Intervention -- The cursed fields of the Chickahominy -- Titanic
fightings, but no generalship -- McClellan the first to reach
James river -- The Orleans leave -- July 4th, the gloomiest since
the birth of the republic -- Not reinforcements, but brains,
wanted; and brains not transferable! -- The people run to the
rescue -- Rebel tactics -- Lincoln does not sacrifice Stanton --
McClellan not the greatest culprit -- Stanton a true statesman --
The President goes to James river -- The Union as it was, a
throttling nightmare! -- A man needed! -- Confiscation bill
signed -- Congress adjourned -- Mr. Dicey -- Halleck, the
American Carnot -- Lincoln tries to neutralize the confiscation
bill -- Guerillas spread like locusts.
When at epochs of great social convulsions events and circumstances
put certain individuals into an eminent or elevated position, their
names become intertwined with the great epoch. In the eyes of the
masses and of the vulgar observers, such names acquire a high
importance on account of the commonly made confusion between
circumstances and personal merit, and, moonlight-like, such names
reverberate not their own, but a borrowed splendor. Thus much for the
official pilots of this great people.
The usual paroxysm of the foreign intervention fever. It ought to be
so easy to understand, that out of self-respect foreign powers will
not risk any intervention on paper; and to make an effective
intervention a hundred thousand men will be necessary, as the first
course. For such a service no foreign power is prepared. Intervention
is silly talk. McClellan and all kinds of his supporters do more for
the South than could England and France united.
It was a poor trick to gather by telegraph the signatures of the
governors for an offer of troops to the President. It was done for
effect in Europe; but events seem to have a grudge against Mr. Seward;
the same steamer carried over the Atlantic the news of our defeats in
the Chickahominy swamps.
To attempt a change of such an extensive basis as was occupied by our
army under the eyes of a daring, able, skilful enemy, in a country
wooded and marshy, and without roads! This movement was perhaps
necessary, and could not be avoided; but why at the start had such a
basis been selected? Such a selection made disasters inevitable, and
they followed.
All kinds of accounts pour in from these cursed fields of the
Chickahominy. Foreign officers--whose veracity I can believe--speak
enthusiastically of the undaunted bravery of the volunteers and of
their generals; _but a general generalship_ was not to be found during
those titanic fightings. What I gathered from the _suite_ of the
Orleans is, that Gen. McClellan was totally confused, was totally
ignorant of the condition of the corps, was never within distance to
give or to be asked for orders, and was the first to reach the banks
of the James and to sleep on board the gunboat Galena. At Winchester,
Banks in person covered the retreat.
The Orleans left. I pity them; they will be hooted in Europe. They
shared some of McClellan's fallacious and petty notions, and very
likely they have been gulled by the McClellan-Seward expectations of
taking Richmond before July 4th.
Gen. Hunter's letter about fugitive slaves, and rebels fugitive from
the flag of the Union, is the noblest contra distinction. No rhetor
could have invented it. Hang yourselves, oh rhetors!
_July 4th._--The gloomiest since the birth of this republic. Never was
the country so low, and after such sacrifices of blood, of time, and
of money; and all this slaughtered to that Juggernaut of strategy, and
to the ignoble motley of his supporters.
Oh you widows, bereaved mothers, sisters, and sweethearts, cry for
vengeance! Cry for vengeance, you shadows of the dead of the malaria,
or fallen in the defence of your country's honor. Stupidity has
stabbed in the back more deadly wounds than did the enemy in front.
This is the 4th of July. Oh! my old heart and my, not weak, mind are
bursting with grief.
The people, the masses, sacrifice their blood, their time, their
fortune. What sacrifice the official leaders and pilots? All is net
gain for them. Thousands and thousands of families will be
impoverished for life, nay, for generations. It is those nameless
heroes on the fields of battle who alone uphold the honor of the
American name, as it is the people at large who have the true
statesmanship, and not the appointed guardsmen.
Rats, hounds, all the vermin, all the impure beasts, are after
Stanton, for his not having sent reinforcements to McClellan; but none
existed, and McClellan has exhausted and devoured all the reserves.
Not reinforcements, but brains, were wanted, and brains are not
transferable.
The people, sublime, runs again to the rescue, and Mr. Seward is so
sacrilegious, so impious, as to say that the people is generally slow.
He is fast on the road of confusion.
I am sure that the whole movement and attack of the rebels was made,
as it could be made, at the utmost with 60,000 to 70,000 men, if even
with such a number. The rebels never attacked our whole line, but
always threw superior forces on some weak and isolated point. This the
rebels did during the last battles. The rebels showed great
generalship. Jackson is already the legendary hero, and deserves to
be.
McClellan never attacked, but _always_ was surprised and forced to
fight, so the rebels were sure that he would not dare anything to
counteract and counter-manoeuvre their daring; so the rebel generals
had perfect ease for the execution of their bold but skilful plans.
