Secretary Chase -- French Mediation -- the Decembriseur --
Diplomatic Bendings.
_November 18._--In the street a soldier offered to sell me the pay
already several months overdue to him. As I could not help him, as
gladly I would have done, being poor, he sold it to a curb-stone
broker, a street note-shaver. I need not say that the poor soldier
sustained a loss of twenty-five per cent. by the operation! He
wanted to send the money home to his poor wife and children; yet one
fourth of it was thus given into the hands of a stay-at-home
speculator. Alas, for me! I could not save the poor fellow from the
remorseless shaver, but I could and did join him in a very energetic
cursing of Chase, that at once pompous and passive patriot.
This induced me to enter upon a further and more particular
investigation, and I found that hundreds of similar cases were of
almost daily occurrence; and that this cheating of the soldiers out
of their nobly and patriotically earned pay, may quite fairly be
denounced as rather the rule than as the exception. The army is
unpaid! Unspeakable infamy! Before,--long before the intellectually
poor occupant of the White House, long before _any_ civil employe,
big or little, the ARMY ought to be paid. Common humanity, common
sense, and sound policy affirm this; and common decency, to say
nothing about chivalric feelings, adds that when paymasters are sent
to the army at all, their first payments should be made to the rank
and file; the generals and their subordinate officers to be paid,
not before, but afterwards. Oh! for the Congress, for the Congress
to meet once again! My hope is in the Congress, to resist, and
sternly put an end to, such heaven-defying and man-torturing
injustice as now braves the curses of outraged men, and the anger of
God. How this pompous Chase disappoints every one, even those who at
first were inclined to be even weakly credulous and hopeful of his
official career. And why is Stanton silent? He ought to roar. As for
Lincoln--he, ah! * * * * The curses of all the books of all the
prophets be upon the culprits who have thus compelled our gallant
and patriotic soldiery to mingle their tears with their own blood
and the blood of the enemy!
_Nov. 18._--Again Seward assures Lord Lyons that the national
troubles will soon be over, and that the general affairs of the
country "stand where he wanted them." Seward's crew circulate in the
most positive terms, that the country will be pacified by the State
Department! England, moved by the State papers and official
notes--England, officially and non-officially, will stop the
iron-clads, built and launched in English ports and harbors for the
use of the rebels, and for the annoyance and injury of the United
States. England, these Americans say, England, no doubt, has said
some hard words, and has been guilty of some detestably treacherous
actions; but all will probably be settled by the benign influence of
Mr. Seward's despatches, which, as everyone knows, are perfectly
irresistible. How the wily Palmerston must chuckle in Downing
Street.
The difference between Seward and a real statesman, is this: that a
statesman is always, and very wisely, chary about committing himself
in writing, and only does it when compelled by absolutely
irresistible circumstances, or by temptations brilliant enough to
overrule all other considerations; for, such a statesman never for
one moment forgets or disregards the old adage which saith that
"_Verba volant, scripta manent_." But Seward, on the contrary,
literally revels in a flood of ink, and fancies that the more he
writes, the greater statesman he becomes.
At the beginning of this month, I wrote to the French minister, M.
Mercier, a friendly and respectful note, warning him against
meddling with politicians and busybodies. I told him that, before he
could even suspect it, such men would bring his name before the
public in a way neither pleasant nor profitable to him. M. Mercier
took it in good part, and cordially thanked me for my advice.
_Nov. 19._--Burnside means well, and has a good heart; but something
more is required to make a capable captain, more especially in such
times as those in which we are living. It is said that his staff is
well organized; God be praised for that, if it really is so. In that
case, Burnside will be the first among the loudly-lauded and
self-conceited West-Point men, forcibly to impress both the military
and the civilian mind in America, with a wholesome consciousness of
the paramount importance to an army of a thoroughly competent and
trustworthy staff.
The division of the army into three grand corps is good; it is at
once wise and well-timed, following the example set by Napoleon,
when he invaded Russia in 1812. If his subordinate generals will but
do well, I have entire confidence in Hooker. He is the man for the
time and for the place. As a fighting man, Sumner is fully and
unquestionably reliable; but I have my doubts about Franklin. He is
cold, calculating, and ambitious, and he has the especially bad
quality of being addicted to the alternate blowing of hot and cold.
Burnside did a good thing in confiding to General Siegel a separate
command.
The _New York Times_ begins to mend its bad ways; but how long will
it continue in the better path?
_Nov. 20._--England stirs up and backs up rebellion and disunion
here; but, in Europe, for the sake of the unity of barbarism,
Islamism, and Turkey, England throttles, and manacles, and lays
prostrate beneath the feet of the Osmanli, the Greeks, the Sclavi,
the heroic Montenegrins. England is the very incarnation of a
treachery and a perfidy previously unexampled in the history of the
world. The _Punica fides_, so fiercely denounced and so bitterly
satirized by the historians and poets of old Rome, was truthful if
compared to the _Fides Anglica_ of our own day.
_Nov. 22._--Our army seems to be massed so as to be able to wedge
itself in between Jackson in the valley and Lee at Gordonsville. By
a bold manoeuvre, each of them could be separately attacked, and, I
firmly believe, destroyed. But, unfortunately, boldness and
manoeuvre, that highest gift, that supreme inspiration of the
consummate captain, have no abiding place in the bemuddled brains of
the West-Pointers, who are a dead weight and drag-chain upon the
victimised and humiliated Army of the Potomac.
