After all, McClellan is not the greatest culprit. It is not his fault that he is without military brains and without military capacity. He tried to do the best, according to his poor intellect. The great, eternally-to-be-damned malefactors are those who kept him in command after having had repeated proofs of his incapacity; and still greater are those constitutionaladvisers who supported McClellan against the outcry of the best in the Cabinet and in the nation. A time may come when the children of those malefactors will be ashamed of their fathers' names, and—curse them.
I have not scorn enough against the revilers and accusers of Stanton. If Stanton could have had his free will, far different would be the condition of affairs. Stanton's first appearance put an end to the prevailing lethargy, and marked a new and glorious era. But, ah! how short! The rats and the vermin were afraid of him, and took shelter behind the incarnated strategy. Stanton embraced and embraces theensembleof the task and of the field before him. And this politician, Blair, to be his critic! If Stanton had been left undisturbed in the execution of his duties as the Secretary of War, McClellan would have been obliged to march directly to Richmond, and the brainless strategy in the Peninsula would have been crushed in the bud. If Stanton had not been undermined, not only the people would have been saved from terrible disasters, but McClellan, Lincoln, Seward, and Blair would have been saved from reproaches and from malediction.
Stanton likewise shows himself to be a true statesman. A Democrat in politics, he very likely never was such a violent and decided opponent of slavery as the Sewards and Blairs professed to be throughout their whole lives. But now Stanton pierces the fog, perceives the unavoidable exigencies, and is anemancipationist, when the Sewards and the Blairs try to compromise, nay, virtually to preserve slavery.
July 10th.—The rebels won time to increase and gather their forces from the south. McClellan's army may not prevent their turning against Pope, who has too small a body to resist or to cover the whole line from Fredericksburg to the Shenandoah. If the rebels attack Pope he must retreat and concentrate before Washington; and then again begins the uphill work. The people generally pour in blood, time and money; but brains, brains are needed, and, without violating the formulas, the people cannot inaugurate brains. Whatever the people may do, the same quacks and bunglers will over again commit the same blunders. Nothing can teach a little foresight to the helmsman and to some of his seconds. Rocked by his imagination, Mr. Seward never sees clearly the events before him and what they generate.
The call for three hundred thousand men will be responded to. The men will come; but will statesmanship and generalship come with them? I am afraid that the rebels, operating with promptness and energy, may give no time to the levies to be fully organized; the rebels will press on Washington.
McClellan reports to the President that he has only 50,000 men left. The President goes to James river, and finds 83,000 ready for action. Was it ignorance in McClellan, or his inborn disrespect of truth, or disrespect of the country, or something worse, that made him make such a report? Andall this passes, and Mr. Lincoln cannot hurt McClellan, although a gory shroud extends over the whole country.
A secretary of the French consul is here, and confirms my speculations concerning the numbers of the rebels in the last battles on the Chickahominy. The current and authoritative opinion in Richmond is, that from the Potomac to the Rio Grande the rebel force never exceeded 300,000 men. If so, the more glory; and it must be so, according to the rational analysis of statistics.
Mr. Seward writes a skilful dispatch to explain the battles on the Chickahominy. But no skill can succeed to bamboozle the cold, clear-sighted European statesmen.
No doubt Mr. Seward sincerely wished to save the Union in his own way and according to his peculiar conception, and, after having accomplished it, disappear from the political arena, surrounded by the halo of national gratitude.
But even for this aim of reconstruction of the Union as it was, Mr. Seward, at the start, took the wrong track, and took it because he is ignorant of history and of the logic in human affairs. To save the Union as it was, it was imperatively necessary to strike quick and crushing blows, and to do this in May, June, etc., 1861. Mr. Seward could have realized then what now is only a throttling nightmare—the Union as it was. But Mr. Seward sustained a policy of delays and not of blows; the struggle protracts, and, for reasons repeatedly mentioned, thesuppression of rebellion becomes more and more difficult, and the reconstruction of the old Union as it was amirageof his imagination.
But it is not Thurlow Weed, and others of that stamp, who could enlighten Mr. Seward on such subjects—far, far above their vulgar and mean politicianism. It is now useless to accuse and condemn Congress for its so-called violence, as does Mr. Seward, and to assert that but for Congress he, Mr. Seward, would have long ago patched up the quarrel. The Congress may be as tame as a lamb, and as subject as a foot-sole. Mr. Seward may on his knees proffer to the rebels a compromise and the most stringent safeguards for slavery; to-day the rebels will spurn all as they would have spurned it during the whole year. The rebels will act as Mason did when in the Senate hall Mr. Seward asked the traitor to be introduced to Mr. Lincoln.
The country is in more need of a man than of the many hundreds of thousands of new levies.
Some time ago Mr. Seward gathered around him his devotees in Congress (few in number), and unveiled to them that nobody can imagine what superhuman efforts it cost him to avert foreign intervention. Very unnecessary demonstration, as he knows it well himself, and, if it gets into the papers, may turn out to be offensive to the two cabinets, as they give to Mr. Seward no reason for making such statements. Should England and France ever decide upon any such step, then Mr. Seward may write asa Cicero, have all the learning of a Hugo Grotius, of a Vattel, and of all other publicists combined; he may send legions of Weeds and Sandfords to Europe, and all this will not weigh a feather with the cabinets of London and of Paris.
Further, no foreign powers occasioned our defeatsin the Chickahominy, but those who were enraptured with the Peninsula strategy.
Mr. Seward's letter to the great meeting in New York shows that not his patriotism, but his confidence in success, is slightly notched.
Nobody doubts his patriotism; but Mr. Seward tried to shape mighty events into a mould after his not-over-gigantic mind, and now he frets because these events tear his sacrilegious hand.
After much opposition, vacillation, hesitation, and aversion, the President signed the confiscation and emancipation bill. A new evidence of how devotedly he wishes to avert any deadly blows from slavery,—this national shame.
The Congress adjourned after having done everything good, and what was in its power. It separated, leaving the country's cause in a worse condition than it was a year ago, after the Bull Run day. Many, nay, almost all the best members of both houses are fully aware in what hands they left the destinies of the nation. Many went away with despair in their hearts; but the constitutional formula makes it impossible for them to act, and to save what so badly needs a savior.
Intervention fever again. The worst intervention is perpetrated at home by imbeciles, by intriguers, by traitors, and by the—spades.
Mr. Dicey, an Englishman who travelled or travels in this country,—Mr. D. is the first among his countrymen who understands the events here, and who is just toward the true American people;—Mr. D. truly says that the people fight without a general, and without a statesman, and are the more to be admired for it.
Mr. Seward tries to appear grand before the foreign diplomats, and talks about Cromwell, Louis Napoleon,coup d'Étatsagainst the Congress, and about his regrets to be in the impossibility to imitate them. Only think, Cromwell, Napoleon I., Napoleon III., Seward! Such dictatorial dreams may explain Mr. Seward's partiality for General McClellan, whom Seward may perhaps wish to use as Louis Napoleon used Gen. St. Arnoud.
