The military organization of Africo-Americans is a powerful social and military engine by which slavery, secession, rebellion, and all other dark and criminal Northern and Southern excrescences can be crushed and pulverized to atoms, and this in a trice. But as is the case with all other powerful and explosive gases, elements, forces, etc. this mighty element put in the hands of the Administration must be handled resolutely, and with unquivering hands and intellect; otherwise the explosion may turn out useless for the country and for humanity.
At present the indications are very small that the administration has a decided, clear comprehension how to use this accession of loyal forces on a large scale; how to bring them boldly into action in Virginia, as the heart of the rebellion. Nothing yet indicates that the administration intends to arm and equip Africo-Americans here under the eyes of the government. Nothing indicates that it intends to do this avowedly and openly, and thereby terrify and strike the proud slave-breeders, the F. F. V's. of Virginia, in the heart of treason, and do it by their own once chattels, now their betters.
January 28.—The Congress almost expires; and will or can the incarnated constitutional formula save the country? It is a chilling thought to doubt, yet how can we have confidence! All in thepeople! the people alone and its true men will not and cannot fail, and they alone are up to the mission.
The dying Congress can no more reconquer its abdicated power. This noble and patriotic majority—many of them, are not re-elected, thanks to Lincoln-Seward—provide the incarnate formula with all imaginable legal, constitutional powers, more than twice sufficient to save the country. Could only the brains and hands entrusted with laws, be able to execute them! Oh for a legal, constitutional, statute Cromwell, ready to behead treason, rebellion, slavocracy and slavo-sympathy, as the great Oliver beheaded and crushed the poisonous weeds of his time. If the democratic-copperhead vermin had the possibility, they would make a McClellan-Seymour dictatorship, and extinguish for a century at least, light, right, justice, and freedom. Not yet! Oh, Copperheads! not yet.
January 29.—They dance to madness in New York, they dance here and give dancing parties! O what a heartlessness, recklessness, flippancy, and crime, of those mothers, wives and young crinolines, when one half of the population is already in mourning, when they have fathers, brothers, husbands in the army. I hope that Boston and New England as well as the towns and villages of the country all over, spit on this example given by New York and Washington. My friend N——, progressive,enlightened and therefore a true Russian, is amazed and displeased with such an intolerable flippancy. During the Crimean war, no one danced in Russia from the Imperial palace down to the remotest village; the people's indignation would have prevented any body—even the Czar, from such a sacrilegious display of recklessness when the country's integrity and honor were at stake, when the nation's blood was pouring in torrents.
Unspeakably worse, is the cold indifference with which many generals, many men in power, the rhetors and the politicians, speak of what is more than a sacrifice in a sacred cause, is an unholy and demoniac waste of human life. But some one—some avenging angel, will call them all to a terrible account.
January 30.—I would have ex-Governor Boutwell, of Massachusetts, Secretary of State. The conduct of European affairs requires pure patriotism—that is, conscientiousness of being an American by principle, in the noblest philosophical sense, sound common sense, discretion, simplicity, sobriety of mind, firmness, clear-sightedness. Boutwell would be a Secretary of State similar to Marcy.
January 30.—Wrote a letter to Stanton with the following suggestions for the organization of a large and efficacious force, nay, army, from the Africo-Americans.
Some of the points submitted to this genuine patriot have been already variously mentioned above; here are some others.
1. It may be possible—even probable—on account of inveterate prejudices and stupidity, that an Africo-American regiment may be left unsupported during a battle.
2. It would be therefore more available to organize such a force at once on a large scale, so as to be able to have strong brigades, and even divisions. At the head of six to eight thousand men, resistance is possible for several hours if the enemy outnumbers not in too great proportions—four or five to one, and if the terrain is not altogether against the smaller force.
3. The Africo-Americans ought to be formed, drilled and armed principally with the view to constitute light infantry—and, if possible, light cavalry—but above all, for aset fight.
4. Their dress must be adapted to such a light service—as ought to be the dress of our whole infantry, facilitating to the utmost the quick and easy movements of the body and of the feet; both impossible or at least difficult in the present equipment of the American infantry. On account of the modern improvements in fire arms, the fights begin at longer distances, and it is important that the soldier be trained to march as quickly as possible, so as to force the enemy from their positions at thepoint of the bayonet. In this country of clay, bad roads, forests and underbrush, even more than care must be bestowed upon the feet and legs of the infantry. I suggested an imitation of the equipment of the French infantry.