_Nov. 25._--The Army is stuck fast in the mud, and the march towards
Fredericksburgh is not at all unlikely to end in smoke. There seems
to be an utter absence of executive energy. Why not mask our
movements before Gordonsville from the observation of Lee? Or, if
preferable, what is to hinder the interposition of _un rideau
vivant_, a _living curtain_, in the form of a false attack, a feint
in considerable force, behind which the whole army might be securely
thrown across the Rappahannock, by which at least two days' march
would be gained on Lee, and our troops would be on the direct line
for Fredericksburg, if Fredericksburg is really to be the base for
future operations. In this way, the army would have marched against
Fredericksburg on both sides of the river. Or, supposing those plans
to be rejected, why not throw a whole army corps at once, say 40,000
to 50,000 strong, across the Rappahannock. On either plan, I repeat
it, at least two days' march would have been stolen upon Lee; three
or four days of forced marches would have been healthy for our army,
and a bloodless victory would have been obtained by the taking of
the seemingly undefended Fredericksburg. A dense cloud enveloped
this whole enterprise, and it is not even improbable, that the
campaign may become a dead failure even before it has accomplished
the half of its projected and loudly vaunted course. But bold
conceptions, and energetic movements to match them, are just about
as possible to Halleck or Burnside as railroad speed to the tedious
tortoise.
_Nov. 25._--Oh! So Louis Napoleon could not keep quiet. He offers
his mediation, which, in plain English, means his moral support to
the South. Oh! that enemy to the whole human race. That
_Decembriseur_.[1] Our military slowness, if nothing else is the
matter, our administrative and governmental helplessness, and
Seward's lying and all-confusing foreign policy have encouraged
foreign impertinence and foreign meddling. I have all along
anticipated them as an at least very possible result of the above
mentioned causes. [See vol. I of the Diary.] Nevertheless, I
scarcely expected such results to appear so soon. Perhaps this same
impertinent French action may prove a second French _faux pas_, to
follow in the wake of the first and very egregious _faux pas_ in
Mexico. The best that we can say for the _Decembriseur_ is, that he
is getting old. England refuses to join in his at once wild and
atrocious schemes, and makes a very Tomfool of the bloody Fox of the
Tuileries. My, Russia--ah! I am very confident of that--will refuse
to join in the dirty and treacherous conspiracy for the
preservation of slavery. Well for mediation. But Mr. _Decembriseur_,
what think you and your diplomatic lackeys; what judgment and what
determination do you and they form as to the terms and the
termination, too, of your diabolical scheme? Descend, sir, from your
shilly-shally generalities and verbal fallacies. Is it to be a
commercial union, this hobby of your minister here? What is it; let
us in all plainness of speech know what it is that you really and
positively intend. Propound to us the plain meaning and scope of
your imperial proposition.
[Footnote 1: The men who, in the great French revolution,
and under the leadership of Danton and of the municipality
of Paris, massacred the political prisoners in September,
1792, are recorded in history under the name of
_Septembriseurs_. Louis Napoleon may no less justly be
called the _Decembriseur_, from that frightful massacre on
the 2nd of December, from which he dates his despotism.]
_Nov. 27._--Lee, with his army, marches or marched on the south side
of the river, in a parallel to the line of Burnside on the north
side of the river, and Jackson quietly, but quickly follows. They
are at Fredericksburg, and our army looms up, calm, but stern;
still, but defiant and menacing. I heartily wish that Burnside may
be successful, and that I may prove to have been a false prophet.
But the great _Fatum_, FATE, seems to declare against Burnside, and
Fate generally takes sides with bold conceptions and their energetic
execution.
_Nov. 28._--The French despatch-scheme reads very like a Washington
concoction, and does not at all bear the marks of Parisian origin. I
find in it whole phrases which, for months past, I have repeatedly
heard from the French minister here. Perhaps Mr. Mercier, in his
turn, may have caught many of Mr. Seward's much-cherished
generalities, unintelligible, very probably, even to himself, and
quite certainly so to every one but himself. Perhaps, I say, Mr.
Mercier may have caught up some of them, and making them up at
hap-hazard into a _macedoine_, a hash, a hotch-potch, has served up
the second-hand and heterogeneous mess to his master in Paris. The
despatch expresses the fear of a servile war; this may very well
have been copied from Mr. Seward's despatch to Mr. Adams, (May,
1862,) wherein Seward attempted to frighten England by a prophecy of
a servile war in this country.
_Nov. 30._--Mr. Seward semi-officially and conveniently accepts the
French impudence. Computing the time and space, the scheme
corresponds with McClellan's inactivity after Antietam, and with the
raising of the banner of the Copperheads. I spoke of this before,
(see Diary for November and December, 1861, in Vol. I.) and
repeatedly warned Stanton.
_Nov. 30._--Mercier, the French diplomat, rapidly gravitates towards
the Copperheads--Democrats. Is he acting thus _in obedience to
orders_? After all, some of the diplomats here, and especially those
of what call themselves the "three great powers," almost openly
sympathize and side with secessionists, and patronize Copperheads,
traitors, and spies. The exceptions to this rule are but few;
strictly speaking, indeed, I should except only one young man. Some
diplomats justify this conduct on the plea that the Republican
Congressmen are "great bores," who will not play at cards, or dine
and drink copiously; accomplishments in which the Secesh was so
pre-eminent as to win his way to the inner depths of the diplomatic
heart. The people, I am sure, will heartily applaud those of its
representatives for thus incurring the contempt of dissipated
diplomats.
Some persons maintain that Stanton breaks down, perhaps that he
suffers, physically as well as mentally, from his necessitated
contact with his official colleagues and his and their persistent,
inevitable and inexorable hangers-on and supplicants. I do not
perceive the alleged failure of his health or powers, and I do not
believe it; but assuredly, it were no marvel if such really were the
case. It must be an adamantine constitution and temper that could
long bear with impunity the daily contact with a Lincoln, a Seward,
a Halleck, and others less noted, indeed, but not the less
contagious.