Press -- Ethics -- President's Powers -- Seward's Manifestoes --
Cavalry -- Letters of Marque -- Halleck -- Siegel -- Fighting --
McDowell -- Schalk -- Hooker -- Etat Major-General -- Gold --
Cloaca Maxima -- Alliance -- Burnside -- Halleckiana -- Had we
but Generals, how often Lee could have been destroyed, etc.
_March 1._--Unprecedented is the fact in the history of
constitutionally-governed nations, that the patriots of a political
party in power, that its most devoted and ardent men, as a question
of life or death, are forced to support and defend an Administration
which they placed at the helm, and whose many, many acts they
disapprove.
The soldiers in the hospitals die the death of confessors to the
great cause. And the hair turns not white on the heads of those
whose policy, helplessness, and ignorance, crowd the hospitals with
the people's best children.
_March 2._--The New-York _Times_--one among the great beacons and
authorities in the country--the New York _Times_ belies its title as
the "little villain." Gigantically, Atlas-like, that sheet upholds
Seward and Weed. The _Times_ makes one admire the senile,
compromising, mediating, arbitrating, and, at times, stumbling
_Tribune_, and the cautious but often ardent _Evening Post_.
The _Times_ joins in the outcry against the radicals. It is
Seward-Weed's watchword. It is the watchword of the _Herald_. It is
the watchword of the most thickly coppered Copperheads. Genuine, pure
convictions and principles are always radical. Christianity could not
have been established were not the first Christians most absolute
radicals. They compromised not with heathenism, compromised not with
Judaism, which in every way was their father. Radicals--true
ones--look to the great aim, forget their persons, and are not moved
by mean interests and vanities.
The press in Europe, above all, on the Continent, is different. Its
editors and contributors risk their liberty, their persons, their
pockets, and sacrifice all to their convictions. They are not afraid
to speak out their convictions, even if under the penalty to
lose--subscribers; and that is all the risk run by an American
newspaper. The _Herald_, the _World_, the _Express_, all organs of
the evil spirit, through thick and thin, stand to their fetish, that
McClellan; the Republican papers neither pitilessly attack the
enemies, nor boldly and manfully support the friends, of the cause.
I nurse no personal likings or dislikings; the times are too mighty,
too earnest for such pettiness. For me, men are agencies of
principles: bad agencies of an intrinsically good principle are
often more mischievous than are bad principles and their confessors.
The eternal tendency of human elevation and purification is to
eliminate, to dissolve, to uproot social evils, to neutralize or
push aside bad men, in whatever skin they may go about. It is a slow
and difficult, but nevertheless incessant work of our race. It is
consecrated by all founders of religions, by legislators, by
philosophers, by moralists; it is an article of human, social and
political ethics. As far as I experienced, the European radical
press more strictly observes that rule of political ethics than the
American press is wont to do. And the press, bad or good, is the
high pontifex of our times; more than any other social agency
whatever, the press ought, at least, to be manly, elevated,
indomitable, vigilant and straight-forward. I mean the respectable
press.
_March 3._--Senator Wilson's kind of farewell speech to the
Copperheads was ringing with fiery and elevated patriotism. It
re-echoed the sentiments, the notions, the aspirations of the
people. The cobbler of Natick rose above the rhetors, above the
deliverers of prosy, classical, polished, elaborated orations, above
young and above gray-haired Athenians, high as our fiery and stormy
epoch towers over the epochs of quiet, self-satisfied, smooth, cold,
elaborate and soulless civilities.
_March 4._--Mr. Lincoln hesitates--and, as many assert, is
altogether opposed to use all the severity of the laws against the
rebels. And shall not our butchered soldiers be avenged? It is
sacrilegious to put in the same scales the Union soldier and the
rebels; it is the same as to put on equal terms before justice the
incendiary and the man who stops or kills the criminal in _flagrante
delicto_.
_March 3._--After a tedious labor I waded through the State papers.
O, what an accumulation of ignorance! Almost every historical and
chronological fact misplaced, misunderstood, perverted, distorted,
wrongly applied. And how many, many contradictions! Only when Mr.