Halleck is to be the American Carnot. But any change is an improvement. If Halleck extricates the army on the James river, and saves it from malaria,—this enemy more deadly than Jackson and McClellan combined,—then for this single action Halleck deserves well of the country, and his Corinth affair will, at least in part, be atoned for.
Mr. Lincoln makes a new effort to save hismammy, and tries to neutralize the confiscation bill. Mr. Lincoln will not make a step beyond what is called the Border-States' policy; and it may prove too late when he will decide to honestly execute thelaw of Congress. Mr. Seward gets into hysterics at the hateful name of Congress. Similar spite he showed to a delegation from the city of New York, upbraiding some of its members, and assuring them that delegations are not needed,—that the administration is fully up to the task. Yes, Stanton is, but how about some others?
Poor Mr. Lincoln! he must stand all the mutual puffs of Seward and Sandford, and some more in store for him when the Weeds and Hughes will come and give an account of their doings in Europe.
The report of the battle against Casey, as published by the rebel General Johnston, is a masterpiece of military style, and shows how skilfully the attack was combined. The Southern leaders have exclusively in view the triumph of their cause. With many of our leaders, the people's cause is made to square with their little selfishness.
Guerillas spread like locusts. Perhaps they are the results of our Union-searching, slavery-saving policy.
Emancipation — The President's hand falls back — Weed sent for — Gen. Wadsworth — The new levies — The Africo-Americans not called for — Let every Northern man be shot rather! — End of the Peninsula campaign — Fifty or sixty thousand dead — Who is responsible? — The army saved — Lincoln and McClellan — The President and the Africo-Americans — An Eden in Chiriqui — Greeley — The old lion begins to awake — Mr. Lincoln tells stories — The rebels take the offensive — European opinion — McClellan's army landed — Roebuck — Halleck — Butler's mistakes — Hunter recalled — Terrible fighting at Manassas — Pope cuts his way through — Reinforcements slow in coming — McClellan reduced in command.
Vulgatior fama est, that Mr. Lincoln was already raising his hand to sign a stirring proclamation on the question of emancipation; that Stanton was upholding the President's arm that it might not grow weak in the performance of a sacred duty; that Chase, Bates, and Welles joined Stanton; but that Messrs. Seward and Blair so firmly objected that the President's outstretched hand slowly began to fall back; that to precipitate the mortification, Thurlow Weed was telegraphed; that Thurlow Weed presented to Mr. Lincoln the Medusa-head of Irish riots in the North against the emancipation of slaves in the South; that Mr. Lincoln's mind faltered (oh, Steffens) before such a Chinese shadow, and that thus once more slavery was saved.Relata refero.
General Wadsworth is the good genius of the poor and oppressed race. But for Wadsworth's noble soul and heart the Lamons and many other blood-hounds in Washington would have given about three-fourths of the fugitives over to the whip of the slavers.
Within the last four weeks 600,000 new levies are called to arms. With the 600,000 men levied previously, it is the heaviest draft ever made from a population. No emperor or despot ever did it in a similar lapse of time. The appreciation current here is, that the twenty millions of inhabitants can easily furnish such a quota; but the truth is that the draft, or the levy, or the volunteering, is made from about three millions of men between the ages of twenty and forty years. One million two hundred thousand in one year is equal to nearly 36-100, and this from the most vital, the most generative, and most productive part of the population.
The same analysis and percentage applied to the statistics of the population in the rebel States gives a little above 300,000 men under arms; however, the percentage of the drafts from the full-aged population in the South can be increased by some 15-100 over the percentage in the North. This increase is almost exclusively facilitated by the substratum of slavery, and our administration devotedly takes carene detrimentum capiatthat peculiar institution.
The last draft could be averted from the North if the four millions of loyal Africo-Americans were called to arms. But Mr. Lincoln, with the Sewards,the Blairs, and others, will rather see every Northern man shot than to touch the palladium of the rebels.
These new enormous masses will crush the rebellion, provided they are not marshalled by strategy; but nevertheless the painful confession must be made, that our putting in the field of three to one rebel may confuse a future historian, and contribute to root more firmly that stupid fallacy already asserted by the rebels, and by some among their European upholders, of the superiority of the Southern over the Northern thus called race. Such a stigma is inflicted upon the brave and heroic North by the strategy, and by the vacillating, slave-saving policy of the administration.
This is the more painful for me to record, as most of the foreign officers in our service, and who are experienced and good judges, most positively assert the superior fighting qualities of the Union volunteers over the rebels. Our troops are better fed, clad and armed, but over our army hovers the thick mist of strategy and indecision; the rebels are led not by anaconda strategians, but by fighting generals, desperate, and thus externally heroic; energy inspires their councils, their administration, and their military leaders.
If Stanton and Halleck succeed in extricating the army on the James river, then they will deserve the gratitude of the people. The malaria there must be more destructive than would be many battles.
Events triumphantly justify Stanton's oppositionto the Peninsula strategy and campaign. So ends this horrible sacrifice; between fifty and sixty thousand killed or dead by diseases. The victims of this holocaust have fallen for their country's cause, but the responsibility for the slaughter is to be equally divided between McClellan, Lincoln, Seward and Blair. Even Sylla had not on his soul so much blood as has the above quatuor. When, after the victory over the allied Samnites and others, at the Colline gate of Rome, Sylla ordered the massacre of more than four thousand prisoners who laid down their arms; when his lists of proscription filled with blood Rome and other cities of Italy, Sylla so firmly consolidated the supremacy of theUrbsover Italy and over the world, that after twenty centuries of the most manifold vicissitudes, transformations and tempests, this supremacy cannot yet be upturned. But the holocaust to strategy resulted in humiliating the North and in heaping glory on the Southern leaders.
If the newly called 600,000 men finish the rebellion before Congress meets, then slavery is saved. To save slavery and to avoid emancipation was perhaps the secret aim of Mr. Lincoln, Seward, and Blair; who knows but that of Halleck, when the administration called for the additional 300,000 men?
Persons who approach Halleck say that he is a thorough pro-slavery partisan. His order No. 3, the opinion of some officers of his staff, and his associations, make me believe in the truth of that report.
Mr. Seward sayssub rosato various persons, that slavery is an obsolete question, and he assures others that emancipation is a fixed fact, and is no more to be held back; that he is no more a conservative. How are we to understand this man? If Mr. Seward is sincere, then his last transformation may prove that he has given up the idea of finding a Union party in the South, or that he wishes to reconquer—what he has lost—the confidence of the party. But this return on his part may provetroppo tardi.
The army of the Potomac is saved; the heroes, martyrs, and sufferers are extricated from the grasp of death. This epopee in the history of the civil war will immortalize the army, but the strategian's immortality will differ from that of the army.
England and France firm in their neutrality. Lord John Russell's speeches in Parliament are all that can be desired.
Will it ever be thoroughly investigated and elucidated why, after the evacuation of Corinth, the onward march of our everywhere-victorious Western armies came at once to a stand-still? The guerillas, the increase of forces in Richmond, and some eventual disasters, may be directly traced to this inconceivable conduct on the part of the Western commanders or of the Commander-in-chief. Was not some Union-searching at the bottom of that stoppage? When, months ago, a false rumor was spread about the evacuation of Memphis and Corinth, Mr. Seward was ready to start for the above-mentioned places, ofcourse in search of the Union feeling. Perhaps others were drawn into this Union-searching, Union and slavery-restoring conspiracy.
