburg, McClellan always speaks of the terrible enemy whom he is
to encounter; and in this last dispatch he tries to frighten not only
his army, but the whole country. During the night _the terrible enemy_
evacuated Williamsburg; McClellan breathes more free, takes fresh
courage, and his bulletin estimates the enemy's forces at 50,000.
The track of truth begins to be lost. By comparing dates, bulletins,
and notes, it results that at the precise minute when McClellan
telegraphed his wail concerning the large numbers of the enemy and the
formidable fortifications of Williamsburg, the rebels were evacuating
them, pressed and expelled therefrom by Hooker, Kearney, and
Heintzelman. Oh Napoleon! Oh spirits not only of Berthier and of
Gneisenau, but of the most insignificant chiefs of staffs, admire your
caricature at the head of the army commanded by this freshly-backed
Napoleon!
A foreign diplomat was in McClellan's tent before Yorktown, on the eve
of the day when the rebels wholly evacuated it. One of McClellan's
aids suggested to the general that the comparative silence of the
rebel artillery might forebode evacuation. "Impossible!" answered the
New York Herald's Napoleon. "I know everything that passes in their
camp, and I have them fast." (I have these details from the
above-mentioned diplomat.) In the same minute, when the strategian
spoke in this way, at least half of the rebel army had already
withdrawn from Yorktown. Comments thereupon are superfluous.
Dayton, from Paris, very sensibly objects to the policy of insisting
that England and France shall annul their decision concerning the
belligerents. Dayton considers such a demand to be, for various
reasons, out of season. I am sure that Dayton is respected by Louis
Napoleon and by Thouvenel on account of his sound sense and rectitude,
although he _parleys not_ French. Dayton must impress everybody
differently from that French parleying claims' prosecutor and
itinerant agent of a sewing machine, who breakfasts in Brussels with
Leopold, and the same day dines in Paris with Thouvenel, and may
take his supper in h----l, so far as the interest of the cause is
concerned. But Dayton seems not to be in favor with the department.
The admirers of McClellan assert that one parallel digged by him was
sufficient to frighten the rebels and force them to evacuate. Good for
what it is worth for such mighty ignorant brains. The mortars, the
hundred-pounders, frightened the rebels; they break down not before
parallels, strategy, or Napoleon, but before the intellectual
superiority of the North, in the present case embodied in mortars and
other armaments.
Following the retreating enemy, McClellan loses more prisoners than he
makes from the enemy. A new and perfectly original, perfectly _sui
generis_ mode of warfare, but altogether in harmony with all the other
martial performances of the pet of the New York Herald, of Messrs.
Seward and Blair, and of the whole herd of intriguers and imbeciles.
People who approach him say that Mr. Lincoln's conceit groweth every
day. I guess that Seward carefully nurses the weed as the easiest way
to dominate over and to handle a feeble mind.
Since Mr. Mercier judges by his own eyes, and not by those of former
various Washington associations, his inborn soundness and perspicacity
have the upper hand. He is impartial and just to both parties; he is
not bound to have against the rebels feelings akin to mine, but he is
well disposed, and wishes for the success of the Union.
The events are too grand and too rapid for Lincoln. It is impossible
for him to grasp and to comprehend them. I do not know any past
historical personality fully adequate to such a task. Happily in this
occurrency, the many, the people at large, by its grasp and
forwardness, supplies and neutralizes the inefficiency or the
tergiversations, intrigues and double-dealings of the few, of the
official leaders, advisers, etc.
I willingly concede to Mr. Lincoln all the best and most variegated
mental and intellectual qualities, all the virtues as claimed for him
by his eulogists and friends. I would wish to believe, as they do, Mr.
Lincoln to be infallible and impeccable. But all those qualities and
virtues represented to form the residue of his character, all shining
when in private life, some way or other are transformed from positives
into negatives, since Mr. Lincoln's contact with the pulsations and
the hurricane of public life. Thus Mr. Lincoln's friends assert that
all his efforts tend to conciliate parties and even individuals. This
candor was beneficial and efficient in the court or bar-rooms, or
around a supper table in Springfield. It was even more so, perhaps,
when seasoned with stories more or less * * * But one who tries to
conciliate between two antipodic principles, or between pure and
impure characters, unavoidably must dodge the principal points at
issue. Such is the stern law of logic. Who dodges, who biasses,
unavoidably deviates from that straight and direct way at the end of
which dwells truth. Further: feeble, expectative and vacillating
minds, deprived of the faculty to embrace in all its depth and
extension the task before them,--such minds cannot have a clear
purpose, nor the firm perception of ways and means leading to the aim,
and still less have they the sternness of conviction so necessary for
men dealing with such mighty events, on which depend the life and
death of a society. Such men hesitate, postpone, bias and deviate from
the straight way. Such men believe themselves in the way to truth,
when they are aside of it. It results therefrom, that when certain
amiable qualities, such as conciliation, a little dodging, hesitation,
etc., are practised in private life and in a very restrained area,
their deviations from truth are altogether imperceptible, and they are
then positive good qualities, nay, virtues. But such qualities,
transported and put into daily friction with the tempestuous
atmosphere of human events, lose their ingenuousness, their innocence,
their good-naturedness; the imperceptibility of their intrinsic
deviation becomes transparent and of gigantic dimensions.