Seward can simply--(very, very seldom) point out to England that by
_this_ and _that fact_ and _act_ England violates the international
laws and rules of neutrality and of good comity between two
_friendly_ governments and nations: then, _only_, Mr. Seward's
papers acquire historical and political signification. But not his
spread eagleism, not his argumentation; and, still less his broad
and inexhaustible and variegated information. Diplomatic and
statesmanlike character can not be conceded to his State papers.
Few, very few, will read them, although foreign Courts, ministers,
statesmen, princes, and the so-called celebrated women are
complimented and deluged with them. The most pitiless critics of
these productions would be the smaller clerks in the Departments of
Foreign Affairs in London and Paris. Only they are not fools to
waste their time on such specimens of literature.
_March 4._--Congress adjourned. This Thirty-Seventh Congress marks a
new era in the American and in the world's history. It inaugurated
and directed a new evolution in the onward progress of mankind. The
task of this Congress was by far more difficult and heavier than was
the task of the revolutionary and of the constitutional Congresses.
The revolutionary Congress had to fight an external enemy. The
tories of that epoch were comparatively less dangerous than are now
all kinds of Copperheads; it had to overcome material wants and
impediments, and not moral, nor social ones. That Congress was
omnipotent, governed the country, and was backed by its virgin
enthusiasm, by unity of purpose, and was not hampered by any
formulas and precedents. The Thirty-Seventh Congress had to fight a
powerful enemy, spread almost over two-thirds of the territory of
the Union; it had to fight and stand, so to speak, at home against
inveterate prejudices, against such bitter and dangerous domestic
enemies as are the Northern men with Southern principles. This
Congress was manacled by constitutional formulas, and had to carry
various other deadweights already pointed out. In the first part of
the session, Pike, Member of Congress from Maine, laid down as the
task for the Congress, _Fight, Tax, Emancipate_--and the Congress
fulfilled the task. In a certain aspect the Thirty-Seventh Congress
showed itself almost superior to the great immortal French
Convention, which ruled, governed, administered, and legislated,
while this Congress dragged a Lincoln, a Seward, etc. This Congress
accomplished noble and great things without containing the so-called
"great" or "representative" men, and thus Congress thoroughly
vindicated the great social truth of genuine, democratic
self-government.
_March 5._--The _good_ press reduces the activity of the Thirty
Seventh Congress to its own rather pigmy-like proportions.
Congress was powerless to purify the corrosive air prevailing in
Washington, above all in the various official strata. Congress
ardently wished to purify, but the third side of the Congressional
triangle, the executive and administrative power, preferred to nurse
the foul elements. Such doubtful, and some worse than doubtful
officials, undoubtedly will become more bold, expecting the
near-at-hand advent of the Copperhead Democratic Millennium.
_March 6._--The Copperhead members of both the Houses have been very
prolific and _scientific_ about the inferiority of race. Pretty
specimens of superiority are they, with their sham, superficial, at
hap-hazard gathered, unvaluable small information, with their
inveterate prejudices, with their opaque, heavy, unlofty minds! Give
to any Africo-American equal chances with these props of darkness,
and he very speedily will assert over them an unquestionable
superiority. Are not the humble, suffering, orderly contrabands
infinitely superior to the rowdy, unruly, ignorant, savage and
bloody whites?
Southern papers are filled with accounts of the savage persecutions
to which the Union men are exposed in the rebel region. It is the
result of what Mr. Seward likes to call his forbearing policy and of
the McClellan and Halleck warfare of 1861-62.
_March 7._--For the first time in the world's history, for the first
time in the history of nations governed and administered by
positive, well established, well organised, well defined
laws--powers, such as those conferred by Congress on Mr. Lincoln,
have been so conferred. Never have such powers been in advance,
coolly, legally deliberated, and in advance granted, to any
sovereign, as are forced upon Mr. Lincoln by Congress, and forced
upon him with the assent of a considerable majority of the people.
Never has a nation or an honest political body whatever, shown to
any mortal a confidence similar to that shown to Mr. Lincoln. Never
in antiquity, in the days of Athens' and Rome's purest patriotism
and civic virtue, has the people invested its best men with a trust
so boundless as did the last Congress give to Mr. Lincoln.