Lincoln sacrifices not Stanton, not even to Seward, to Blair, and to
the slaveocrats in Congress. That is something.
McClellan publishes a pompous order of the day for the 4th of July,
and apes the phraseology of Napoleon's bulletins from times when by a
blow Napoleon overthrew empires.
What I can gather from the accounts of the seven days' fighting is,
that during the battle at Gaines' Mills (to speak technically),
positively the whole army was without any basis. But traitors,
imbeciles and intriguers rend the air and the skies with their praises
of the great strategy and of the brilliant generalship.
I am aware how difficult it will be to convince the heroic army--that
is, its rank and file--that their disasters result from want of
generalship, and not from any inferiority in numbers. All over the
world incapable commanders raise the outcry of deficiency in numbers
to cover therewith their personal deficiency of brains. Similar events
to McClellan's wails, and the confusion they create in the armies and
in the people, are nothing new in the history of wars.
A fleet of gunboats covers the army on the James river. Once McClellan
condescendingly boasted that he would take care of the gunboats. The
worst is, that these gunboats could have done service against
Charleston, Mobile, Savannah, etc.
After all, McClellan is not the greatest culprit. It is not his fault
that he is without military brains and without military capacity. He
tried to do the best, according to his poor intellect. The great,
eternally-to-be-damned malefactors are those who kept him in command
after having had repeated proofs of his incapacity; and still greater
are those constitutional advisers who supported McClellan against the
outcry of the best in the Cabinet and in the nation. A time may come
when the children of those malefactors will be ashamed of their
fathers' names, and--curse them.
I have not scorn enough against the revilers and accusers of Stanton.
If Stanton could have had his free will, far different would be the
condition of affairs. Stanton's first appearance put an end to the
prevailing lethargy, and marked a new and glorious era. But, ah! how
short! The rats and the vermin were afraid of him, and took shelter
behind the incarnated strategy. Stanton embraced and embraces the
_ensemble_ of the task and of the field before him. And this
politician, Blair, to be his critic! If Stanton had been left
undisturbed in the execution of his duties as the Secretary of War,
McClellan would have been obliged to march directly to Richmond, and
the brainless strategy in the Peninsula would have been crushed in the
bud. If Stanton had not been undermined, not only the people would
have been saved from terrible disasters, but McClellan, Lincoln,
Seward, and Blair would have been saved from reproaches and from
malediction.
Stanton likewise shows himself to be a true statesman. A Democrat in
politics, he very likely never was such a violent and decided opponent
of slavery as the Sewards and Blairs professed to be throughout their
whole lives. But now Stanton pierces the fog, perceives the
unavoidable exigencies, and is an emancipationist, when the Sewards
and the Blairs try to compromise, nay, virtually to preserve slavery.
_July 10th._--The rebels won time to increase and gather their forces
from the south. McClellan's army may not prevent their turning against
Pope, who has too small a body to resist or to cover the whole line
from Fredericksburg to the Shenandoah. If the rebels attack Pope he
must retreat and concentrate before Washington; and then again begins
the uphill work. The people generally pour in blood, time and money;
but brains, brains are needed, and, without violating the formulas,
the people cannot inaugurate brains. Whatever the people may do, the
same quacks and bunglers will over again commit the same blunders.
Nothing can teach a little foresight to the helmsman and to some of
his seconds. Rocked by his imagination, Mr. Seward never sees clearly
the events before him and what they generate.
The call for three hundred thousand men will be responded to. The men
will come; but will statesmanship and generalship come with them? I am
afraid that the rebels, operating with promptness and energy, may give
no time to the levies to be fully organized; the rebels will press on
Washington.
McClellan reports to the President that he has only 50,000 men left.
The President goes to James river, and finds 83,000 ready for action.
Was it ignorance in McClellan, or his inborn disrespect of truth, or
disrespect of the country, or something worse, that made him make such
a report? And all this passes, and Mr. Lincoln cannot hurt McClellan,
although a gory shroud extends over the whole country.
A secretary of the French consul is here, and confirms my speculations
concerning the numbers of the rebels in the last battles on the
Chickahominy. The current and authoritative opinion in Richmond is,
that from the Potomac to the Rio Grande the rebel force never exceeded
300,000 men. If so, the more glory; and it must be so, according to
the rational analysis of statistics.
Mr. Seward writes a skilful dispatch to explain the battles on the
Chickahominy. But no skill can succeed to bamboozle the cold,
clear-sighted European statesmen.
No doubt Mr. Seward sincerely wished to save the Union in his own way
and according to his peculiar conception, and, after having
accomplished it, disappear from the political arena, surrounded by the
halo of national gratitude.
But even for this aim of reconstruction of the Union as it was, Mr.