Mr. Lincoln's crystal-pure integrity prevented not the most frightful
dilapidation, nay, robbing of the treasury by contractors, etc., etc.
Nor has it kept pure his official household. His friend Lamon and the
to-be-formed regiments; the splendid equipages and _coupes_ of his
youthful secretaries, to be sure, came not from Springfield, etc.,
etc., nor sees he through the rascally scheme of the Chiriqui
colonization.
Mr. Lincoln, his friends assert, does not wish to hurt the feelings of
any one with whom he has to deal. Exceedingly amiable quality in a
private individual, but at times turning almost to be a vice in a man
entrusted with the destinies of a nation. So he never could decide to
hurt the feelings of McClellan, and this after all the numerous proofs
of his incapacity. But Mr. Lincoln hurts thereby, and in the most
sensible manner, the interests, nay, the lives, of the twenty millions
of people. I am sure that McClellan may lose the whole army, and why
not if he continues as he began? and Mr. Lincoln will support and keep
him, as to act otherwise would hurt McClellan's, Marcy's, Seward's,
and perhaps Blair's feelings.
Finally, Mr. Lincoln, advised, they say, by Mr. Seward, holds in
contempt public opinion as manifested by the press, with the exception
of the incense burnt to him by the New York Herald. If this is true,
Mr. Lincoln's mind is cunningly befogged.
It is very soothing for the quiet of private life to ignore
newspapers; but all over Europe men in power, sovereigns and
ministers, carefully and daily study and watch the opinions of the
newspapers, and principally of those which oppose and criticise them.
Such, Mr. Lincoln, is the wisdom of the truly experienced statesman.
Better ask Louis Napoleon than Seward.
I am astonished that concerning Mexico Louis Napoleon was taken in by
Almonte. Experience ought to have fully made him familiar with the
general policy of political refugees. This policy was, is, and will be
always based on imaginary facts.
Political refugees befog themselves and befog others. And this Mr. de
Saligny must be a d----; Louis Napoleon ought to expel him from the
service.
Halleck likewise seems to lay the track to the White House. Nothing
has been done since he took the command in person. Halleck, as does
also McClellan, tries to make all his measures so sure, so perfect,
that he misses his aim, and becomes fooled by the enemy. In war, as in
anything else, after having quickly prepared and taken measures, a man
ought to act, and rely as much as possible on fortune--that is, on his
own acuteness--how to cut the knot when he meets it in his path.
Halleck before Corinth, and McClellan before Manassas and Yorktown,
both spend by far more time than it took Napoleon from Boulogne and
Bretagne to march into the heart of Germany, surround and capture Mack
at Ulm, and come in view of Vienna.
The French and English naval officers in the Mississippi assured our
commanders that it was impossible to overcome the various defences
erected by the rebels. Our men gave the lie to those envious
forebodings. McClellan, in a dispatch, assures the Secretary of War
that he, McClellan, will take care of the gunboats. _Risum teneatis._
The most contemptible flunkeys on the face of the earth are the
wiseacres, and the thus-called framers of public opinion. Until yet
McClellan, literally, has not stood by when a cartridge was burned,
and they sing hosanna for him.
Ten thousand men have been disabled by diseases before Yorktown; add
to it the several thousands in a similar way disabled in the camp
before Manassas, and it makes more than would have cost two battles,
fought between the Rappahannock and Richmond,--battles which must have
settled the question.
Although ultra-Montane, the Bishop of Orleans nobly condemns slavery.
The Bishop's pastoral is an answer to H. E., Archbishop of New York.
The French bishop therein is true to the spirit of the Catholic
church. The Irish archbishop, compared to him, appears a dabbler in
Romanism.
During the administration of Pierce and of Buchanan, the Democratic
senators ruled over the President and the Cabinet. Perhaps it is not
as it ought to be; but for the salvation of the country it were
desirable that a curb be put on Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Seward, Mr. Blair, by
the Republican senators, by men like Wade, Wilson, Chandler, Grimes,
Fessenden, Hale, and others.