The powers granted to a Roman dictator were granted for a short
time, and they were extra legal in their nature and character; in
their action and execution the dictatorial powers were rather taken
than granted in detail. The powers forced on Mr. Lincoln are most
minutely specified; they have been most carefully framed and
surrounded by all the sacred rites of law, according to justice and
the written Constitution. These powers are sanctioned by all
formulas constituting the legal cement of a social structure
erected by the freest people that ever existed. These powers deliver
into Mr. Lincoln's hand all that is dear and sacred to man--his
liberty, his domestic hearth, his family, life and fortune. A well
and deliberately discussed and matured statute puts all such earthly
goods at Mr. Lincoln's disposal and free use.
The sublime axiom, _salus populi suprema lex esto_ again becomes
blood and life, and becomes so by the free, deliberate will and
decision of the foremost standard-bearer of light and civilization,
the first born in the spirit of Christian ethics and of the rights
of man.--
The Cromwells, the Napoleons, the absolute kings, the autocrats, and
all those whose rule was unlimited and not defined--all such grasped
at such powers. They seized them under the pressure of the direst
necessity, or to satisfy their personal ambition and exaltation. The
French Convention itself exercised unlimited dictatorial powers. But
the Convention allowed not these powers to be carried out of the
legislative sanctuary. The Committee of Robespierre was a board
belonging to and emanating from the Convention; the Commissaries
sent to the provinces and to the armies were members of the
Convention and represented its unlimited powers. When the Committee
of Public Safety wanted a new power to meet a new emergency, the
Convention, so to speak, daily adjusted the law and its might to
such emergencies.
Will Mr. Lincoln realize the grandeur of this unparallelled trust?
Has he a clear comprehension of the sacrifice thus perpetrated by
the people? I shudder to think about it and to doubt.
The men of the people's heart--a Fremont, a Butler, are still
shelved, and the Sewards, the Hallecks, are in positions wherein no
true patriot wishes them to be. The Republican press had better
learn tenacity from the Copperhead press, which never has given up
that fetish, McClellan, and never misses the slightest occasion to
bring his name in a wreath of lies before the public.
_March 8._--A great Union meeting in New York. War Democrats,
Republicans, etc., etc., etc. War to the knife with the rebels is
the watchword. Of course, Mr. Seward writes a letter to the meeting.
The letter bristles with stereotyped generalities and Unionism. The
substance of the Seward manifesto is: "Look at me; I, Seward, I am
the man to lead the Union party. I am not a Republican nor a
Democrat, but Union, Union, Union."
The _I_, the No. 1, looks out from every word of that manifesto.
With a certain skill, Mr. Seward packs together high-sounding words,
but these his phrases, are cold and hollow. Mr. Seward begins by
saying that the people are to confer upon him the highest honors.
Mr. Seward enlightens, and, so to speak, _pedagogues_ the people
concerning what everybody ought to sacrifice. The twenty-two
millions of people have already sacrificed every thing, and
sacrificed it without being doctrined by you, O, great patriot! and
you, great patriot, you have hitherto sacrificed NOTHING!
Let Mr. Seward show his patriotic record! To his ambition,
selfishness, ignorance and innate insincerity he has sacrificed as
much of the people's honor, of the people's interests, and of the
people's blood as was feasible. History cannot be cheated. History
will compare Mr. Seward's manifestoes and phrases with his actions!
_March 8._--The cavalry horses look as if they came from Egypt
during the seven years' famine. I inquired the reason from different
soldiers and officers of various regiments. Nine-tenths of them
agreed that the horses scarcely receive half the ration of oats and
hay allotted to them by the government. Somebody steals the other
half, but every body is satisfied. All this could very easily be
ferreted out, but it seems that no will exists any where to bring
the thieves to punishment.
_March 8._--During weeks and weeks I watched McDowell's inquiry.