I have most positive reasons to believe that Gen. Halleck wished to remove Gen. McClellan from the command of the army. The President opposed to it. Men of honor, of word, and of truth, and who are on intimate footing with Mr. Lincoln, repeatedly assured me that, in his conversation, the President judges and appreciates Gen. McClellan as he is judged and appreciated by those whom his crew call his enemies. With all this, Mr. Lincoln, through thin and thick, supports McClellan and maintains him in command. Such a double-dealing in the chief of a noble people! Seemingly Mr. Seward and Mr. Blair always exercise the most powerful influence. Both wished that the army remain in the malarias of the James river. Whatever be their reasons, one shudders in horror at the case with which all those culprits look on this bloody affair. Oh you widowed wives, mothers, and sweethearts! oh you orphaned children! oh you crippled and disabled, you impoverished and ruined, by sacrificing to your country more than do all the Lincolns, McClellans, Blairs, and Sewards! Some day you will ask a terrible account, and if not the present day, posterity will avenge you.
It is very discouraging to witness that the President shows little or no energy in his dealings with incapacities, and what a mass of intrigues is used to excuse and justify incapacity when the nation's life-bloodruns in streams. Without the slightest hesitation any European government would dismiss an incapable commander of an army, and the French Convention, that type of revolutionary and nation-saving energy, dealt even sharper with military and other incapacities.
Regiments after regiments begin to pour in, to make good the deadly mistakes of our rulers. The people, as always, sublime, inexhaustible in its sacrifices! God grant that administrative incompetency may become soon exhausted!
Mr. Seward told a diplomat that his (Seward's) salary was $8,000, and he spends double the amount; thus sacrificing to the country $8,000. When I hear such reports about him, I feel ashamed and sorrowful on his account. Such talk will not increase esteem for him among foreigners and strangers; and although I am sure that Mr. Seward intended to make a joke, even as such it was worse than a poor one.
In his interview with a deputation composed of Africo-Americans, Mr. Lincoln rehearsed all the clap-trap concerning the races, the incompatibility to live together, and other likebosh. Mr. Lincoln promised to them an Eden—in Chiriqui. Mr. Lincoln promised them—what he ought to know is utterly impossible and beyond his power—that they will form an independent community in a country already governed by orderly and legally organized States, as are New Grenada and Costa Rica. Happily even for Mr. Lincoln's name, the logic of human events will save from exposure his ignoranceof international laws, and his too light and too quick assertions. I pity Mr. Lincoln; his honesty and unfamiliarity with human affairs, with history, with laws, and with other like etceteras, continually involve him in unnecessary scrapes.
The proclamation concerning the colonization is issued. It is a display of ignorance or of humbug, or perhaps of both. Some of the best among Americans do not utter their condemnation of this colonization scheme, because the President is to be allowedto carry out his hobby. The despots of the Old World will envy Mr. Lincoln. Those despots can no morecarry out their hobbies. TheRoi s'amusehad its time; but theil bondo canof some here, at times, beats that of theItalina in Algero.
The two letters of Greeley to the President show that the old, indomitable lion begins to awake. As to Mr. Lincoln's answer, it reads badly, and as for all the rest, it is the eternal dodging of a vital question.
Mr. Lincoln's equanimity, although not so stoical, is unequalled. In the midst of the most stirring and exciting—nay, death-giving—news, Mr. Lincoln has always a story to tell. This is known and experienced by all who approach him. Months ago I was in Mr. Lincoln's presence when he received a telegram announcing the crossing of the Mississippi by Gen. Pope, at New Madrid. Scarcely had Mr. Lincoln finished the reading of the dispatch, when he cracked (that is the sacramental word) two not very washed stories.
When the history of this administration shall become well known, contemporary and future generations will wonder and be puzzled to know how the most intelligent and enlightened people in the world could produce such fruits and results of self-government.
The rebel chiefs take the offensive; they unfold a brilliancy in conception and rapidity in execution of which the best generals in any army might be proud. McClellan's army was to be prevented from uniting with Pope. But it seems that Pope manœuvres successfully, and approaches McClellan.
If only our domestic policy were more to the point, England and France could not be complained of. Mr. Mercier behaves here as loyally as can be wished, and carefully avoids evoking any misunderstandings whatever. So do Louis Napoleon, Mr. Thouvenel, Lord John Russell, notwithstanding Mr. Seward's all-confusing policy. Mr. Mercier never, never uttered in my presence anything whatever which in the slightest manner could irritate even thethinnest-skinnedAmerican.
As I expected, Louis Napoleon and Mr. Thouvenel highly esteem Mr. Dayton; and it will be a great mistake to supersede Mr. Dayton in Paris by the travelling agent of the sewing machine. It seems that such a change is contemplated in certain quarters, because the agent parleys poor French. Such a change will not be flattering, and will not be agreeable to the French court, to the French cabinet, and to the French good society.
On the continent of Europe sympathy begins to be unsettled, unsteady. As independence is to-day the watchword in Europe, so the cause of the rebels acquires a plausible justification. Various are the reasons of this new counter current. Prominent among them is the vacillating, and by Europeans considered to beINHUMAN, policy of Mr. Lincoln in regard to slavery, the opaqueness of our strategy, and the brilliancy of the tactics of the rebel generals, and, finally, the incapacity of our agents to enlighten European public opinion, and to explain the true and horrible character of the rebellion. Repeatedly I warned Mr. Seward, telling him that the tide of public opinion was rising against us in Europe, and I explained to him the causes; but of course it was useless, as his agents say the contrary, and say it for reasons easily to be understood.
McClellan's army landed, and he is to be in command of all the troops. I congratulate all therein concerned about this new victory. Bleed, oh bleed, American people! Mr. Lincoln andconsortesinsisted that McClellan remain in command.Siste tandem carnifex!
Mr. Roebuck, M. P., the gentleman! About thirty years ago, when entering his public career as a member for Bath, Mr. Roebuck was publicly slapped in the face during the going on of the election. A few years ago Mr. Roebuck went to Vienna in the interests of some lucrative railroad or Lloyd speculation, and returned to England a fervent and devoted admirer of the Hapsburgs, and a reviler of allthat once was sacred to the disciple of Jeremy Bentham.
General Halleck may become the savior of the country. I hope and ardently wish that it may be so, although his qualifications for it are of a rather doubtful nature. Gen. Halleck wrote a book on military science, as he wrote one on international laws, and both are laborious compilations of other people's labors and ideas. But perhaps Halleck, if not inspired, may become a regular, methodical captain. Such was Moreau.
Also, Gen. Halleck is not to take the field in person. I am told that it was so decided by Mr. Lincoln, against Halleck's wish. What an anomalous position of a commander of armies, who is not to see a field of battle! Such a position is a genuine, new American invention, but it ought not to be patented, at least not for the use of other nations. It is impossible to understand it, and it will puzzle every one having sound common sense.