The retreat of the rebels was masterly conducted, and their pursuit by
McClellan has no name. Nowhere has this Napoleon got at them. The
affair at Williamsburg was bravely done by Heintzelman and Hooker; but
it was done without the knowledge of McNapoleon, and contrary to his
expectations and strategy. This he confesses in one of his _masterly_
bulletins. Perhaps McNapoleon ignored Heintzelman's corps' heroic
actions, because neither Heintzelman, nor Hooker, nor Kearney worship
_strategy, and the deep, well-matured plans of Mc_.
General Hunter's proclamation in South Carolina is the greatest social
act in the course of this war. How pale and insignificant are Mr.
Lincoln's disquisitions aside of that proclamation, which is greeted
in heaven by angels and cherubim--provided they are a reality.
Of course Mr. Lincoln overrules General Hunter's proclamation. It is
too human, too noble, too great, for the tall Kentuckian. Many say
that Seward, Blair, Seaton from the Intelligencer, and other Border
State patriots, pressed upon Lincoln. I am sure that it gave them very
little trouble to put Mr. Lincoln straight ---- with slaveocracy.
Henceforth every Northern man dying in the South is to be credited to
Mr. Lincoln!
Mr. Lincoln again publishes a disquisition, and points to the signs of
the times. But does Mr. Lincoln perceive other, more awful, signs of
the times? Does he see the bloody handwriting on the wall, condemning
his unnatural, vacillating, dodging policy?
All things considered, it will not be astonishing in Europe if they
lose patience and sneer at the North, when they learn that McClellan
is continually doing strategy; when they will read his bulletins; when
they will find out that from West Point to Richmond he pursued the
enemy at the _enormous_ speed of two miles a day,--and that of course
nobody was hurt,--and finally, that, surrounded by a brilliant and
costly staff, he was ignorant of the condition of the roads, and of
the existence of marshes and swamps into which he plunged the army.
The President repeatedly speaks of his strong will to restore the
Union. Very well; but why not use for it the best, the most decided,
and the most thorough means and measures?
Continually I meet numbers and numbers of soldiers who are discharged
because disabled in the camps during winter. Thus McClellan's
bloodless strategy deprived several thousands of their health, without
in the least hurting the enemy. And daily I meet numbers of
able-bodied Africo-Americans, who would make excellent soldiers. I
decided to try to form a regiment of the Africo-Americans, and, after
whipping the F. F. V.'s, establish, beyond doubt, the perfect equality
of the thus called races.
McClellan subsides in mud,--digs,--and the sick list of the army
increases hourly at a fearful ratio. And McClellan refuses to slaves
admittance within his lines. If, at least, McClellan was a fighting
general; but a mud-mole as he ------. Any other general in any other
country, in Asia, in Africa, etc., would use any elements whatever
within his grasp, by using which he could strengthen his own and
weaken the enemy's resources. McNapoleon knows better!
One of the best diplomatic documents by Mr. Seward is that on Mexico;
and so is also the policy pursued by him. Why does Mr. Seward dabble
in war and strategy at home?
McClellan digs, and by his wailings has disorganized the corps of
McDowell, and of Banks, who retreats and is pressed by Jackson. The
men who advised, or the McClellan worshippers who prevented the union
of McDowell with Banks and Fremont, are as criminal as any one can be
in Mr. Lincoln's councils.
Now Jackson is reorganized; he penetrated between Fremont and Banks,
who were sorely weakened by transferring continually divisions from
one to another army, and this between the Chickahominy and the lower
Shenandoah.
New diplomatic initiative by Mr. Seward. France and England are
requested to declare to the rebels that they have no support to
expect from the above-mentioned powers.
This initiative would be splendid if it could succeed; but it cannot,
and for the same logical reasons as failed the recent initiative about
belligerents. Such unsuccessful initiatives are lowering the
consideration of that statesman who makes them. Such failures show a
want of diplomatic and statesmanlike perspicacity.
The nation is assured by Mr. Lincoln and by Mr. Seward that a perfect
harmony prevails in the Cabinet. Beautiful if true.
General Banks attacked by Jackson and defeated; but, although
surrounded, makes a masterly retreat, without even being considerably
worsted. Bravo, Banks! Such retreats do as much honor to a general as
a won battle.
This bold raid of Jackson--a genuine general--wholly disorganized that
army which, if united weeks ago, could have taken Richmond, and
rendered Jackson's brilliant dash impossible. The military aulic
council of the President is frightened out of its senses, and asks the
people for 100,000 defenders. General Wadsworth advised not to thus,
without any necessity, frighten the country.