Seward, at the start, took the wrong track, and took it because he is
ignorant of history and of the logic in human affairs. To save the
Union as it was, it was imperatively necessary to strike quick and
crushing blows, and to do this in May, June, etc., 1861. Mr. Seward
could have realized then what now is only a throttling nightmare--_the
Union as it was_. But Mr. Seward sustained a policy of delays and not
of blows; the struggle protracts, and, for reasons repeatedly
mentioned, the suppression of rebellion becomes more and more
difficult, and the reconstruction of the old Union as it was a
_mirage_ of his imagination.
But it is not Thurlow Weed, and others of that stamp, who could
enlighten Mr. Seward on such subjects--far, far above their vulgar and
mean politicianism. It is now useless to accuse and condemn Congress
for its so-called violence, as does Mr. Seward, and to assert that but
for Congress he, Mr. Seward, would have long ago patched up the
quarrel. The Congress may be as tame as a lamb, and as subject as a
foot-sole. Mr. Seward may on his knees proffer to the rebels a
compromise and the most stringent safeguards for slavery; to-day the
rebels will spurn all as they would have spurned it during the whole
year. The rebels will act as Mason did when in the Senate hall Mr.
Seward asked the traitor to be introduced to Mr. Lincoln.
The country is in more need of a man than of the many hundreds of
thousands of new levies.
Some time ago Mr. Seward gathered around him his devotees in Congress
(few in number), and unveiled to them that nobody can imagine what
superhuman efforts it cost him to avert foreign intervention. Very
unnecessary demonstration, as he knows it well himself, and, if it
gets into the papers, may turn out to be offensive to the two
cabinets, as they give to Mr. Seward no reason for making such
statements. Should England and France ever decide upon any such step,
then Mr. Seward may write as a Cicero, have all the learning of a
Hugo Grotius, of a Vattel, and of all other publicists combined; he
may send legions of Weeds and Sandfords to Europe, and all this will
not weigh a feather with the cabinets of London and of Paris.
Further, no foreign powers occasioned our defeats _in the
Chickahominy_, but those who were enraptured with the Peninsula
strategy.
Mr. Seward's letter to the great meeting in New York shows that not
his patriotism, but his confidence in success, is slightly notched.
Nobody doubts his patriotism; but Mr. Seward tried to shape mighty
events into a mould after his not-over-gigantic mind, and now he frets
because these events tear his sacrilegious hand.
After much opposition, vacillation, hesitation, and aversion, the
President signed the confiscation and emancipation bill. A new
evidence of how devotedly he wishes to avert any deadly blows from
slavery,--this national shame.
The Congress adjourned after having done everything good, and what was
in its power. It separated, leaving the country's cause in a worse
condition than it was a year ago, after the Bull Run day. Many, nay,
almost all the best members of both houses are fully aware in what
hands they left the destinies of the nation. Many went away with
despair in their hearts; but the constitutional formula makes it
impossible for them to act, and to save what so badly needs a savior.
Intervention fever again. The worst intervention is perpetrated at
home by imbeciles, by intriguers, by traitors, and by the--spades.
Mr. Dicey, an Englishman who travelled or travels in this
country,--Mr. D. is the first among his countrymen who understands the
events here, and who is just toward the true American people;--Mr. D.
truly says that the people fight without a general, and without a
statesman, and are the more to be admired for it.
Mr. Seward tries to appear grand before the foreign diplomats, and
talks about Cromwell, Louis Napoleon, _coup d'Etats_ against the
Congress, and about his regrets to be in the impossibility to imitate
them. Only think, Cromwell, Napoleon I., Napoleon III., Seward! Such
dictatorial dreams may explain Mr. Seward's partiality for General
McClellan, whom Seward may perhaps wish to use as Louis Napoleon used
Gen. St. Arnoud.
Halleck is to be the American Carnot. But any change is an
improvement. If Halleck extricates the army on the James river, and
saves it from malaria,--this enemy more deadly than Jackson and
McClellan combined,--then for this single action Halleck deserves well
of the country, and his Corinth affair will, at least in part, be
atoned for.
Mr. Lincoln makes a new effort to save his _mammy_, and tries to
neutralize the confiscation bill. Mr. Lincoln will not make a step
beyond what is called the Border-States' policy; and it may prove too
late when he will decide to honestly execute the law of Congress. Mr.
Seward gets into hysterics at the hateful name of Congress. Similar
spite he showed to a delegation from the city of New York, upbraiding
some of its members, and assuring them that delegations are not
needed,--that the administration is fully up to the task. Yes, Stanton
is, but how about some others?
Poor Mr. Lincoln! he must stand all the mutual puffs of Seward and
Sandford, and some more in store for him when the Weeds and Hughes
will come and give an account of their doings in Europe.
The report of the battle against Casey, as published by the rebel
General Johnston, is a masterpiece of military style, and shows how
skilfully the attack was combined. The Southern leaders have
exclusively in view the triumph of their cause. With many of our
leaders, the people's cause is made to square with their little
selfishness.
Guerillas spread like locusts. Perhaps they are the results of our
Union-searching, slavery-saving policy.