5. In the case of the arsenals not having the requisite number of fire-arms, I would have the third line armed with scythes. As a Pole, I am familiar with that really terrible weapon.
6. To adapt the drill to the object in view—to free it as far as possible from needless technicalities, and to reduce it to the most urgently needed and the most readily comprehended particulars.
7. In view of the above-mentioned reasons, I would have the Tactics now in use very carefully revised, or have an entirely new book of Tactics and Regulations.
8. Suggested that General Casey should be entrusted with the matters treated of in suggestions 6 and 7.
January 31.—The Copperheads in Congress are shedding crocodile tears over the doom that awaits those Africo-Americans who may unfortunately be taken prisoners by the rebels. Now, in the first place enlisted Africo-Americans are under the protection of the United States Government, and that Government will not be guilty of the infamy of seeing its captured soldiers murdered in cold blood—and in the next place the Africo-American willprove anything rather than an easily-made captive to Southern murderers. The Africo-Americans will sell their lives so dearly as to disgust the rebels with the task of attempting to capture them.
January 31.—Few people can understand the intensity of the disgust with which I find myself often obliged to mention Thurlow Weed—that darkest incarnation of all that is evil in black mail, lobbyism, and all hideous corruptions. It is not my fault that such a man is allowed to exert a malign influence on the country's fate, and I am obliged to give the dark as well as the bright parts of the great social picture. How deeply I regret my inability to collect and record, in part at least, if not as a whole, all the deeds of heroism and devotion, of generous and brave self-abnegation, which have been done by thousands, even by millions of those who are both falsely and foolishly called the lower classes.
The Problems before the People — the Circassian — Department of State and International Laws — Foresight — Patriot Stanton and the Rats — Honest Conventions — Sanitary Commission — Harper's Ferry — John Brown — the Yellow Book — the Republican Party — Epitaph — Prize Courts — Suum cuique — Academy of Sciences — Democratic Rank and File, etc. etc. etc.
February 1.—The task which this great American people has on its hands is one utterly unexampled in the history of the world. While in the midst of a great civil war, and struggling as it were in very death-throes, to emancipate and organize four millions of men, most of whom, up to this very day, have by deliberate legislation been kept in ignorance and savagery. Thoroughly to comprehend the immensity of such a task, we must also reflect that the men to whom that task is intrusted are anything rather than intellectual giants. Yet the true solution of the problem will be given by the principle of self-government and by the self-governing People. And it is therein that consists the genuine American originality which Europe finds it so impossible to understand. And it is just as little understood by most of the diplomatists here, and whatis still worse, it is not even studied by them. It is wretched work to be obliged to witness the low, the actually ignoble parts which many men play in the great farce of political life. I could easily mention a full score of would-be-eminent men, who are unsurpassed by the meanest of the vulgar herd in flippancy and an utter want of self-respect.
The diary published in London by Bull Run Russell deserves to be read by every American. Russell deals blows to slavery which will tell in England. However annoying may be to many the disclosures made by this indiscreet confidant of their vanity, Russell's revelations establish firmly the broad historical—not gossipping—fact, that before and after Sumter, the most absolute want of earnestness, of statesmanlike foresight, and the most childish but fathomless vanity inspired all the actions of the American Secretary of State. I am one of the few who, having often met Russell here, never fawned to him, nay who not even took any notice of him; but I am grateful to him for his falsely-called indiscreetness—for his having done the utmost to bring out truth—in his own way. It is the best that I have seen, or heard, or read of him. Flatterers, Secretaries, Senators, and Generals crowded to Russell and to his table, and he exposes them. Among others, General McDowell was Russell's guest, very likely to show his gratitude to theslanderer of the volunteers, whom McDowell did not understand how to lead to victory.
Seward showed to Russell his dispatches to Lord John Russell. Mr. Sumner, at Bull Run Russell's table, asked Russell's aid to keep peace with England. Good! Unspeakably good!
