The Problems before the People -- the Circassian -- Department of
State and International Laws -- Foresight -- Patriot Stanton and
the Rats -- Honest Conventions -- Sanitary Commission -- Harper's
Ferry -- John Brown -- the Yellow Book -- the Republican Party --
Epitaph -- Prize Courts -- Suum cuique -- Academy of Sciences --
Democratic Rank and File, etc. etc. etc.
_February 1._--The task which this great American people has on its
hands is one utterly unexampled in the history of the world. While
in the midst of a great civil war, and struggling as it were in very
death-throes, to emancipate and organize four millions of men, most
of whom, up to this very day, have by deliberate legislation been
kept in ignorance and savagery. Thoroughly to comprehend the
immensity of such a task, we must also reflect that the men to whom
that task is intrusted are anything rather than intellectual
giants. Yet the true solution of the problem will be given by the
principle of self-government and by the self-governing People. And
it is therein that consists the genuine American originality which
Europe finds it so impossible to understand. And it is just as
little understood by most of the diplomatists here, and what
is still worse, it is not even studied by them. It is wretched
work to be obliged to witness the low, the actually ignoble parts
which many men play in the great farce of political life. I could
easily mention a full score of would-be-eminent men, who are
unsurpassed by the meanest of the vulgar herd in flippancy and an
utter want of self-respect.
The diary published in London by Bull Run Russell deserves to be read
by every American. Russell deals blows to slavery which will tell in
England. However annoying may be to many the disclosures made by this
indiscreet confidant of their vanity, Russell's revelations establish
firmly the broad historical--not gossipping--fact, that before and
after Sumter, the most absolute want of earnestness, of statesmanlike
foresight, and the most childish but fathomless vanity inspired all
the actions of the American Secretary of State. I am one of the few
who, having often met Russell here, never fawned to him, nay who not
even took any notice of him; but I am grateful to him for his
falsely-called indiscreetness--for his having done the utmost to bring
out truth--in his own way. It is the best that I have seen, or heard,
or read of him. Flatterers, Secretaries, Senators, and Generals
crowded to Russell and to his table, and he exposes them. Among
others, General McDowell was Russell's guest, very likely to show his
gratitude to the slanderer of the volunteers, whom McDowell did not
understand how to lead to victory.
Seward showed to Russell his dispatches to Lord John Russell. Mr.
Sumner, at Bull Run Russell's table, asked Russell's aid to keep
peace with England. Good! Unspeakably good!
Not only the Emancipation problem must be solved, so to speak,
amidst the storm of battle--but other and very mighty problems,
social, constitutional, jurisprudential, and financial, must be
similarly and promptly dealt with. And these great questions must be
debated to the accompaniment of the music of musketry and cannon. In
some respects the situation of America at present may be said to
resemble that of France in the days of her great Revolution. But
affairs here and now are still more complicated than they were in
France from 1789 to 1793.
Formerly I took a more active part than I now take in revolutionary
and reformatory struggles, and was seldom daunted by their difficult
problems, or by their most violent tempests. But now I have a
chilling sense of weariness and disgust as I note the strange things
that are done under my very eyes.
The burden of taxes laid upon a people who have an inborn hatred of
taxation, a debt created in a few months surpassing that which
England and France contracted in half a century; and that debt
contracted as if by magic, and in the very crisis of a civil
war such as any foreign war would be mere baby's play to.
The people at large see the precipice, and hear the roaring of the
breakers ahead, but despair not! Sublime phenomena for the future
historian to dwell upon! All this is genuine American originality.
In its sublime presence, down, down upon your knees in the dust, all
you European wiseacres!
The capture of the _Circassian_, an English blockade runner, gave
birth to some very delicate international complications. The
decision of the Prize Court shows up the absolute destitution of
statesmanship in the Department of State, generally coruscated with
ignorance of international principles, rules of judicial
international decisions, and of belligerent rights and observances.
Every day shows what a masterly stroke it was of the Secretary of
State to have proclaimed the blockade in April, 1861, and to have
been the first to recognize the rebels in the character of
independent belligerents. The more blockade runners will be captured
by our cruisers, the more the complications will grow. A false first
step generates false conditions _ad infinitum_. The question of the
_Circassian_ is only the beginning, and not even the worst. The
worst will come by and by. But Seward is great before Allah! The
truth is, that Mr. Seward and the Department are as innocent of
any familiarity with international laws, as can be. The people,
the intelligent people would be horror-stricken could they suddenly
be made acquainted with all the shameful ignorance which is
corrosively fermenting in the State Department.
To every intelligent and well regulated Government in Europe, the
Department of Foreign Affairs--which in America is called the State
Department--has attached to it a board of advisers for the solution
of all international questions.
In England, for instance, all such questions are referred to the
Crown Lawyers, i.e. the Attorney and Solicitor General, and, in
specially important cases, to the Lord High Chancellor, and one or
two of the Judges. And in order to obtain the advice he obviously
stands so much in need of, Mr. Seward ought to have consulted two or
three American juriconsults of eminence. Mr. Seward ought to have
foreseen that the war would necessarily give rise to international,
commercial, and maritime complications. Such men as Charles Eames,
Upton, etc. would have been excellent advisers on all international
and statutory questions. Presumptuous that I am--to venture upon
the mere supposition that Seward the Great can possibly need advice!
Not he, of course--not he. Mr. Seward is the Alpha and Omega--knows
everything, and can do every thing himself. Happily, the people at
large is the genuine statesman, and can correct the mistakes--and
worse--of its blundering, bungling servants.