On this occasion Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, wrote a scorching
letter to the administration on account of General Hunter's
proclamation. Governor Andrew always acts, speaks, and writes to the
point.
This alarming appeal, so promptly responded to, has its good, as it
will show to Europe the untired determination of the free States.
The President took it into his head to direct himself, by telegraph,
the military operations from Fredericksburg to Shenandoah. The country
sees with what results. The military advisers of the President seem no
better than are his civil advisers--Seward, Blair, etc. If the
President earnestly wishes to use his right as Commander-in-Chief,
then he had better take in person the command of the army of the
Potomac.
There McClellan's diggings and strategy neutralize the gallantry of
the generals and of the troops. There action, not digging, is needed.
I wrote to the President; suggesting to make Sigel his chief of the
staff (Sigel has been educated for it), and then to let our generals
fight under his, the President's, eyes.
Great injustice was and is done to Mr. Seward by the lying and very
extensively spread rumor that he is often intoxicated. I am sure that
it is not so, and I contradict it with all my might. At last I
discovered the reason of the rumor. It is Mr. Seward's unhappy passion
for generalizations. He goes off like a rocket. Most people hearing
him become confused, understand nothing, are unable to follow him in
his soarings, and believe him to be intoxicated. His devotees alone
get in ecstacies when these rockets fly.
Every time after any success of our troops, that perfidious sheet, the
London Times, puts on innocent airs, and asks, "Why are the Americans
so bitter against England?" Why? At every disaster the Times pours
upon the North the most malicious, poisonous, and lacerating
derisions; derisions to pierce the skin of a rhinoceros. When in that
strain no feeling is respected by this lying paper.
Derision of the North was the Times's order of the day even before the
civil war really began. People, who probably have it from the fountain
itself, assert that in one of his hours of whiskey expansion the great
Russell let the cat out, and confessed that the Times's firm purpose
was, and is, to definitely break the Union.
Until this hour that reptile's efforts have been unsuccessful; it
could not even bring the Cabinet over to its heinous purposes. A
counterpoise and a counter poison exist in England's higher spheres,
and I credit it to that noblest woman the queen, to Earl Russell, and
to some few others.
The would-be English _noblesse_, the Tories, and all the like genuine
nobodies, or _would-be_ somebodies, affect to side with the South.
They are welcome to such an alliance, and even parentage. _Similis
simili gaudet._ Nobody with his senses considers the like
_gentlemen_ as representing the progressive, humane, and enlightened
part of the English nation; the American people may look down upon
their snobbish hostility. J. S. Mill--not to speak of his
followers--has declared for the cause of the North. His intellectual
support more than gorgeously compensates the cause of right and of
freedom, even for the loss or for the sneers of the whole
aristocracy, and of snobdom, of somebodies and of would-be gentlemen
of the whole Britannia Empire, including the Canadian beggarly
manikins.
By their arrogance the Englishmen are offensive to all the nations of
the world; but they are still more so by their ingrained snobbyism.
(See about it Hugo Grotius.) Further: During the last thirty years the
London Times and the Lord Fussmaker Palmerston have done more to make
us hate England than even did the certain inborn and not over-amiable
traits in the English character.
A part of the young foreign diplomacy here have a very strong secesh
bend; they consider the slaveholders to be aristocrats, and thus like
to acquire an aristocratic perfume. But, aristocratically speaking,
most of this promiscuous young Europa are parvenus, and the few titled
among them have heraldically no noble blood in their veins. No wonder
that here they mistake monstrosities for real noblesse. Enthusiastic
is young Germany--that is, young Bremen.
Young European Spain here is remarkably discreet, as in the times of a
Philip II., of an Alba.
Corinth evacuated under the nose of Halleck, as Manassas and Yorktown
have been evacuated under the nose of McClellan. Nay, Halleck, equally
strong as was the enemy, the first day of the evacuation ignores what
became of Beauregard with between sixty and eighty thousand men. Oh
generalship! Gen. Halleck is a gift from Gen. Scott. If Halleck makes
not something better, it will turn out to be a very poor gift. _Timeo
Danaos_, etc., concerning the North and the gifts from "_the highest
military authority in the land_."
McDowell is grimly persecuted by bad luck. Since March, twice he
organized an excellent and strong corps, with which he could have
marched on Richmond, and both times his corps was wholly
disorganized--first by McClellan's wails for more, the second time by
the President and his aulic council. And now all the ignorance and
stupidity, together with all the McClellanites, accuse McDowell. Pity
that he was so near Washington; otherwise his misfortune could not
have so thoroughly occurred.