What an honest and straight-forward man is Sigel. McDowell would
make an excellent criminal lawyer. McDowell is the most cunning to
cross-examine; he would shine among all criminal catchers. The
Know-Nothing West Point hatred is stirred up against Sigel. I was
most positively assured that at Pea Ridge a West Point drunkard and
general expressly fired his batteries in Sigel's rear, to throw
Sigel's troops into disorder and disgrace. But in the fire Sigel
cannot be disgraced nor confused; so say his soldiers and
companions. Sigel would do a great deal of good, but the
Know-Nothing-West Point-Halleck envy, ignorance and selfishness are
combined and bitter against Sigel.
In this inquiry Sigel proved that he always fought his whole corps
himself. So do all good commanders; so did Reno, Kearney, so do
Hooker, Heintzelman, Rosecrans, and very likely all generals in the
West.
The McClellan-Franklin school, and very probably the Simon-pure West
Pointers, fight differently. In their opinion, the commander of a
corps relies on his generals of divisions; these on the generals of
brigades, who, in their turn rely on colonels, and thus any kind of
_ensemble_ disappears. Of course exceptions exist, but in general
our battles seem to be fought by regiments and by colonels. O West
Point! At the last Bull Run two days' battles, McDowell fought his
corps in the West Point-McClellan fashion. His own statements show
that his corps was scattered, that he had it not in hand, that he
even knew not where the divisions of his corps were located; and
during the night of 29-30, he, McDowell, after wandering about
the field in search of his corps, spent that night bivouacking
amidst Sigel's corps!
_March 9._--New York politicians behaved as meanly towards
Wadsworth as if they were all from Seward's school.
_March 9._--Hooker is at the Herculean work of reorganizing the
army. Those who visited it assert that Hooker is very active, very
just; and that he has already accomplished the magician's work in
introducing order and changing the spirit of the army. Only some few
inveterate McClellanites and envious, genuine West Pointers are
slandering Hooker.
_March 12._--Since the adjournment of Congress, everything looks
sluggish and in suspense. The Administration, that is, Mr. Lincoln,
is at work preparing measures, etc., to carry out the laws of
Congress; Mr. Seward is at work to baffle them; Blair is going over
to border-State policy; Stanton, firm, as of old; so is Welles;
Bates recognises good principles, but is afraid to see such
principles at once brought to light; Chase makes bonds and notes. We
shall see what will come from all these preparations. But for
Congress, Lincoln or the executive, would have been disabled from
executing the laws. Congress, by its laws or statutes, aided the
Executive branch in its _sworn duty_.
_March 13._--The various Chambers of Commerce petition and ask that
the president may issue letters of marque. It is to be supposed, or
rather to be admitted, that the Chambers of Commerce know what is
the best for them, how our commerce is to be protected, how the
rebel pirates swept from the oceans, and how England, treacherous
England, perfidious Albion, be punished. But Sumner--of
course--knows better than our Chambers of Commerce, and our
commercial marine; with all his little might, Sumner opposes what
the country's interests demand, and demand urgently. I am sure that
already this general demonstration of the national wish and will,
the demonstrations made by our Chambers of Commerce, etc., will
impress England, or at least the English supporters of piracy.
Sumner will believe that his letters to English old women will
change the minds of the English semi-pirates. Sumner is a little
afraid of losing ground with the English guardians of civilization.
Sumner is full of good wishes, of generous conceptions, and is the
man for the millennium. Sumner lacks the keen, sharp, piercing
appreciation of common events. And thus Sumner cannot detect that
England makes war on our commerce, under the piratic flag of the
rebels.
_March 14._--The primitive Christians scarcely had more terrible
enemies, scarcely had to overcome greater impediments, than are
opposed to the principle of human rights, and of emancipation. All
that is the meanest, the most degraded, the most dastardly and the
most treacherous, is combined against us. Many of the former
confessors, many of our friends, many, unconscious of it--_Sewardise_
and _Blairise_.
Mud is stirred up, flows, rises and penetrates in all directions.
The _Cloaca Maxima_ in Rome, during thirty centuries scarcely
carried more filth than is here besieging, storming the
departments, all the administrative issues, and all the so-called
political issues.