American pilots and statesmen! Forget not that foresight is the germ
of action. Foresight reveals to the mind the opportuneness of the
needed measure by which a solution is to be given, a question
decided, and the hoped-for results obtained.
American people! How much foresight have your--dearly-paid--servants
shown? You, the people alone, you have been far-seeing and
prophetic; but not they.
_February 2._--All the efforts of the worshippers of treason, of
darkness, of barbarism, of cruelty, and of infamy--all their
manoeuvres and menaces could not prevail. The majority of the
Congress has decided that the powerful element of Africo-Americans
is to be used on behalf of justice, of freedom, and of human rights.
The bill passed both the Houses. It is to be observed that the "big"
diplomats swallowed _col gusto_ all the pro-slavery speeches, and
snubbed off the patriotic ones. The noblest eulogy of the patriots!
The patriots may throb with joy! The President intends great changes
in his policy, and has telegraphed for----Thurlow Weed, that prince
of dregs, to get from him light about the condition of the country.
The conservative "Copperheads" of Boston and of other places in New
England press as a baby to their bosom, and lift to worship
McClellan, the conservative, and all this out of deepest hatred
towards all that is noble, humane, and lofty in the genuine American
people. Well they may! If by his generalship McClellan butchered
hundreds of thousands in the field, he was always very conservative
of his precious little self.
Biting snow storm all over Virginia! Our soldiers! our soldiers in
the camp! It is heart-rending to think of them. Conservative
McClellan so conservatively campaigned until last November as to
preserve--the rebel armies, and make a terrible winter campaign an
inevitable necessity. O, Copperheads and Boston conservatives! When
you bend your knees before McClellan, you dip them in the best and
purest blood of the people!
_February 3._--The Secretary of War appointed General Casey to
shorten the general tactics for the use of Africo-American regiments
to use them as light infantry.
The devotion of American women to the sick and wounded soldiers,
makes them be envied by the angels in Heaven (provided there are
any). This devotion of these genuine gentlewomen atones for the
ignoble flippancy of dancing crinolines.
Down, down goes slavery notwithstanding the _gates of hell_, and
their guard, the McClellans, the Sewards, amorously embracing the
Copperheads and all that is dark and criminal. Humanity is avenged
and Eternal Justice is satisfied.
_February 4._--Sumner is re-elected to the Senate. His re-election
vindicates a sound principle, because his opponents were all the
Copperheads and slavery-saviours in Massachusetts. Sumner's
influence in the Senate is rather limited. Politically he is on all
points most honest; but his conduct towards Seward is not calculated
to impress one with any very high esteem for his manhood.
It is not force, or decision, or power, that is cruel in
revolutionary times--but, weakness. All societies have had their
epochs of progress and of retrogression. Sylla was a conservative,
and so too was Phocion. The Pharisees were reactionists and
conservatives. Europe has millions of them, of various hues, shapes,
tendencies and convictions. But the reactionists and conservatives
in the past of Europe all have been and are of a purer metal than
the conservatives here, and their impure organs, as the National
Intelligencer, the World, the Boston Courier, and the rest of that
fetish creed.
_February 4._--The French Yellow Book, or State Correspondence,
justifies my forebodings of November last. Mr. Mercier's diplomatic
sentimentalism, and his associations, germinated the _Decembriseur's_
scheme for mediation and humiliation.
Further is to be found in the Yellow Book the evidence how, from the
start of this dark rebellion, Mr. Seward, the master spirit of the
Administration, dealt death blows to all energetic, unyielding
prosecution of the war for crushing the rebellion, and that he was
double-dealing in all his public actions. The published state papers
of the French government disclose the fact that nine months ago Mr.
Seward sent the French minister to Richmond with a mission to invite
the Jeff. Davises, Hunters, Wigfalls, Benjamins and others to come
back to their seats in the Senate, and in the name of the cruelly
outraged North, Mr. Seward proffered to the traitors a hearty
welcome. So says the French diplomat in his official dispatch to the
French Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Such underhanded dealings
should not be allowed, and most assuredly would be stringently
punished, if perpetrated under similar circumstances by the minister
of any European government dealing with treason in arms. But here,
Mr. Seward's impudence--if not worse--displays its flying colors.
The Republican press will swallow all this, and Senator Sumner as
Chairman of the Committee will--keep quiet.
That confidential mission entrusted to the French diplomat by Mr.
Seward, was more than sufficient to evoke the subsequent attempt at
mediation, because it revealed to the piercing eye of European
statesmanship, how the Administration, and above all how its master
spirit had little confidence in the cause; it revealed the want of
earnestness in official quarters. I hate and denounce all attempts,
even by the most friendly foreign power, to meddle with the internal
affairs of our country. But I have some little knowledge of European
statecraft, of European diplomacy, of European rulers, and of
European diplomats; and I assert, emphatically, that they are
emboldened to offer their meddlesome services because they have very
little if any respect for our official leaders; and because the want
of energy and of good faith to the principles of the North as
displayed by Seward, he nevertheless remaining at the helm, has
firmly settled the conviction in European minds, that the rebels
cannot be crushed by such traffickers and used up politicians as
have in their hands the destinies of the Union.
_February 5._--The new Copperhead Senators--in their appearance
resembling bushwhackers; the pillars of Copperheadism in the House,
take umbrage at the sight and the name of New England, and abuse the
New England spirit with all their coppery might. Well they may. So
did Satan hate and abuse light.