Gen. Butler commits a mistake in taunting and teasing the French population and the French consul in New Orleans. When Butler was going there, Mr. Seward ought to have instructed him concerning our friendly relations with Louis Napoleon, and concerning the character of the French consul in New Orleans, who was not partial to secesh. There may be some secesh French, but the bulk, if well managed, would never take a decided position against us as long as we were on friendly terms with Louis Napoleon.
The President is indefatigable in his efforts to—save slavery, and to uphold the policy of the New York Herald.
It is said that General Hunter is recalled, and so was General Phelps from New Orleans; General Phelps could not coolly witness the sacrilegious massacre of the slaves. The inconceivable partiality of the President for McClellan may, after all, be possibly explained by the fact that Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward see in McClellan a—savior of slavery.
During two days' terrible fighting at Manassas, at Bull Run, and all around, Pope cut his way through, but the reinforcements from McClellan's army in Alexandria areslowin coming. McClellan and his few pets among the generals may not object to see Pope worsted. Such things happened in other armies, even almost under the eyes of Napoleon, as in the campaign on the Elbe, in 1813. Any one worth the name of a general, when he has no special position to guard, and hears the roar of cannon, by forced marches runs to the field of battle. Not any special orders, but the roar of cannon, attracted and directed Desaix to Marengo, and Mac Mahon to Magenta. The roar of cannon shook the air between Bull Run and Alexandria, and —— General McClellan and others had positive orders to run to the rescue of Pope.
I should not wonder if the President, enthusiasmed by this new exploit of McClellan, were to nominate him for his, the President's, eventual successor; Mr. Blair will back the nomination.
It is said that during these last weeks, Wallach, the editor of the unwashedEvening Star, is in continual intercourse with the President.Arcades ambo.
McClellan reduced in command; only when the life of the nation was almost breathing its last. This concession was extorted from Mr. Lincoln! What will Mr. Seward say to it?
Consummatum est!— Will the outraged people avenge itself? — McClellan satisfies the President — After a year! — The truth will be throttled — Public opinion in Europe begins to abandon us — The country marching to its tomb — Hooker, Kearney, Heintzelman, Sigel, brave and true men — Supremacy of mind over matter — Stanton the last Roman — Inauguration of the pretorian regime — Pope accuses three generals — Investigation prevented by McClellan — McDowell sacrificed — The country inundated with lies — The demoralized army declares for McClellan — The pretorians will soon finish with liberty — Wilkes sent to the West Indian waters — Russia — Mediation — Invasion of Maryland — Strange story about Stanton — Richmond never invested — McClellan in search of the enemy — Thirty miles in six days — The telegrams — Wadsworth — Capitulation of Harper's Ferry — Five days' fighting — Brave Hooker wounded — No results — No reports from McClellan — Tactics of the Maryland campaign — Nobody hurt in the staff — Charmed lives — Wadsworth, Judge Conway, Wade, Boutwell, Andrew — This most intelligent people become the laughing-stock of the world! — The proclamation of emancipation — Seward to the Paisley Association — Future complications — If Hooker had not been wounded! — The military situation — Sigel persecuted by West Point — Three cheers for the carriage and six! — How the great captain was to catch the rebel army — Interview with the Chicago deputation — Winter quarters — The conspiracy against Sigel — Numbers of the rebel army — Letters of marque.
The intrigues, the insubordination of McClellan's pets, have almost exclusively brought about the disasters at Manassas and at Bull Run, and brought the country to the verge of the grave. But the people are not to know the truth.
Consummatum est!The people's honor is stained—the country's cause on the verge of the grave. Will this outraged people avenge itself on the four or five diggers?
Old as I am, I feel a more rending pain now than I felt thirty years ago when Poland was entombed. Here are at stake the highest interests of humanity, of progress, of civilization. I find no words to utter my feelings; my mind staggers. It is filled with darkness, pain, and blood.
Mr. Lincoln is the standard-bearer of the policy of the New York Herald. So, before him, were Pierce and Buchanan.
It is said that General McClellan fully satisfied the President of his (the General's) complete innocence as to the delays which exclusively generated the last disasters; also Gen. McClellan has justified himself on military grounds. I wish the verdict of innocence may be uttered by a court-martial of European generals. At any rate, the country was thrown into an abyss.
After a year!—One hundred thousand of the best, bravest, the most devoted men slaughtered; hundreds and hundreds of millions squandered; the army again in the entrenchments of Washington; everywhere the defensive and losses; the enemy on the Potomac, perhaps to invade the free States; but McClellan is in command, his headquarters as brilliant and as numerous as a year ago; the mean flunkeys at their post; only the country's life-blood pours in streams; but—that is of no account.
No acids are so dissolving and so corrosive as is the air of Washington on patriotism. How few resist its action! Among the few are Stanton, Chase (a passive patriot), Wadsworth, Dahlgren, and those grouping around Stanton; so is Welles; likewise Fox; but they are powerless. Washington is likewise the greatest garroter of truth; and I am sure that the truth about the last battles will be throttled and never elucidated.
September 3.—The Cabinets of France and of England will have a very hard stand to resist the pressure of public opinion, carried away by the skill and by the plausible heroism of the rebels. Public opinion will be clamorous that something be done in favor of the rebels. Happily, nothing else can be done but a war, and this saves us. But if the rebels succeed without Europe, the more glory for their chiefs, the more ignominy for ours. Public opinion begins to abandon us in Europe. Already I have explained some of the reasons for it.
The country is marching to its tomb, but the grave-diggers will not confess their crime and their utter incapacity to save it. This their stubbornness is even a greater crime. Will Halleck warn the country against McClellan's incapacity?
We have such generals as Hooker, Heintzelman, Kearney, etc., who fought continually, and with odds against them, and who never were worsted. Those three, among the best of the army, fought under Pope and mutineered not. In any other country such men would receive large, even thesuperior command; here the palm belongs to the incapable, theslow, and to the flatterer. The same with Sigel. His corps is reduced to 6,000 men; common sense shows that he ought to have at least 25,000 under him. Sigel begged the President to have more men; the President sent him to Halleck and McClellan, who both snubbed him off. By my prayer Sigel, although disheartened, went to Stanton, who received him friendly and warmly, and promised to do his utmost. Stanton will keep his word, if only the West Point envy will not prevent him.
Hooker, Kearney, and Heintzelman were not in favor at the headquarters in the Peninsula, and their commands have been continually disorganized in favor of the pets of the Commander-in-Chief. The country knows what the three braves did since Yorktown down to the last day—the country knows that at the last disasters at Bull Run these heroic generals did their fullest duty. But not even their advice is asked at the double headquarters. Stanton alone cannot do everything. Rats may devour a Hercules.
It seems certain that the rebel generals have various foreign officers in their respective staffs. The rebels wish to assure the success of their cause; here many have only in view their personal success. The President, although not a Blucher, may make a Gneisenau out of Sigel, who has in view only the success of the cause, and no prospects towards the White House. Sigel would understand how to organize a genuine staff.