I am sure that the enemies of emancipation, that Seward, Weed, etc.,
wait for some great victory, for the fall of Vicksburgh or of
Charleston, to renew their efforts to pacify, to unite, to kiss the
hands of traitors, and to save slavery. I see positive indications
of it. Seward expects in 1864 to ride into the White House on such
reconciliation. What a good time then for the Weeds, and for all the
Sewardites!
_March 15._--Persons who seemed well informed, assured me that Weed
got hold of Stanton, and secretly presides over the contracts in the
War Department. If so, it is very secretly done; as I investigated,
traced it, and found out nothing. At any rate, Weed would never get
at a Watson, a man altogether independent of any political
influences. Watson is the incarnation of honest and intelligent
duty.
Wilkes' _Spirit of the Times_ is unrelenting in its haughty
independence. It is the only public organ in this country of like
character; at least I know not another.
_March 15._--It is so saddening to witness how all kinds of
incapacities, stupidities, how meanness, hollowness, heartlessness,
all incarnated in politicians, in trimmers, in narrow brained; how
all of them ride on the shoulders of the masses, and use them for
their sordid, mean, selfish and ambitious ends. And the masses are
superior to those riders in everything constituting manhood, honesty
and intellect!
_March 16._--Halleck wrote a letter to Rosecrans, explaining how to
deal with all kinds of treason, and with all kinds of traitors. It
looks as if Halleck improved, and tried to become energetic. What is
in the wind? Is Mr. Lincoln becoming seriously serious?
_March 16._--Genuine, social and practical freedom, is generated by
individual rational freedom. If a man cannot, or even worse, if a
man understands not to act as a free rational being in every daily
circumstance of life during the week, then he cannot understand to
behave on Sunday as a free man; and act as a free man in all his
political and social relations and duties. The North upholds that
law of freedom against the slavocracy, and fights to carry and
establish a genuine social organism where at present barbarity,
oppression, lawlessness and recklessness, prevail and preside.
_March 18._--I sent Hooker Schalk's _Summary of the Science of War_.
It is the best, the clearest handbook ever published. About six
months ago, when Banks commanded the defenses of Washington, I
suggested to him to try and get Schalk into head-quarters, or into
the staff. The ruling powers proffered to Schalk to make him captain
at large, and this was proffered at a time when altogether
unmilitary men became colonels, etc., at the head-quarters. I never
myself saw Schalk, but he refused the offer, as years ago he was a
captain in the Austrian army, is independent, and knows his own
value. Any European government, above all when having on hand a
great war, with both hands with military grades, would seize upon a
capacity such as Schalk's. Here they know better. My hobby is that
the president be surrounded by a genuine staff composed either of
General Butler or any other capable American general, of Sigel, of
Schalk, and of a few more American officers, who easily could
organise a staff, _un etat Major general_, such as all European
governments have. But West Point wisdom, engineers and routine,
kill, murder, throttle, everything beyond their reach, and thus
murder the people.
_March 20._--Every week Mr. Seward pours over the fated country his
cold, shallow Union rhetoric. But whoever reads it feels that all
this combined phraseology gushes not from a patriotic heart; every
one detects therein bids for the next Presidency.
Gold is at fifty-five per cent here; in Richmond, gold is four to
six hundred per cent. The money bags, and all those who adjust the
affairs of the world to the rise and to the fall of all kind of
exchanges, they may base their calculations on the above figures,
and find out who has more chances of success, the rebels or we!
Mud, stench on the increase, and because I see, smell and feel it,
"_My friends scorn me, but my eye poureth =tears= into_" [Psalm] the
noble American people.
_March 21._--The _honest_ Conservatives and the small church of
abolitionists are equally narrow-minded, and abuse the last
Congress. The one and the other comprehend not, and cannot
comprehend the immense social and historical signification of the
last Congress. It made me almost sick to find Edward Everett joining
in the chorus. But he, too, is growing very old.
_March 22._--What are generally called excellent authorities assert
that an offensive and defensive alliance is concluded between Seward
and Stanton. Further, I am told, that Senator Morgan, Thurlow Weed,
and a certain Whiting, a new star on the politician's horizon, have
been the attorneys of the two contracting powers. I cannot yet
detect any signs of such an alliance, and disbelieve the story. A
short time will be necessary to see its fruits. Until I see I
wait!... But were it true? Who will be taken in? I am sure it will
not be Seward. Is Stanton dragged down by the infuriated fates?