Patriot Stanton is earnestly at work concerning the organization of
Africo-Americans on a mighty scale; busy against him, likewise, are
the intriguers, the traitors, the cavillers, the Sewardites and the
McClellanites, all being of the same kidney. Seward sighs for
McClellan. But Stanton will override the muddy storm. He has at his
side men as pure, energetic and devoted as Watson, a patriot without
a flaw.
Stanton surrounds himself and selects young men--as far as he can,
he crowds out the remains of Scott, so tenderly protected by
Lincoln. Could he only have swept out the rest of the old fogies!
Undoubtedly these young men in the War Department would give new
life to it.
_February 6._--The people at large are at a loss to find the cause
of the recent disasters. The general axiom is, "we are not a
military nation." Neither is the South. But here they forget that
every great or small effect has its--not only--cause, but several
causes. Many such causes have been repeatedly pointed out. Old
routine in military organization stands foremost. Few, if any,
understand wherein consists the proper organization of an army, and
most have notions reaching back sixty years. The medical and
surgical bureaus are obsolete. Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, who
is always on the right side, and with him many young men, insisted
upon organizing the above services as they are organized in the
Continental armies of Europe. But even in the Senate prevailed the
respect for dusty, rusty, domestic tradition. The few changes forced
by the outcry of the people cure not the evil. Skeletons and not
men are at work, and if they are not skeletons they are leeches of
the government and of the people's blood.
Thus likewise, when the organizations of the staffs was discussed,
no one had the first notion of the nature and duties of a staff; and
the military authorities were as ignorant as the civilians. Of
course a McClellan, then a Halleck, Meigs, Hitchcock, etc., could
not disperse the fog. Many Congressmen were thunderstruck by the
display of words which, as they were purely technical terms, the
Congressmen in question could not understand. Others sought for
guidance in the Staff of Wellington, and thus oddly but unmistakably
proved themselves completely in the dark as to the difference
between the personal staff of the commander of an army, and the
Staff of that Army itself. And all this in a country of the most
rapid movement and progress, and amongst a people which
unhesitatingly adopts and adapts to its own needs and welfare almost
every novelty from almost every part of the world. The great fault
committed by the People is its too great respect for false
authorities and false prophets.
The so-called honest Conservatives have exercised and still continue
to exercise a most fatal influence on public affairs, and especially
on what is called the domestic policy. These same "honest
Conservatives" are more dangerous than the out-spoken Copperheads;
more dangerous, perhaps, than all the friends of slavery and foes
of the Union combined. These "honest Conservatives" have contrived
to surround themselves with a halo of honesty and respectability.
But they as cordially hate and dread every vivid light and vigorous
progress as the traitors themselves do. Those Conservatives opposed
every vigorous measure. They spoke tenderly of the "misguided
brethren" in the South, and took their own servile and blundering,
though quite possibly sincere fancies, for actual and tangible
facts. The honest Conservatives will support whatever is slow,
double-dealing, and, therefore, conservative. The honest
Conservatives took McClellan to their honest hearts, and not one of
them has any clear notion of military affairs, and still less can
any of them fathom the awful depth of McClellan's military
criminality. I repeat what I said in the first volume of my Diary:
McClellan and his tail fell, not on account of their Democratism, or
their pro-slavery creed, but because McClellan repeatedly displayed
all the worst qualities of a thoroughly unsoldierly commander. No
one would have uttered a word of censure if McClellan with his
hundred and eighty thousand men had surrounded the thirty to forty
thousand rebels in Centreville and Manassas in the winter of 1861-2,
and taken some nobler trophies than camp manure and maple guns! The
honest Conservatives attack and hate Stanton, yet not one of them
has any notion whatever of Stanton's action towards McClellan.
Stanton would have been the first to raise McClellan sky-high if
McClellan had preferred to fight instead of reposing in his bed in
Washington, and then in various muds. Such is your knowledge of this
and of all other public affairs, O respectable soul and spiritless
body of honest Conservatives! Historians of this country! collect
the names of the _honest_ Conservatives, but expose them not to the
abomination of coming generations.
_February 7._--The Sanitary Commission, with all its branches and
subdivisions, is among the noblest manifestations of what can be
done by a free people, and how private enterprise of intelligent,
patriotic and unselfish men can confer benefit. Nor must the praise
of that great work be limited to men. Warm-hearted gentlewomen also
have done their share in it. The Sanitary Commission is one of the
best out-croppings of self-government, and does honor to the people,
and softens and ameliorates the warlike roughness of the times.
The Sanitary Commission marks a new era in the history of genuine
and not bogus and merely verbal philanthropy, and its spontaneity
and expansion were only possible in free, and therefore humane and
enlightened America.
_February 8._--Mr. Seward is busily at work endeavoring to crush the
radicals, and to make the Emancipation Proclamation a mere sheet of
waste paper. All that is mean and nasty, all that is reeking and
foul with all kinds of corruptions, takes Seward for its
standard-bearer. The so-called radical press aids Seward with all
its might.
_February 9._--Gen. Casey adopts some of my ideas and suggestions,
which I discussed with him. Gen. Casey is honestly at work, and the
new tactics will be in print.
Stanton would wish to establish a thorough military camp on a large
scale, for organizing Africo-Americans. But the higher powers are
against it. Virginia, the most populous slave state, the nursery of
slaves, must, scorpion-like, be surrounded with glowing contraband
camps. What a splendid position for such a camp is Harper's Ferry
under the shadow of immortal John Brown!