Not only the Emancipation problem must be solved, so to speak, amidst the storm of battle—but other and very mighty problems, social, constitutional, jurisprudential, and financial, must be similarly and promptly dealt with. And these great questions must be debated to the accompaniment of the music of musketry and cannon. In some respects the situation of America at present may be said to resemble that of France in the days of her great Revolution. But affairs here and now are still more complicated than they were in France from 1789 to 1793.
Formerly I took a more active part than I now take in revolutionary and reformatory struggles, and was seldom daunted by their difficult problems, or by their most violent tempests. But now I have a chilling sense of weariness and disgust as I note the strange things that are done under my very eyes.
The burden of taxes laid upon a people who have an inborn hatred of taxation, a debt created in a few months surpassing that which England and France contracted in half a century; and that debtcontracted as if by magic, and in the very crisis of a civil war such as any foreign war would be mere baby's play to.
The people at large see the precipice, and hear the roaring of the breakers ahead, but despair not! Sublime phenomena for the future historian to dwell upon! All this is genuine American originality. In its sublime presence, down, down upon your knees in the dust, all you European wiseacres!
The capture of theCircassian, an English blockade runner, gave birth to some very delicate international complications. The decision of the Prize Court shows up the absolute destitution of statesmanship in the Department of State, generally coruscated with ignorance of international principles, rules of judicial international decisions, and of belligerent rights and observances. Every day shows what a masterly stroke it was of the Secretary of State to have proclaimed the blockade in April, 1861, and to have been the first to recognize the rebels in the character of independent belligerents. The more blockade runners will be captured by our cruisers, the more the complications will grow. A false first step generates false conditionsad infinitum. The question of theCircassianis only the beginning, and not even the worst. The worst will come by and by. But Seward is great before Allah! The truth is, that Mr. Seward and the Department are as innocent ofany familiarity with international laws, as can be. The people, the intelligent people would be horror-stricken could they suddenly be made acquainted with all the shameful ignorance which is corrosively fermenting in the State Department.
To every intelligent and well regulated Government in Europe, the Department of Foreign Affairs—which in America is called the State Department—has attached to it a board of advisers for the solution of all international questions.
In England, for instance, all such questions are referred to the Crown Lawyers, i.e. the Attorney and Solicitor General, and, in specially important cases, to the Lord High Chancellor, and one or two of the Judges. And in order to obtain the advice he obviously stands so much in need of, Mr. Seward ought to have consulted two or three American juriconsults of eminence. Mr. Seward ought to have foreseen that the war would necessarily give rise to international, commercial, and maritime complications. Such men as Charles Eames, Upton, etc. would have been excellent advisers on all international and statutory questions. Presumptuous that I am—to venture upon the mere supposition that Seward the Great can possibly need advice! Not he, of course—not he. Mr. Seward is the Alpha and Omega—knows everything, and can do every thing himself. Happily, the people at large is thegenuine statesman, and can correct the mistakes—and worse—of its blundering, bungling servants.
American pilots and statesmen! Forget not that foresight is the germ of action. Foresight reveals to the mind the opportuneness of the needed measure by which a solution is to be given, a question decided, and the hoped-for results obtained.
American people! How much foresight have your—dearly-paid—servants shown? You, the people alone, you have been far-seeing and prophetic; but not they.
February 2.—All the efforts of the worshippers of treason, of darkness, of barbarism, of cruelty, and of infamy—all their manœuvres and menaces could not prevail. The majority of the Congress has decided that the powerful element of Africo-Americans is to be used on behalf of justice, of freedom, and of human rights. The bill passed both the Houses. It is to be observed that the "big" diplomats swallowedcol gustoall the pro-slavery speeches, and snubbed off the patriotic ones. The noblest eulogy of the patriots!
The patriots may throb with joy! The President intends great changes in his policy, and has telegraphed for——Thurlow Weed, that prince of dregs, to get from him light about the condition of the country.
The conservative "Copperheads" of Boston and of other places in New England press as a baby totheir bosom, and lift to worship McClellan, the conservative, and all this out of deepest hatred towards all that is noble, humane, and lofty in the genuine American people. Well they may! If by his generalship McClellan butchered hundreds of thousands in the field, he was always very conservative of his precious little self.
Biting snow storm all over Virginia! Our soldiers! our soldiers in the camp! It is heart-rending to think of them. Conservative McClellan so conservatively campaigned until last November as to preserve—the rebel armies, and make a terrible winter campaign an inevitable necessity. O, Copperheads and Boston conservatives! When you bend your knees before McClellan, you dip them in the best and purest blood of the people!