Most of the foreigners who came to serve here came with the intention to fight for the sacred principle of freedom, and without any further views whatever of career and aggrandizement. In this respect Americans are not just towards these foreigners, and the great men at headquarters will prefer to see all go to pieces than to use the capacity of foreigners, above all in the artillery and for the staff duties.
The mind—that is, Jeff. Davis, Jackson, Lee, etc.—has the best of the matter—that is, Lincoln, McClellan, Blair, and Seward; however, these positions are reversed when one considers the masses on both sides. But on our side the matter commands and presses down the mind; on the rebel side the mind of the chiefs vivifies, exalts, attracts, and directs the matter. And the results thereof are, that not the rebellion, but the North, is shaking.
Asa, not only asthePresident, Mr. Lincoln represents nothing beyond the unavoidable constitutional formula. For all other purposes, as an acting, directing, inspiring, or combining power or agency, Mr. Lincoln becomes a myth. His reality is only manifested by preserving slavery, by sticking to McClellan, by distributing offices, by receiving inspirations from Mr. Seward, and by digging the country's grave. So it is from March 4, 1861, up to this, September 5th, 1862. What else Mr. Lincoln may eventually incarnate is not now perceptible.
Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward piloted the countryamong breakers and rocks, from which to extricate the country requires a man who is to be the burning focus of the whole people's soul.
Other nations at times reached the bottom of an abyss, and they came up again when from the tempest rending them emerged such a savior. But here the formula may render impossible the appearance of such a savior. The formula is the nation's hearse. The formula has neutralized the best men in Congress, the best men in the Cabinet, as is Stanton.
The people have decided not,propter vitam vivendi perdere causas; but the various formulas, the schemers, the grave-diggers, and the aspirants for the White House, think differently.
The almost daily changes made by Mr. Lincoln in the command of the forces are the best evidences of his good-intentioned—debility.
Harmony belongs to the primordial laws of nature; it is the same for human societies. But here no harmony exists between the purest, the noblest, and the most patriotic portion of the people, and the official exponent of the people's will, and of its higher and purer aspirations. So here all jars dissonantly; all is confusion, because avenged must be every violation of nature's law.
I cannot believe that at this deadly crisis the salvation can come from Washington. The best man here has not his free action. And the rest of them are the country's curse. Mr. Lincoln, with McClellan, Seward, Blair, Halleck, and scores of such, areas able to cope with this crisis as to stop the revolution of our planet.
Up to this day, from among those foremost, the only man whose hands remain unstained with the country's, his mother's, and his brethren's blood, the last Roman, is Stanton.
September 7.—During last night troops marched to meet the enemy, saluting with deafening shouts and cheers the residence of McClellan; spit-lickers as a Kennedy, giving the sign by waving his hat. Such shouts would cheer up the mind but for the fact that they were mostly raised for the victory over those who demanded an investigation of the causes ofslownessand insubordination,—those exclusive causes of the defeat of Pope's army. Those shouts were thrown out as defiance to justice, to truth, and to law. Those shouts marked the inauguration of thepretorian regime. General McClellan and other generals have forced the President topostponethe investigation into the conduct of theslowand of the insubordinate generals, all three special favorites of McClellan. General McClellan appeared before the soldiers surrounded by hisold identical staff, by a tross of flatterers, and, Oh heavens! in the cortege Senator Wilson! Oh,sanctanotsimplicitas, but —— Oh, clear-sighted Republican!
Subsequently, I learned that Senator Wilson was present for a moment, and only by a pure accident, at that ovation.
Laeszt Dich dem Teufel bey'm Haare packen, so hat Er Dich bey'm Kopfe, says Lessing, and so itmay become here with this first success of the pretorians, or even worse than pretorians; these here are Yanitschars of a Sultan.
Pope and his army accuse three generals of insubordination and mutiny on the field of battle. McClellan prevents investigation; the brutal rule of Yanitschars is inaugurated, thanks to you, Messrs. Seward and Blair.
McDowell sacrificed to the Yanitschars; he is the scapegoat and the victim to popular fallacy, to the imbecility of the press, and, above all, to the intriguers and to the conspiracy of the mutinous pets of McClellan. Weeks and weeks ago, I foretold to McDowell that such would be his fate, and that only in after-times history will be just towards him.
The country begins to be inundated and opinion poisoned by all kinds of the most glaring lies, invented and spread by the staffs, and the imbecile, blind partisans of McClellan. Here are some from among the lies.
In January (oh hear, oh hear!) General McClellan with 50,000 men intended to make aflying(oh hear, oh hear!) expedition to Richmond, but Lincoln and Stanton opposed it. This lie divides itself into two points. 1st lie. In January, nobody opposed General McClellan's will, and, besides, he was sick. 2d lie. If he was so pugnacious in January, why has he not made with the same number of men a flying expedition only to Centreville, right under his nose?
Emanating from the staff, such a lie is sufficientto show the military capacity of those who concocted it.
Second lie. That the expedition to Yorktown and the Peninsula strategy were forced upon McClellan. I hope that the Americans have enough memory left, and enough self-respect to recollect the truth.
Further, the above staff asserts that, when the truth will be known about the campaign, and the fightings in the Chickahominy, then justice will be done to McClellan.
Always and everywhere lost battles, bad and ignorant generalship, require explanations, justifications, and commentaries. Well-fought battles are justified on the spot, the same day, and by results. No one asks or makes comments upon the fighting of Jackson. Austerlitz, Jena, were commented on, explained, some of the chiefs were justified, but—by Austrian and Prussian commentators.
Until to-day French writers discuss, analyze, and comment upon the fatal battle of Waterloo. At Waterloo Napoleon was in the square of his heroic guards; but during the seven days' fighting on the Chickahominy, what regiment, not to say a square, saw in its midst the American Napoleon?
A thousand others, similar to the above-mentioned lies, will be or are already circulated; the mass of the people will use its common sense, and the lies must perish.
On September 7th, Gen. McClellan gave his word to the President to start to the army at 12 o'clock, but started at 4P. M.with a long train of well-packedwagons for himself and for his staff. To be sure, Lee, Jackson, and all the other rebel chiefs together, have not such a train; if they had, they would not be to-day on the Potomac and in Maryland. Most certainly those quick-moving rebels start at least an hour earlier than they are expected to do.
September 9.—Up to this day Mr. Lincoln ought to have discovered whose advice transformed him into a standard-bearer of the policy of the New York Herald, and made him push the country to the verge of the grave; and, nevertheless, Mr. Lincoln is deaf to the voice of all true and pure patriots who point out the malefactors.
Secondary events; as a lost battle, etc., depend upon material causes; but such primordial events as is the thorough miscarriage of Mr. Lincoln's anti-rebellion policy,—such events are generated by moral causes.
Jefferson Davis, Lee, Jackson, and all the generals down to the last Southern bush-whacker, incarnate the violent and hideous passion of slavery, now all-powerful throughout the South. Here, Lincoln, Seward, McClellan, Blair, Halleck, etc., incarnate the negation of the purest and noblest aspirations of the North. Stanton alone is inspired by a national patriotic idea. No unity, no harmony between the people and the leaders; this discord must generate disasters.