A few days ago, Mr. Lincoln was full of joy because the defences of
Washington are in excellent condition. Thus the country will learn
with joy that the----spade is still at work, that the military curse
hurled by Scott and McClellan is still influencing the operation of
the war, that Halleck is the worthy continuator of his predecessors,
that Mr. Lincoln's fears and uneasiness about the fate of the city
of Washington are slowly, slowly assuaged, that the President's
fancy is nursed, that the construction of the extensive
fortifications around the capital is still continued, that new forts
are continually erected, that the fear of an attack on Washington is
still paramount, and that to-day--sixty to seventy thousand troops
are kept idle in these old and new forts--when Rosecrans has no
succor, when Texas is lost, and when the whole rebel region
trembles under the tread of savage hordes.
Through one of its clerks, the State Department intends to sue me
for libel, contained, as they say, in the first volume of my
_Diary_. Well, great masters, if you swallow me, you may not digest
me. Let us try.[2]
[Footnote 2: I must here record that Mr. Carlisle, the
eminent lawyer in Washington, although in every respect
opposed to my political and social views, behaved, in this
affair, as a thorough man of honor. I am sorry that on a
similar former occasion, not in Washington, my political
friends showed themselves not Carlisles.]
_February 10._--... mens agitat molem ... oh, could I only believe
that such is the case with Mr. Lincoln, how devoted I could become,
and loyal to him, according to the new theory of the lickspittles
and politicians!
_February 10._--Resolute Senator Grimes did what was the duty of
Sumner to have done long ago. Grimes presented resolutions relative
to the mission of Mercier to Richmond, a mission allowed, almost
authorized by Mr. Seward. Mercier cannot be blamed, and his veracity
is supported by the fact that Lord Lyons was at once informed of the
whole transaction, and Lord Lyons is to be believed. Seward will
play the innocent, and take his refuge in the god of--lies.
_February 12._--In his answer to the Senate, Mr. Seward gives to
Mercier the lie direct. It will be rich if Mercier stands square.
_February 12._--Congress draws to its close. Lincoln accumulates
powers, responsibilities, and hereafter perhaps curses, sufficient
to break the turtle on which stands the elephant that sustains the
Sanscrit world.
_February 13._--The almost imperceptible ripple on the diplomatic pool
of Washington has disappeared. Simple people might have believed that
there was an issue of veracity between Mr. Seward and the French
Minister. But since a long, a very long time, Seward and veracity have
run in different orbits, and diplomats, Talleyrand-like, ought to be
the incarnation of equanimity even if any one--diplomatically--treads
on their toes. Besides, the answer given to the Senate before it
reached its destination _might have been arranged_ at any such
confidential chat as was that one where the little innocent,
nobody-hurting (no, not even the people's honour) trip to Richmond was
concocted. The French Minister's name _appears not_ in the document
sent to the Senate; so the lie direct is after all only a constructive
lie; nobody is hurt. A general shaking of hands and all is well. But
strange things may come out yet, and others may not be so blazened
out.
The soap bubble of mediation exploded under the nose of the French
schemers. The soap used by them was of the finest and most aromatic
quality, but the democratic nerves of the American people resisted
the Franco-diplomatic cunningly mixed aroma. The applause gained by
Mr. Seward's very indifferent document, wherein the great initiator
of the Latin race on this free continent was rebuked, the
satisfaction shown by the public, ought to open the eyes of the
sentimental French trio. They ought to understand, by this time,
that Seward's argumentative dispatch, incomplete and below mark as
it is, won applause, although it expresses only the hundredth of the
patriotic ire bursting from the people's bosom. Otherwise the people
would have at once found out all skillfully, cunningly,
chameleon-like Seward dodges, which ignore before Europe the sublime
character of the struggle forced by treason upon the loyal free
States; and in which how he avoids to hurt the slavocracy.
The Imperial mediator and bottle-holder to slavocracy belies not his
bloody origin and his bloody appetites. The events in Egypt, the
negro kidnapping in Alexandria, have torn the mask from his astute
policy. If, for his filibustering raid into Mexico, Louis Napoleon
wanted colored soldiers accustomed to the climate, he could raise
them among the free colored population of the French possessions in
Martinique, Guadaloupe, etc. But to use the freemen from the
Antilles would have set a bad example to the Africo-Americans in the
revolted States; Louis Napoleon wished not to hurt or offend his
slaveocratic pets and traitors; by kidnapping slaves in Egypt the
French ruler showed how highly he values the stealing qualities of
the Southern chivalry--and he paid a tribute to the principle of
slavery.
But while treating with all possible horror and disrespect the
French officiousness, the American people ought not to forget the
innermost interconnection of events. If the French diplomacy, if the
French Cabinet became sentimental at the sight of our deadly
struggle with the demon of treason, it was because they witnessed
our helplessness, and witnessed the uninterrupted chain of faults
and of bad policy; it was because they and the whole world saw the
want of earnestness in our official leaders; and from all this these
_Messieurs_ concluded that the patriots of the North never will be
able to crush the traitors in the South. So speak the French
diplomatic documents, so speaks Mercier, Drouyn de l'Huys and Louis
Napoleon; and has not the Seward-Weed influence, paramount in the
policy of the Government, brought about all these bad results,
palsied the war, and thus almost justified the officiousness of the
_Messieurs_?