February 3.—The Secretary of War appointed General Casey to shorten the general tactics for the use of Africo-American regiments to use them as light infantry.
The devotion of American women to the sick and wounded soldiers, makes them be envied by the angels in Heaven (provided there are any). This devotion of these genuine gentlewomen atones for the ignoble flippancy of dancing crinolines.
Down, down goes slavery notwithstanding thegates of hell, and their guard, the McClellans, the Sewards, amorously embracing the Copperheadsand all that is dark and criminal. Humanity is avenged and Eternal Justice is satisfied.
February 4.—Sumner is re-elected to the Senate. His re-election vindicates a sound principle, because his opponents were all the Copperheads and slavery-saviours in Massachusetts. Sumner's influence in the Senate is rather limited. Politically he is on all points most honest; but his conduct towards Seward is not calculated to impress one with any very high esteem for his manhood.
It is not force, or decision, or power, that is cruel in revolutionary times—but, weakness. All societies have had their epochs of progress and of retrogression. Sylla was a conservative, and so too was Phocion. The Pharisees were reactionists and conservatives. Europe has millions of them, of various hues, shapes, tendencies and convictions. But the reactionists and conservatives in the past of Europe all have been and are of a purer metal than the conservatives here, and their impure organs, as the National Intelligencer, the World, the Boston Courier, and the rest of that fetish creed.
February 4.—The French Yellow Book, or State Correspondence, justifies my forebodings of November last. Mr. Mercier's diplomatic sentimentalism, and his associations, germinated theDecembriseur'sscheme for mediation and humiliation.
Further is to be found in the Yellow Book the evidence how, from the start of this dark rebellion, Mr. Seward, the master spirit of the Administration, dealt death blows to all energetic, unyielding prosecution of the war for crushing the rebellion, and that he was double-dealing in all his public actions. The published state papers of the French government disclose the fact that nine months ago Mr. Seward sent the French minister to Richmond with a mission to invite the Jeff. Davises, Hunters, Wigfalls, Benjamins and others to come back to their seats in the Senate, and in the name of the cruelly outraged North, Mr. Seward proffered to the traitors a hearty welcome. So says the French diplomat in his official dispatch to the French Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Such underhanded dealings should not be allowed, and most assuredly would be stringently punished, if perpetrated under similar circumstances by the minister of any European government dealing with treason in arms. But here, Mr. Seward's impudence—if not worse—displays its flying colors. The Republican press will swallow all this, and Senator Sumner as Chairman of the Committee will—keep quiet.
That confidential mission entrusted to the French diplomat by Mr. Seward, was more than sufficient to evoke the subsequent attempt at mediation, because it revealed to the piercing eye of European statesmanship, how the Administration, and aboveall how its master spirit had little confidence in the cause; it revealed the want of earnestness in official quarters. I hate and denounce all attempts, even by the most friendly foreign power, to meddle with the internal affairs of our country. But I have some little knowledge of European statecraft, of European diplomacy, of European rulers, and of European diplomats; and I assert, emphatically, that they are emboldened to offer their meddlesome services because they have very little if any respect for our official leaders; and because the want of energy and of good faith to the principles of the North as displayed by Seward, he nevertheless remaining at the helm, has firmly settled the conviction in European minds, that the rebels cannot be crushed by such traffickers and used up politicians as have in their hands the destinies of the Union.
February 5.—The new Copperhead Senators—in their appearance resembling bushwhackers; the pillars of Copperheadism in the House, take umbrage at the sight and the name of New England, and abuse the New England spirit with all their coppery might. Well they may. So did Satan hate and abuse light.
Patriot Stanton is earnestly at work concerning the organization of Africo-Americans on a mighty scale; busy against him, likewise, are the intriguers, the traitors, the cavillers, the Sewardites and the McClellanites, all being of the same kidney. Sewardsighs for McClellan. But Stanton will override the muddy storm. He has at his side men as pure, energetic and devoted as Watson, a patriot without a flaw.
Stanton surrounds himself and selects young men—as far as he can, he crowds out the remains of Scott, so tenderly protected by Lincoln. Could he only have swept out the rest of the old fogies! Undoubtedly these young men in the War Department would give new life to it.