All over the country the lie is spread that the army demanded the reappointment of McClellan. First, the three mutinous generals did it; but nota Kearney, the Bayard of America; very likely not Hooker and Heintzelman—all of them soldiers, patriots, and men of honor; nor very likely was it demanded by Keyes. I do not know positively what was the conduct of Gen. Sumner. Gen. Burnside owes what he is, glory and all, to McClellan. Burnside's honest gratitude and honest want of judgment have contributed more than anything else to inaugurate the regime of the pretorians, to justify mutiny. Halleck's conduct in all this is veiled in mystery; it is so at least for the present; and as truth will be kept out of sight, the country may never know the truth about those shameful proceedings.
I learn that Heintzelman, against his own judgment, agreed in the McClellan movement. Well, if this is true, then, of course, the army, for a long time misled by uninterrupted intrigues, misled by papers such as the New York Herald and the Times,—the army or the soldiers mightily contributed to bring about this fatal crisis. An army composed of intelligent Americans, blinded, stultified by intriguers, declares for a general who never, up to this day, covered with glory his or the army's name. After this nothing more is to be expected, and no disaster on the field of battle, no dissolution of a national principle, can astonish my mind. Cursed be those who thus demoralized the sound judgment of the soldiers! Cursed be my personal experience of men and of things which makes me despair! But when an army or soldiers become intellectuallybrought down to such a standard, then the holiest cause will always be lost. Oh for a man to save the cause of humanity! But if even such a man should appear, these pretorians will turn against him.
The pretorians, with the New York Herald as their flag, will soon finish with liberty at home. McClellan, Barlow, the brothers Wood, and Bennett, may very soon be at the helm, with the 100,000 pretorians for support.Similia similibus; and here disgrace is to cure disgrace.
These helpless grave-diggers, above all, Seward, are on the way to pick a quarrel with England, sending a flying gunboat fleet under Wilkes into the West Indian waters. At this precise moment it were better to be very cautious, and rather watch strongly our coasts with the same gunboats.
September 11.—A military genius at once finds out the point where blows are to be struck, and strikes them with lightning-like speed. The rebels act in this manner; but what point was found out, what blows were ever dealt by McClellan?
Individuals similar to McClellan were idolized by the Roman pretorians, and this idolatry marks the epoch of the utmost demoralization and degradation of the Roman empire. Witnessing such a phenomenon in an army of American volunteers, one must give up in despair any confidence in manhood and in common sense.
The Journal of St. Petersburg of August 6th semi-officially refutes the insinuations that Russia intends to recognize the South, or to unite withFrance and England for any such purpose, or for mediation. The language of the article is noble and friendly, as is all which up to this day has been done by Alexander II. Mr. Stoeckl, the Russian minister here, considerably contributes that such sound and friendly views on the condition of our affairs are entertained by the Russian Cabinet.
September 11.—Imbeciles agitate the question of mediation. European cabinets will not offer it now, and nobody, not even the rebels, would accept. No possible terms and basis exist for any mediation. A Solomon could not find them out. If Jackson and Lee were to shell Washington, then only the foreign ministers may be requested to step in and to settle the terms of a capitulation or of an evacuation. The foreign ministers here could act as mediators only if asked; not otherwise. I am sure it will come out that the invasion of Maryland by the rebels is made under the pressure exercised in Richmond by the Maryland chivalry in the service of the rebellion. These runaways probably promised an insurrection in Maryland, provided a rebel force crosses the Potomac. (Wrote it to England.)
All around helplessness and confusion. Conscientiously I make all possible efforts to record what I believe to be true, and then truth will take care of herself.
After the study of the campaigns of Frederick II., above all, after the study of those marvellous campaigns, combinations, manœuvres of Napoleon, to witness every day the combinations of McClellan ismore disgusting, more nauseous for the mind, than can be for the stomach the strongest dose of emetic.
The last catastrophe at Bull Run and at Manassas has a slight resemblance with the catastrophe at Waterloo. The conduct of the mutinous generals here is similar to the conduct of some of the French generals during the battle of Ligny and Quatre-Bras. But here was mutiny, and there demoralization produced by general and deeply rooted and fatally unavoidable causes. The demoralization of the French generals came at the end of a terrible epoch of struggles and sacrifices, of material exhaustion, when the faith in the destinies of Napoleon was extinct; here mutiny and demoralization seize upon the newly-born era.
September 13.—What a good-natured people are the Americans! A regiment of Pennsylvania infantry quartered for the night on the sidewalk of the streets; officers, of course, absent; the poor soldiers stretched on the stones, when so many empty large buildings, when the empty (intellectually and materially empty) White House could have given to the soldiers comfortable night quarters. It can give an idea how they treat the soldiers in the field, if here in Washington they care so little for them. But McClellan has forty wagons for his staff, and forty ambulances—no danger for the latter to be used. In European armies aristocratic officers would not dare to treat soldiers in this way—to throw them on the pavement without any necessity.
More than once in my life, after heavy fighting,I laid down the knapsack for a cushion, snow for a mattrass and for a blanket; but by the side of the soldiers, the generals, the staffs, and the officers shared similar bedsteads.
I hear strange stories about Stanton, and about his having ruefully fallen in McClellan's lap. If so, then one moreman, one more illusion, and one more creed in manhood gone overboard, drowned in meanness, in moral cowardice, and subserviency.
The worshippers of strategy and of Gen. McClellan try to make the public swallow, that the investment of Richmond by him was a magnificent display of science, and would have been a success but for 50,000 more men under his command.
To invest any place whatever is to cut that place from the principal, if not from all communications with the country around, and thus prevent, or make dangerous or difficult, the arrival of provisions, of support, etc.
Our gunboats, etc., in the York and the James rivers have virtually invested Richmond on the eastern side; but that part of the Peninsula did not constitute the great source of life for the rebel army. The principal life-arteries for Richmond ran through four-fifths of a circle, beginning from the southern banks of the James river and running to the southern banks of the Rapidan and of the Rappahannock. Through that region men, material, provisions poured into Richmond from the whole South, and that whole region around Richmond was left perfectly open; but strategy concentrated its wisdomon the comparatively indifferent eastern side of the Chickahominy marshes, and cut off the rebels from—nothing at all.
September 13.—General McClellan, in search of the enemy, during the first six days makes thirty miles! Finds the enemy near Hagerstown. No more time for strategy.
September 14.—General McClellan telegraphs to General Halleck (meliores ambo) that he, McClellan, has "the most reliable information that the enemy is 190,000 strong in Maryland and in Pennsylvania, besides 70,000 on the other side of the Potomac." (The same bosh about the numbers as in the Peninsula.)
The Generals Burnside, Hooker, Sumner, Reno, fought the battle at Hagerstown, and drove the enemy before them. General McClellan reports a victory,but expects the enemy to renew the fighting next day in a considerable force—(as at Williamsburg). McClellan telegraphs to Halleck, "Look for an attack on Washington." The enemy retreats to recross the Potomac!