_February 13._--Many forebode the downfall, the dissolution, and the
disappearance of the Republican party. That may be, and if so then
one of the cardinal laws of human progress, development and
ascension, will be fullfilled. _The initiator either perishes by the
initiated, or the initiator perishes, disappears because his
special mission, his task is done._
The progress of humanity is marked by the sacrifice and death of its
initiators. Such was the end of the founders of religions, of
societies; such of political bodies. Osiris, Lycurgus, Romulus,
Christ, the martyrs, the apostles, are a few from numberless
illustrations that might be cited. The Long Parliament, the French
Convention, disappeared after having fullfilled the work of
destruction pointed out to them by the genius of progress and of our
race. As an organized political party the Republican may disappear
with the war, for slavery is finally destroyed. This is the noble
initiation and solution fulfilled by the Republican party. To
destroy slavery and the political defenders and props of slavery,
was the mission that was fatally thrown or entrusted by inexorable
destiny to the Republican party. With the destruction of slavery,
disappears from the political life of America the _Northern man with
Southern principles_; those very dregs of dregs of all times and of
all political bodies and societies. Slavery is destroyed both
virtually and _de facto_, new issues are looming, new solutions will
be given, and new men will bear the new word.
All in creation, and in every party, has its light and its shadow,
its pure principle, its pure men and its dregs. Every party has its
faults and its shortcomings. The dregs fall, and the work of the
party is done. Some of the chiefs and leaders of the Republican
party became faithless, (Seward,) went over to darkness, but thereby
the onward march to the sacred aim was not arrested. The
irresistible current of events and of human affairs carried onwards
the Republican party. Perhaps unconsciously, but nevertheless
emphatically, the Republican party in its _ensemble_ was a
providential agency; it became the incarnation of the loftiest
aspirations of the best among the American people. Against its wish
and will, contrary to expectations, the Republican party was
challenged to action; the sword of law, of justice and of right, was
forcibly thrust into the party's hand, and slavocracy, the
challenger, is already bleeding its life-blood, and its death-knell
resounds from pole to pole. To speak the language of politicians;
abolition, emancipation by the sword, was forced upon the Republican
party.
And the Republican party carried out the principle of the preamble
of the bill of rights; a principle eternal as right, but
nevertheless hitherto only partially realized. The Republican party
has borne the brunt, and accomplished the appointed evolutions of
progress; and the Republican party has deserved well of the American
people, of history and of humanity. And the children and
grandchildren of those who to-day cavil, defile and stone the party,
they hereafter will bless the Republican party, who, with noble
consciousness can say to the spirit of light and of duty: _Nunc
dimitte in pacem servum tuum Domine._
One of the best evidences of purity and of the elevation of the
Republican party in its noblest representative men is that the
obtusest among the great diplomats shunned the Republicans as little
monsters shun the daylight. I mention this as a collateral
illustration without intending to raise a diplomat or the poor
diplomacy of the world to an undeserved significance, for I bear in
mind the behest, _ne misceantur sacra prophanis_.
The nobleness of the accomplished mission, the glorious Sunset
wherein will disappear the Republican party, frees, not from
reproaches nor from maledictions, those Republicans who, by their
selfishness and faithlessness, obstructed its progress, and polluted
the party. Their names remain nailed to the pillory.
I may here observe that I never belonged and never claimed to belong
to the Republican party. For nearly half a century my creed has
been--Onward! onward! struggle, fight, sacrifice for light, for
progress, for human rights; for that cause fight and struggle under
every banner, under every name, and in rank and file with every
body.
_February 13._--Seward seizes by the hair the occasion proffered to
him by the _Decembriseur's_ offer of mediation, and tries to
reconquer the confidence of the public. This shows to Drouyn de
l'Huys and to his master, that they are misinformed concerning the
condition of America, (also M. Mercier misinformed them; how could
he do otherwise?) The despatch to Dayton, February 7, will lead
astray public opinion. The majority will forget and lose sight of
the intercatenation of events and actions perpetrated by Mr.
Seward. O Chase! O Sumner! Seward rises with his patient pen and
paper in the inky glory of a patriot, and you----cave in.
Speaking of Mr. Seward's answer to France, a diplomat observed to
me: "The European Cabinets are so accustomed to Mr. Seward's
duplicity and want of veracity, that now that Seward refuses to
accept mediation, in Europe they will conclude that Seward's
acceptation of mediation is at hand."
_February 14._--The struggle is for the rights of man, for the
Christian idea, purified of all dogma and worship. Those who see it
not, are similar to a fish from the Kentucky Cave.
_February 14._--Could Mr. Lincoln only be inspired, be warmed by the
sacred fire of enthusiasm, then his natural and selected affinities
would be other minds than those of a Seward, a Weed, a Halleck,
etc.; then what is night could become light; and where he painfully
gropes along his path, Mr. Lincoln would march with a firm, almost
with a godlike step, at the head of such a peerless people as those
of whom he is the Chief Magistrate.
But as it is now, I may turn the mind in any direction whatever, all
the causes of mishaps and disasters converge on Mr. Lincoln.