_March 23._--Burnside is to save Kentucky, almost lost by Halleck
and Buell. Congress adjourned, and no investigation was made into
Halleck's conduct after Corinth in 1862. The Western army
disappeared; Buell commanded in Kentucky, and rebels, guerillas,
cut-throats, murderers and thieves overflow the west, menaced
Cincinnati. And all this when the Secretary of War in his report
speaks about eight hundred thousand men in the field. But the
Secretary of War provides men and means; great Lincoln, the still
greater Halleck distribute and use them. This explains all. Burnside
is honest and loyal, only give him no army to command. I deeply
regret that Burnside's honesty squares not at all with his military
capacity.
The Government is at a loss what to do with honest, ignorant,
useless military big men, who in some way or other rose above their
congenial but very low level. Already last year I suggested (in
writing) to Stanton to gather together such intellectual military
invalids and to establish an honorary military council, to counsel
nothing. Occasionally such a council could direct various
investigations, give its advice about shoes, pants, horses and
horse-shoes. Something like such council really exists in Russia,
and I pointed it out to Stanton for imitation.
_March 25._--Stanton scorns the slander concerning his alliance with
Seward and Weed. It is an invention of Blair, and based on the fact
that Stanton sides with Seward in the question _of letters of
marque_, opposed by Blair under the influence of Sumner the
civiliser. I believe Stanton, and not my former informer.
_Halleckiana._ This great, unequalled great man declared that "it
were better even to send McClellan to Kentucky, or to the West, than
to send there Fremont, as Fremont would at once free the niggers."
The admirers of poor argument, of spread-eagleism, and of ignorant
quotations stolen from history, make a fuss about Mr. Seward's State
papers. The good in these papers is where Mr. Seward, in his
confused phraseology, re-echoes the will, the decision of the
people, no longer to be humbugged by England's perversion of
international laws and of the rights and duties of neutrals; the
will of the people sooner or later to take England to account. (I
hope it will be done, and no English goods will ever pollute the
American soil. It will be the best vengeance.) The repudiation of
any mediation is in the marrow of the people, and Seward's muddy
arguments only perverted and weakened it. In Europe, the substance
of Seward's dispatch, is considered the passage where Seward's
highfalutin logomachy offers to the rebels their vacant seats in the
Congress.
_March 26._--Had we generals, the rebel army in Virginia ought to
have been dispersed and destroyed after the first Bull Run:
A. McCLELLAN.--Any day in November and December, 1861.
B. McCLELLAN.--Any day in January and February, 1862, at
Centerville, Manassas.
C. McCLELLAN.--At Yorktown, and when the rebels retreated to
Richmond.
D. McCLELLAN.--After the battle of Fair Oaks, Richmond easily could
and ought to have been taken. (See Hurlbut, Hooker, Kearney and
Heintzelman.)
E. McCLELLAN.--Richmond could have been taken before the fatal
change of base. (See January, Fitz John Porter.)
F. But for the wailings of McClellan and his stick-in-the-mud
do-nothing strategy, McDowell, Banks and Fremont would have marched
to Richmond from north, north-west, and west, when we already
reached Stanton, and could take Gordonsville.
G. General Pope and General McDowell, the McClellan pretorians, at
the August 1862, fights between the Rappahannock and the Potomac.
H. McCLELLAN.--Invasion of Maryland, 1862. Go in the rear of Lee,
cut him from his basis, and then Lee would be lost, even having a
McClellan for an antagonist.
I. McCLELLAN.--After Antietam battle, won by Hooker, and above all
by the indomitable bravery of the soldiers and officers, and not by
McClellan's generalship, Lee ought to have been followed and thrown
into the Potomac.
K. McCLELLAN.--Lay for weeks idle at Harper's Ferry, gave Lee time
to reorganize his army and to take positions. Elections.
Copperheads, French mediation.
L. McCLELLAN.--By not cutting Lee in two when he was near
Gordonsville, Jackson at Winchester, and our army around Warrenton.