Empty rhetoric -- The future dark and terrible -- Wadsworth
defeated -- The official bunglers blast every thing they touch --
Great and holy day! McClellan gone overboard! -- The planters --
Burnside -- McClellan nominated for President -- Awful events
approaching -- Dictatorship dawns on the horizon -- The
catastrophe.
O God, O God! to witness how, by the hands of
Lincoln-Seward-McClellan, this noblest human structure is
crumbled--and, perhaps, soon
Pulvere vix tactae poterunt monstrare ruinae.
May God preserve this people--those noble patriots, of which
Wadsworth, Wade, Potter of Wisconsin, Stanton, Governor Andrew, and
many others are the types, when the country will be ruined and rended
by the firm, Lincoln-Seward-McClellan, to realize the pang,--
Nessun maggior' dolor' che ricordarsi dell tempo felice
Nella miseria.
O, I know what it is!
Mr. Seward's letter, October 28, to Messrs. Connover and Palmer, is a
display of that empty rhetoric whose dust he is wont to throw into the
eyes of the good-natured masses. His plea for united action--of course
with him--is the most bitter irony on himself. Mr. Seward's policy and
action are at the helm, and he piloted "our noble ship of state" on
worse breakers than those "of eighteen months ago."
Mr. Seward's letter is dumb on the object of the Cooper meeting. Of
course, Mr. Seward would rather swallow a viper than applaud the
abolition of slavery.
_Nov. 5._--Lincoln-Seward politically slaughtered the republican
party, and with it the country's honor. The future looks dark and
terrible. I shudder. Dishonor on all sides. Lincoln will not
understand to use the lease of power left to him--or to fall as a man.
But to be candid, most of the thus called leaders prepared this
defeat, and most of them at the last moment may lack decision and
dignity. How repeatedly I warned the Sumners, Wilsons, and other
wiseacres, that such will be the end, that the people at large will
become exasperated by Lincoln's administration!
The issue brought before the people was all but dignified. It would
have been better to make a straightforward issue against the
incapacity and the democratic ill-will of McClellan, than to dodge the
question, and force honest and noble men to speak against their
convictions. The issue, as made, was concocted by journalists, by
politicians; but not by statesmen, not by genuine great leaders.
Seward triumphs. His insincerity preeminently contributed to defeat
Wadsworth. Mephisto-like, he rejoices in thus having humbled the pure
and radical patriots.
At any rate, I shall try to expose Seward. _Arrive que pourra._ But
for him the sacred cause would have been victorious, and now--horror!
horror!
The pro-Romanist clergy is more furiously and savagely pro-slavery
than are the Rhetts, the Yanceys, in the South; the poor
Africo-Americans are, if not the truest Christians in this country, at
any rate their Christianity is sublime when compared with the
pro-Romanism.
O, for civic intrepidity, or all is lost! High-minded, intrepid,
self-forgetful civism and abnegation alone can avert the catastrophe.
Such is the mass of the people--but its leaders!
_Nov. 8._--Hooker has the military instinct in him which lights the
fire, and the inspiration of the god of battles; as Halleck has
nothing of the one and of the other, and as Mr. Lincoln is--Mr.
Lincoln, so Hooker is not to be put in command of the army. Lincoln
and Halleck will find out their man. _Similis simili gaudet_, or,
_przywitala sie dupa z wiechciem_.
_Nov. 9._--The official bunglers have blasted every thing they
touched: the people's virgin enthusiasm and unparalleled devotion;
they have endangered the country's safety. It is to hope for a miracle
to expect any thing for the better at the hands of the bunglers. Will
the shallow rhetors, will the would-be leaders in the Congress, be as
subservient to the bunglers as they have been up to this hour?
_Nov. 9._--Great and holy day! McClellan gone overboard! Better late
than never. But this belated act of justice to the country cannot
atone for all the deadly disasters, will not remove the fearful
responsibility from Lincoln-Seward-Blair, for having so long sustained
this horrible vampire. Now is Seward's turn to jump.
It must be acknowledged, in justice to the average of the better class
of planters, that the superficial, sociable intercourse with them is
more easy, and what is commonly considered more European, than is
similar intercourse with any corresponding class in the North. Therein
consists the whole attraction exercised by the Southerners on
Europeans visiting America--the diplomats included. I, for one, am
always uneasy, anxious, as if touching hot iron, when in intercourse
here with men with whom I am very intimate, (on the outside,) and who
now are in power. I never felt so out of the track when--once--in
intercourse with sovereigns, and with eminent men in Europe.
_Nov. 11._--General Burnside succeeds to McClellan--gives a military
ovation to his predecessor. In his order of the day, Burnside pays
homage to McClellan, and thus implicitly condemns the government.
Burnside permits McClellan to issue such a parting word as must shake
the army and the country.
_Nov. 12._--The democrats nominate McClellan for the next presidency.
Thus Mr. Lincoln's helplessness, Seward's hatred of the republican
creed, the treason, the imbecility, the intrigues of various others,
the lack of civic energy in the New York republican press and in the
republican politicians, except some repeatedly mentioned in this
Diary,--all this combined has built up a pedestal for such a
McClellan!
Strange and awful events may occur even before the end of Mr.
Lincoln's administration. The democratic leaders are perverse,
unprincipled, reckless, daring beyond conception; success is their
creed, and no conscience, no honor restrain them; and in the
management of the public opinion and of their party the democrats have
evidenced a skill far above that of the republican leaders; further,
the democrats evoke the vilest, the most brutish passions dormant in
the masses; the democrats are supported by all that is brutal, savage,
ignorant, and sordid; and, to crown and strengthen all, the democrats,
united to Romanist priesthood, rule over the Irishry.
And thus the relentless hatred with which the democrats persecute any
elevated, noble, humane aspiration; the helplessness, the incapacity
of the official and unofficial leaders of the republican party: both
these agencies combined may deal such a blow to the pure and humane
republican creed that it may not recover therefrom during the next
twenty-five years.