According to his partisans, Mr. Lincoln's intentions are the best,
and he is always trying to conciliate--and to shift. It is useless
to discuss Mr. Lincoln's peculiar ways. In most cases, Mr. Lincoln
uses old, rotten tools for a new and heavy work. I have it from the
most truthful and positive authority, that Mr. Lincoln is fully
acquainted with the opinions of the so called _dissatisfied_, of
those with Southern propensities, proclivities and affinities, of
whom many are in the superior civil and military service. Contrary
to the advice of patriots in the Cabinet and out of it, Mr. Lincoln
insists upon keeping such at their post--doubtless always expecting
that they will _turn round_. Such a heavy difficulty and task as is
the present, must be worked out, with absolute devotion and
sincerity; and can this logically be expected from men whose hearts
and minds are not in their actions? Mr. Lincoln forgets that
thousands of lives and millions of money are sacrificed to the
experiment as to whether the insincere officials will _turn round_.
The cause will not fail, light will not be extinguish, even if the
leaders break down or betray, even if the Copperheads frighten some
of the pilots, or if some of the faithless pilots shake hands with
the Copperheads, as was the case in the elections of November last
in New York and elsewhere. The people will save light, dissipate
darkness, save the cause, save the leaders, the pilots and the
politicians.
_February 15._--Some days ago in compliance with summons, that
pedler of all corruptions, Thurlow Weed, came to Washington, and
with Mr. Seward, his _fidus Achates_, was for days or nights
closeted with Mr. Lincoln, pouring into the president's soul as much
poison and darkness as was possible. That such was the case can,
besides, easily be concluded from what that incarnation of all
perversions predicated to all who came within his nauseous
preachings here. According to Mr. T. Weed's revelations, "_The
proclamation is an absurdity, and the Union will soon--as it
ought--be ruled by the rebels._" So it was told me. Perhaps it is
already done through Thurlow Weed's mediation and instrumentality.
Continually inspired by Weed, Mr. Seward is therefore untiring in
his over-patriotic efforts to preserve the former Union and
Slavery--to save the matricide slave-holders.
In what clutches is Mr. Lincoln! Even I pity him. Even I am forced
to give him credit for being what he is--considering his intimacies
and his surroundings. Few men entrusted with power over nations have
resisted such fatal influences,--not even Cromwell and Napoleon.
History has not yet settled how it was with Caesar, and so far as I
know, Frederick the Great of Prussia is of the very few who have
been unimpressionable. Pericles coruscates over ruins and the night
of the ancient world; Pericles's intimacy was with the best and the
manliest Athenians.
But has Mr. Lincoln an unlimited confidence in the few men with
large brains and with big hearts, brains and hearts burning with the
sacred and purest patriotic fire? Or are not rather all his
favorites--not even whitened--sepulchres of manhood, of mind and of
sacred intellect?
_February 16._--It is asserted, and some day or other it will be
verified, that the Committee on the Conduct of the War have
investigated how far certain generals from the army on the
Rappahannock used their influence with the President to paralyze a
movement against the enemy ordered by Burnside. That facts
discovered may be published or not, for the Administration shuns
publicity. _The Committee discovered that Mr. Seward was implicated
in that conspiracy of generals against Burnside._ Any qualification
of such conduct is impossible, and the vocabulary of crimes has no
name for it; let it, therefore, be _Sewardism_. The editors of the
New York _Tribune_ did their utmost to prevent _Sewardism_ being
exposed.
_February 16._--Often, so to speak, the hand refuses to record what the
head hears and sees, what the reason must judge. To witness how one of
the greatest events in the development of mankind, how the deadly
struggle between right and crime, between good and evil, how the blood
and sweat of _such a people_ are dealt with by--counterfeits!
_February 17._--Poor Banks! He is ruined by having been last year
pressed to Seward's bosom, and having been thus initiated into the
Seward-Weed Union and slavery-restoring policy. Banks and Louis
Napoleon in Mexico and in his mediation scheme; both Banks and
Napoleon were ruined by yielding to bad advice--Banks to that of
Seward, and Louis Napoleon to that of his diplomats. I hope that
Banks will shake off the nightmare that is throttling him now; that
he will no more write senseless proclamations, will give up the
attempt to save slave-holders, and will march straight to the great
task of crushing the rebellion and rebels. He will blot slavery,
that Cain's mark on the brow of the Union; blot it and throw it into
the marshes of the parishes of Louisiana. I rely upon Banks's sound
common sense. He will come out from among the evil ones.
_February 18._--Under no other transcendent leadership than that of
its patriotism and convictions, the majority of this expiring Congress
boldly and squarely faced the emergencies and all the necessities
daily, hourly evoked by the Rebellion, and unhesitatingly met them. If
the majority was at times confused, the confusion was generated by
many acts of the administration, and not by any shrinking before the
mighty and crushing task, or by the attempt to evade the
responsibility. The impartial historian will find in the Statutes an
undisputable confirmation of my assertions. The majority met all the
prejudices against taxation, indebtedness, paper currency, draft, and
other similar cases.
And all the time the majority of Congress was stormed by traitors,
by intriguers, by falsifiers and prisoners of public opinion; the
minority in Congress taking the lead therein. Many who ought to
have supported the majority either fainted or played false. The
so-called good press, neither resolute nor clear-sighted, nor
far-seeing, more than once confused, and as a whole seldom
thoroughly supported the majority.
If the good press had the indomitable courage in behalf of good and
truth, that the _Herald_ has in behalf of untruth and of mischief,
how differently would the affairs look and stand!
_February 19._--Jackson first formed, attracted and led on the
people's opinion. Has not Mr. Lincoln thrown confusion around?