September 15.—General Wadsworth suggested to the President one of those bold movements by which campaigns are terminated by one blow: "To send Heintzelman and him, Wadsworth, with some 25,000 men, to Gordonsville (here and in Baltimore about 90,000 men), and thus cut off the enemy from Richmond, and prevent him from rallying his forces." But General Halleck opposes such a Murat's dash, on account of McClellan's "looked-forattack on Washington"—by his, McClellan's, imagination.
September 17.—When I wrote the above about Wadsworth and Heintzelman, I was under the impression that the victory announced by McClellan, Sept. 14, was more decisive; that as he had fresh the whole corps of Fitz John Porter, and the greatest part of that of Franklin, and other supports sent him from Washington, he would give no respite to the enemy, and push him into the Potomac. It turned out differently.
The loss by capitulation of Harper's Ferry. It is a blow to us, and very likely a disgraceful affair, not for the soldiers, but for the commanders.
September 19.—Five days' fighting. Our brave Hooker wounded; tremendous loss of life on both sides, and no decisive results. These last battles, and those on the Chickahominy, that of Shiloh, in one word all the fightings protracted throughout several consecutive days, are almost unexampled in history. These horrible episodes establish the bravery, the endurance of the soldiers, the bravery and the ability of some among the commanders of the corps, of the divisions, etc., and the absence of anygeneralship in the commander.
September 20.—Until this day Gen. McClellan has not published one single detailed report about any of his operations since the evacuation of Manassas in March. Thus much for the staff of the army of the Potomac. We shall see what detailed report he will publish of the campaign inMaryland. McClellan's bulletins from Maryland are twins to his bulletins from the Peninsula; and there may be very little difference between thegainedvictories. To-day he is ignorant of the movements of the enemy, and has more than 30,000 fresh troops in hand.
As in the Peninsula, so in Maryland. Although having nearly one-third more men than the enemy, General McClellan never forced the enemy to engage at once its whole force, never attacked the rebels on their whole line, and never had any positive notion about the number and the position of the opposing forces.
The rebels had the Potomac in their rear; our army pressed them in front, and—the rebels escaped.
I appeal to such military heroes as Hooker; I appeal to thousands of our brave soldiers, from generals down to the rank and file, and further I appeal to all women with hearts and brains here and in Europe.
September 20.—Gen. Mansfield killed at the head of his brigade. I ask his forgiveness for all the criticism made upon him in this diary. Last year, at the beginning of the war, Gen. Mansfield acted under the orders of Gen. Scott. This explains all.
As in the slaughters of the Chickahominy, so in the Maryland slaughters,nobody hurtin McClellan's numerous staff. Thank Heaven! Not only his life is charmed, but the charm extends over all who surround him,—men and beasts.
A malediction sticks to our cause. Hooker badly, very badly wounded. Hooker fought the greatest number of fights,—was never worsted in the Peninsula, nor in the August disasters, and he alone has the supreme honor of a nick-name, by the troopers' baptism: theFighting Joe. Hooker, not McClellan, ought to command the army. But no pestilential Washington clique, none of the West-Pointers, back him, and the pets, the pretorians, may have refused to obey his orders.
After the escape of the rebels from Manassas in March, and after the evacuation of Yorktown, all the intriguers and traitors grouped around the New York Herald, and the imbeciles around the New York Times, prized highthe masterly strategyand its bloodless victories. Now, in dead, by powder and disease, in crippled, etc., McClellan destroyed about 100,000 men, and the country's honor is bleeding, the country's cause is on the verge of a precipice.
How rare are men of civic heroism, of fearless civic courage; men of the creed:perisse mon nom mais que la patrie soit sauvée.
General Wadsworth feels more deeply and more painfully the disasters, nay, the disgrace, of the country, than do almost all with whom I meet here. During the Congress, similar were the feelings of Senator Wade, Judge Potter, and of many other Congressmen in both the Houses. So feel Boutwell, Andrew, the Governor of Massachusetts, and I am sure many, many over the country.But the sensation-men and preachers, lecturers, etc., all are to be * * * *
September 22.—By Mr. Seward's policy and by McClellan's strategy and war-bulletins the bravest and the most intelligent people became the laughing-stock of Europe and of the world. And thus is witnessed the hitherto in history unexampled phenomenon of a devoted and brave people of twenty millions, mastering all the wealth and the resources of modern civilization, worsted and kept at bay by four to five million rebels, likewise brave, but almost beggared, and cut off from all external communications.
Sept. 23.—Proclamationconditionallyabolishing slavery from 1863. Theconditionalis the last desperate effort made by Mr. Lincoln and by Mr. Seward to save slavery. Poor Mr. Lincoln was obliged to strike such a blow at hismammy! The two statesmen found out that it was dangerous longer to resist the decided, authoritative will of the masses. The words "resign," "depose," "impeach," were more and more distinct in the popular murmur, and the proclamation was issued.
Very little, if any, credit is due to Mr. Lincoln or to Mr. Seward for having thus late and reluctantlylegalizedthe stern will of the immense majority of the American people. For the sake of sacred truth and justice I protest before civilization, humanity, and posterity, that Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward intrinsically are wholly innocent of this great satisfaction given to the right, and to national honor.
The absurdity of colonization is preserved in the proclamation. How could it have been otherwise?
But if the rebellion is crushed before January 1st, 1863, what then? If the rebels turn loyal before that term? Then the people of the North will be cheated. Happily for humanity and for national honor, Mr. Lincoln's and Mr. Seward's benevolent expectations will be baffled; the rebels will spurn the tenderly proffered leniency; these rebels are so ungrateful towards those who "cover the weakness of the insurgents," &c. (See the celebrated, and by the American press much admired, despatch in May or June, 1862, Seward to Adams.)
The proclamation is written in the meanest and the most dry routine style; not a word to evoke a generous thrill, not a word reflecting the warm and lofty comprehension and feelings of the immense majority of the people on this question of emancipation. Nothing for humanity, nothing to humanity. Whoever drew it, be he Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Seward, it is clear that the writer was not in it either with his heart or with his soul; it is clear that it was done under moral duress, under the throttling pressure of events. How differently Stanton would have spoken!
General Wadsworth truly says, that never a noble subject was more belittled by the form in which it was uttered.
Brazilian m——s are much disturbed by the proclamation.
Sept. 23.—In his answer to the Paisley ParliamentaryReform Association, Mr. Seward complains that the sympathy of Europe turns now for secession.
O Mr. Seward, Mr. Seward, who is it that contributed to turn the current against the cause of right and of humanity? Months ago I and others warned you; the premonitory signs and the reasons of this change have been pointed out to you. Now you slander Europe, of which you know as little as of the inhabitants of the moon. The generous populations of the whole of Europe expected and waited for a positive, unhesitating, clear recognition of human rights; day after day the generous European minds expected to see some positive, authoritative fact confirm that lofty conception which, at the start of this rebellion, they had of the cause of the North. But the pure, generous tendencies of the American people became officially, authoritatively misrepresented; the public opinion in Europe became stuffed with empty generalizations, with official but unfulfilled prophecies, and with cold declamations. Those official generalizations, prophecies, and declamations, the supineness shown by the administration in the recognition of human rights, all this began to be considered in Europe as being sanctioned by the whole American people; and generous European hearts and minds began to avert in disgust from themisrepresentedcause of the North.