_February 19._--The Supreme Court of the United States has before it
the prize cases resulting from captures made by our navy. The
counsel for the English and rebel blockade-runners and pilferers
find the best point of legal defence in the unstatesmanlike and
unlegal wording of the proclamation of the blockade, as concocted
and issued by Mr. Seward, and in the repeated declarations contained
in the voluminous diplomatic correspondence of our Secretary of
State,--declarations asserting that _no war whatever is going on in
the Federal Republic_. No war, therefore no lawful prizes on the
ocean. So ignorance, and humbug mark every step of this foremost
among the pilots of a noble, high-minded, but too confiding people.
The facts, the rules, and the principles in these prize cases are
almost unprecedented and new; new in the international laws, and
new in the history of governments of nations. Seldom, if ever, were
so complicated the powers of government, its rights, and the duties
of neutrals, the rights and the duties of the captors, and the
condition of the captured. This rebellion is, so to speak, _sui
generis_, almost unprecedented on land and sea. The difficulties and
complications thus arising, became more complicated by the either
reckless or unscientific (or both) turn given by the State
Department in conceding to the rebels the condition of belligerents.
Thus the great statutory power of the sovereign, (that is, of the
Union through its president) for the suppression of the rebellion
was palsied at the start. The insurrection of the Netherlands alone
has some very small similarity with our civil war; however, that
insurrection took place at a time when very few, if any, principles
of international laws were generally laid down and generally
recognized. Here the municipal laws, the right of the sovereign and
his duty to save itself and the people, the rights and the laws of
war, wrongly applied to such virtual outlaws as the rebels, the
maritime code of prize laws and rules, play into and intertwine each
other. When Mr. Seward penned his doleful proclamation of the
blockade, etc., he never had before his mind what a mess he
generated; what complications might arise therefrom. I am sure he
never knew that such proclamation was _a priori_ pregnant with
complications, and that at least its wording ought to have been very
careful. Mr. Seward was not at all cognizant of the fact that the
wording of a proclamation of a blockade, for the time being, lays
down a rule for the judges in the prize courts. For him it was
rather a declamation than a proclamation; he who believed the
rebellion would end in July, 1861, and that no occasion would arise
to apply the rules of the blockade.
Thus Mr. Seward, with his thorough knowledge of international law
rendered difficult the position of the captors; he equally increased
the difficulty for the judge to administer justice. By this
proclamation and the commentaries put on it, Mr. Seward curtailed
the rights of the government of which he is a part, conceded undue
conditions to the rebels, and facilitated to the neutrals the means
of violating his blockade. So much is clear and palpable to-day, and
I am sure more complications and imbecilities are in store. If Mr.
Seward had had good advisors for these nice and difficult questions,
he would not have blundered in this way. Thus Charles Eames, who in
the pleadings before the Superior United States Court has shown a
consummate mastery in prize questions--Eames could teach Mr. Seward
a great deal about the constitutional powers of the president to
suppress the rebellion, and about the meaning and the bearing of
international maritime laws, rights, duties and rules.
_February 20._--A Mr. Funk, a member of the Illinois Senate, a
farmer, and a man of sixty-five years, on February 13, made a speech
in that body which sounds better than all the rhetories and
oratories. It was the sound and genuine utterance of a man from the
people, and I hope some future historian will record the speech and
the name of the old, indomitable patriot.
_February 20._--Stimulated by a pure Athenian breeze, the Congress
passed a law organizing an Academy of Sciences. What a gigantic
folly; the only one committed by this Congress. The pressure was
very great, and exercised by the bottomless vanity of certain
scientific, self-styled magnates, and by the Athenians. Up to this
day, the American scientific development and progress consisted in
its freedom and independence. No legal corporation impeded and
trammeled the limitless scope of the intellectual and scientific
development. That was the soul and secret of our rapid and luminous
onward march. Now fifty patented, incorporated respectabilities will
put the curb on, will hamper the expansion. Academies turn to
fossils. My hope is that the true American spirit will soar above
the vanity and pettiness of corporated wisdom, and that this
scientific Academy bubble will end in inanity and in ridicule. I am
sorry that Congress was taken in, and committed such a blunder. It
was caught napping.
Mr. Chase's bank bill, prospective of money, and as many say,
prospective of presidency, passed the house. What fools are they
already begin to direct their steps and their ardent wishes toward
the White House.
_February 22._--The, at any price, supporters of the Administration,
point with satisfaction to the various successes, and to the space
of land already redeemed from rebellion. I protest against such
explanation given to events, and call to it the attention of every
future historian. Never had the _suum cuique_ required a more
stringent, philosophical application. With the various inexhaustible
means at its disposal, with the unextinguishable enthusiasm of the
people, far different and more conclusive results, _could_ and ought
to have been obtained. The ship makes headway if even, by the
negligence of the officers and of the crew, she drags a cable or an
anchor. The ship is the people dragging its administrators.
A western Democrat, but patriot, said to me that Lincoln compares to
Jeff Davis, as a wheel-barrow does to a steam engine!
The Democrats claim to be the genuine fighting element, and to be
possessed of the civic courage, and of governmental capacity. How,
then, can the Democrats rave for McClellan, the most unfighting
soldier ever known?
The future historian must be warned not to look to the newspapers
for information concerning facts and concerning the spirit of the
people. The _Tribune's_ senile clamor for peace, for arbitration,
for meditation, its Jewitt, Mercier, Napoleon, and Switzerland
combinations, fell dead and in ridicule before the sound judgment of
ninety-nine hundredths of the people.
_February 24._--In Europe I had experience of political prisons and
of their horror. But I would prefer to rot, to be eaten up by rats,
rather than be defended by such arch-copperheads as are the Coxes,
the Biddles, the Powells, etc., etc.
In the discussion concerning the issue of the letters of marque,
Sumner was dwelling in sentimentalities and generalities, altogether
losing sight of the means of defense of the country, and the genuine
national resources. With all respect for high and sentimental
principles and patriotism, with due reverence of the opinion, the
applause or the condemnatory verdict to be issued by philanthropists,
by doctors, and other Tommities, my heart and my brains prefer the
resolute, patriotic, manly Grimes, Wades, etc., the various _skippers_
and masters, all of whom look not over the ocean for applause, but
above all have in view to save or to defend the country, whatever be
the rules or expectations of the self-constituted Doctors of
International laws.
_February 25._--The Union-Slavery saviours, led on by the _Herald_,
by Seward, by Weed, etc., all are busily at work.
_Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from
us._
I hear that great disorder prevails in the Quartermaster's Department.
It is no wonder. In all armies, countries, government and wars, the
Quartermaster's Department is always disorderly. Why shall it not be
so here, when want of energy is the word? At times Napoleon hung or
shot such infamous thieves, as by their thefts skinned and destroyed
the soldiers and the army; at times in Russia, such curses are sent to
Siberia. But as yet, I have not heard that any body was hurt here,
with the exception of the treasury of the country, and of the
soldiers. The chain-gang of those quartermaster's thieves,
contractors, jobbers and lobbyists must be strong, very long, and
composed of all kind of influential and not-influential vampyres.
Somebody told me, perhaps in joke, that all of them constitute a kind
of free-masonry, and have signs of recognition. After all, that may be
true. Impudence, brazen brow, and blank conscience may be among such
signs of recognition.
_February 26._--O, could I only win confidence in Mr. Lincoln, it
would be one of the most cheerful days and events in my life.
Perhaps, elephant-like, Mr. Lincoln slowly, cautiously but surely
feels his way across a bridge leading over a precipice. Perhaps so;
only his slowness is marked with blood and disasters. But the most
discouraging and distressing is his _cortege_, his official and
unofficial friends. Mars Stanton, Neptune Welles, are good and
reliable, but have no decided preponderance. Astrea-Themis-Bates is
mostly right when disinfected from border-State's policy, and from
fear of direct, unconditional emancipation. But neither in Olympus
nor in Tartarus, neither in heaven nor in hell, can I find names of
prototypes for the official and unofficial body-guard which,
commanded by Seward, surrounds and watches Mr. Lincoln, so that no
ray of light, no breath of spirit and energy may reach him.
_February 26._--This civil war with its _cortege_ of losses and
disasters, which after all fall most bloodily and crushingly on the
laborious, and rather comparatively, poorer part of the whole
people; perhaps all this will form the education of the rank and
file of the political Democratic party. The like Democratic masses
are intellectually by far inferior to the Republican masses.
Experience will perhaps teach those unwashed Democrats how degrading
was their submission to slavocracy, which reduced them to the
condition of political helots. This rank and file may find out how
they were blindfolded by slave breeders and their northern abettors.
A part of the Democratic masses were, and still are kept in as
brutal political ignorance and depravity as are the poor whites in
the South, under whatever name one may record them. Now, or never,
is the time for the _unwashed_ to find out that during their
alliance with the Southern traitors, all genuine manhood, all that
ennobles, elevates the man and warms his heart, was poisoned or
violently torn from them--that brutality is not liberty, and
finally, that the Northern leaders have been or are more abject than
abjectness itself. If the rank and file finds out all this, the
blood and disasters are, in part at least, atoned for.
_February 27._--O! could I from every word, from every page of this
Diary, for eternities, make coruscate the nobleness, the simple
faith with which the people sacrifices all to the cause. To be
biblical, the sacrifice of the people is as pure as was that made
by Abel; that made by the people's captains, leaders, pilots is
Cain-like.
_February 27._--All the Copperheads fused together have done less
mischief, have less distorted and less thrown out of the track the
holy cause, they have exercised a less fatal and sacrilegious
influence, they are responsible for less blood and lives, than is
Mr. Seward, with all his arguments and spread-eagleism. Even
McClellan and McClellanism recede before Seward and Sewardism, the
latter having generated the former. In times of political
convulsions, perverse minds and intellects at the helm, more fatally
influence the fate of a nation than do lost battles. Lost battles
often harden the temper of a people; a perverse mind vitiates it.
_February 27._--Gold rises, and no panic, a phenomenon upsetting the
old theories of political economy. This rise will not affect the
public credit, will not even ruin the poor. I am sure it will be so,
and political economy, as every thing else in this country, will
receive new and more true solutions for its old, absolute problems.
The genuine credit, the prosperity of this country, is wholly
independent of this or that financial or governmental would-be
capacity; is independent of European exchanges, and of the
appreciation by the Rothschilds, the Barings, and whatever be the
names of the European appraisers. The American credit is based on
the consciousness of the people, and on the faith in its own
vitality, in its inexhaustible intellectual and material resources.
The people credits to itself, it asks not the foreigners to open
for it any credit. The foreign capitalists will come and beg. The
nation is not composed here as it is composed all over Europe, of a
large body of oppressed, who are cheated, taxed by the upper-strata
and by a Government. Thus credit and discredit in America have other
causes and foundations, their fluctuations differ from all that
decides such eventualities in Europe.