Two issues are before history, before the philosophy of history, and before the social progress of our race. The first issue is the struggle between the puredemocratic spirit embodied in the Free States, and the fetid remains of the worst part of humanity embodied in the South. The second issue is between the perennial vitality of the principle of self-government in the people, and the transient and accidental results of the self-government as manifested in Mr. Lincoln, in Mr. Seward, and their followers. I hope that this Diary will throw some light on the second issue, and vindicate the perennial against the transient and the accidental.
Sept. 24.—If the events of this war should progress as they are foreshadowed in the proclamation of September 22, then the application of this proclamation may create inextricable complications. Not only in one and the same State, but in one and the same district, nay, even in the same township, after January 1st, 1863, may be found Africo-Americans, portions of whom are emancipated, the others in bondage. But the stern logic of events will save the illogical, pusillanimous, confused half-measure, as it now is. (O Steffens!)
General McClellan confesses that if Hooker had not been wounded, thenthe road, by which the retreat of the rebels might have been cut off, would have been taken. Such a declaration is the most emphatic recognition of Hooker's superior military capacity. Seldom, however, has the loss of a general commanding onlyen second, or a wing, as did Hooker, decided the fortunes of the day. Why did not McClellan takethe roadhimself, after Hooker was obliged to leave the field? When Desaix, Bessières,and Lannes fell, Napoleon nevertheless won the respective battles.
Sept. 25.—The military position of the rebels in Winchester seems to me one of the best they ever held in this war. Winchester is the centre of which Washington, Harper's Ferry, Williamsport, nay, even Wheeling, seem to be the circumference. Our army under McClellan is almost beyond the circle, crosses not the Potomac, and is now only to watch the enemy. So much for the great McClellan's victory. Truly, the enemy may be taken in the rear, its communications with Richmond, &c., cut off and destroyed; butwe are safeon the Potomac, and this is sufficient. McClellan isthe man of large conceptions and rapid execution. The best generals arehors de combat; as to Halleck, O, it is not to think, not to speak. Well, I may be mistaken, but I clearly see all this on the map of Virginia.
Sept. 25.—The West Point spirit persecutes Sigel with the utmost rage. The West Point spirit seemingly wishes to have Sigel dishonored, defeated, even if the country be thereby destroyed. The Hallecks, &c., keep him in a subordinate position;three days agohis corps was a little over seven thousand, almost no cavalry, and most of the artillery without horses, and he in front.
The more I scrutinize the President's thus called emancipation proclamation, the more cunning and less good will and sincerity I find therein. I hope I am mistaken. But the proclamation is only an act of the military power,—is evoked by militarynecessity,—and not a civil, social, humane act of justice and equity.
The only good to be derived from this proclamation is, that for the first time the wordfreedom, and a general comprehension of "emancipation," appear in an official act under the sanction of the formula, and are inaugurated into the official, the constitutional life of the nation. In itself it is therefore a great event for a people so strictly attached to legality and to formulas.
I do not recollect to have read in the history of any great, or even of a small captain,—above all of such a one when between thirty-four and thirty-six years old,—that he followed the army under his command in a travelling carriage and six, when the field of operations extended from fifty to seventy miles. Three cheers for McClellan, for his carriage and six!
HOW THE GREAT CAPTAIN WAS TO CATCH THE WHOLE REBEL ARMY IN MANASSAS, IN FEBRUARY AND MARCH, A. D. 1862.
It was to have been done by a brilliant and unsurpassable stroke of combined strategy, tactics, manœuvres, marches, and swimmings; also on land and water. (O, hear! O, hear!)
As every body knows, the rebels were encamped in the sofearfulstrongholds of Centreville and Manassas, all the time fooling the commander-in-chief of the federal army in relation to theirimmensenumbers. To attack the rebels in front,or to surround them by the Occoquan and Brentsville, would have been a too—simple operation; by a special, an immense, space-embracing anaconda strategy, the rebel army was to be cut off from the whole of rebeldom, and forced to surrenderen masseto the inventor of (the not yet patented, I hope) bloodless victories. To accomplish such an immense result, a fleet of transports was already ordered to be gathered at Annapolis. On them in ten or fifteen days (O, hear!) an army of fifty to sixty thousand, most completely equipped, was to be embarked, plus forty thousand in Washington, all this to sail under the personal command of the general-in-chief, and sail towards Richmond. Richmond taken, the rebel army at Manassas would have been cut off, and obliged to surrender on any terms.
The above splendid conception was, and still is, peddled among the army and among the nation by the admirers of, and the devotees of, anaconda strategy.
The expedition was to land at the mouth of the Tappahannock, a small port, or rather a creek, used for shipping of a small quantity of tobacco. As the port or creek has only some small attempts at wharves, the landing of such an enormous army, with parks of artillery, with cavalry, pontoons, and material for constructing bridges,—the landing would not have been executed in weeks, if in months; but the projector of the plan, perfectly losing the notion of time, calculated for ten days. From that port theflyingexpedition was to march directly on Richmondthrough a country having only common field and dirt roads, and this in a season when all roads generally are in an impassable condition, through a country intersected by marshy streams, principal among them the Matapony and the Pamunkey—to march towards Richmond and the Chickahominy marshes. It seems that Chickahominy exercised an attractive, Armida-like charm on the great strategian. An army loaded with such immense trains would have sufficiently destroyed all the roads, and rendered them impassable for itself; and theflyingexpedition would at once have been transformed into an expedition sticking in the mud, similar to that subsequent in the peninsula. The enemy was in possession of Fredericksburg and of the railroad to Hanover Court House on one flank, and of all the best roads north of and through Chickahominy marshes on the other flank. Theflyingexpedition would have had for base Tappahannock and a dirt road. O strategy! O stuff!
The much-persecuted General McDowell exposed the worse than crudity of the brilliant conception. By doing this, McDowell saved the country, the administration, and the strategian from immense losses and from a nameless shame. It is due to the people that the administration lay before the public the scheme and the refutation. A look on the map of Virginia must convince even the simplest mind of the brilliancy of this conception.
During all this time spent in such masterly operations, the rebel army in Manassas was to quietlylook on, to wait, and not move, not retreat on Richmond. Early in March, at once the rebel army, always undisturbed, quietly disappeared from Manassas; and this is the best evidence of the depth of that brilliant combination, peddled under the name of theflying expedition to Richmond, projected for January, February, or March. I appeal to the verdict of sound reason; the parties are, common senseversusanaconda strategy and bloodless victories.
Sept. 27.—The proclamation issued by the war power of the President is not yet officially notified to those who alone are to execute it—the armies and their respective commanders. Who is to be taken in? The papers publish a detailed account of an interview between the President and an anti-slavery deputation from Chicago. The deputation asked for stringent measures in the spirit of the law of Congress, which orders the emancipation of the slaves held by the rebels. The President combated the reasons alleged by the deputation, and tried to establish the danger and the inefficiency of the measure. A few days after the above-mentioned debate, the President issued the proclamation of September 22. Are his heart, his soul, and his convictions to be looked for in the debate, or in the proclamation?