February 6.—The people at large are at a loss to find the cause of the recent disasters. The general axiom is, "we are not a military nation." Neither is the South. But here they forget that every great or small effect has its—not only—cause, but several causes. Many such causes have been repeatedly pointed out. Old routine in military organization stands foremost. Few, if any, understand wherein consists the proper organization of an army, and most have notions reaching back sixty years. The medical and surgical bureaus are obsolete. Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, who is always on the right side, and with him many young men, insisted upon organizing the above services as they are organized in the Continental armies of Europe. But even in the Senate prevailed the respect for dusty, rusty, domestic tradition. The few changes forced by the outcry of the people cure not the evil. Skeletons and not men are atwork, and if they are not skeletons they are leeches of the government and of the people's blood.
Thus likewise, when the organizations of the staffs was discussed, no one had the first notion of the nature and duties of a staff; and the military authorities were as ignorant as the civilians. Of course a McClellan, then a Halleck, Meigs, Hitchcock, etc., could not disperse the fog. Many Congressmen were thunderstruck by the display of words which, as they were purely technical terms, the Congressmen in question could not understand. Others sought for guidance in the Staff of Wellington, and thus oddly but unmistakably proved themselves completely in the dark as to the difference between the personal staff of the commander of an army, and the Staff of that Army itself. And all this in a country of the most rapid movement and progress, and amongst a people which unhesitatingly adopts and adapts to its own needs and welfare almost every novelty from almost every part of the world. The great fault committed by the People is its too great respect for false authorities and false prophets.
The so-called honest Conservatives have exercised and still continue to exercise a most fatal influence on public affairs, and especially on what is called the domestic policy. These same "honest Conservatives" are more dangerous than the out-spoken Copperheads; more dangerous, perhaps, than all thefriends of slavery and foes of the Union combined. These "honest Conservatives" have contrived to surround themselves with a halo of honesty and respectability. But they as cordially hate and dread every vivid light and vigorous progress as the traitors themselves do. Those Conservatives opposed every vigorous measure. They spoke tenderly of the "misguided brethren" in the South, and took their own servile and blundering, though quite possibly sincere fancies, for actual and tangible facts. The honest Conservatives will support whatever is slow, double-dealing, and, therefore, conservative. The honest Conservatives took McClellan to their honest hearts, and not one of them has any clear notion of military affairs, and still less can any of them fathom the awful depth of McClellan's military criminality. I repeat what I said in the first volume of my Diary: McClellan and his tail fell, not on account of their Democratism, or their pro-slavery creed, but because McClellan repeatedly displayed all the worst qualities of a thoroughly unsoldierly commander. No one would have uttered a word of censure if McClellan with his hundred and eighty thousand men had surrounded the thirty to forty thousand rebels in Centreville and Manassas in the winter of 1861-2, and taken some nobler trophies than camp manure and maple guns! The honest Conservatives attack and hate Stanton, yet not one of them hasany notion whatever of Stanton's action towards McClellan. Stanton would have been the first to raise McClellan sky-high if McClellan had preferred to fight instead of reposing in his bed in Washington, and then in various muds. Such is your knowledge of this and of all other public affairs, O respectable soul and spiritless body of honest Conservatives! Historians of this country! collect the names of thehonestConservatives, but expose them not to the abomination of coming generations.
February 7.—The Sanitary Commission, with all its branches and subdivisions, is among the noblest manifestations of what can be done by a free people, and how private enterprise of intelligent, patriotic and unselfish men can confer benefit. Nor must the praise of that great work be limited to men. Warm-hearted gentlewomen also have done their share in it. The Sanitary Commission is one of the best out-croppings of self-government, and does honor to the people, and softens and ameliorates the warlike roughness of the times.
The Sanitary Commission marks a new era in the history of genuine and not bogus and merely verbal philanthropy, and its spontaneity and expansion were only possible in free, and therefore humane and enlightened America.
February 8.—Mr. Seward is busily at work endeavoring to crush the radicals, and to make the Emancipation Proclamation a mere sheet of wastepaper. All that is mean and nasty, all that is reeking and foul with all kinds of corruptions, takes Seward for its standard-bearer. The so-called radical press aids Seward with all its might.
February 9.—Gen. Casey adopts some of my ideas and suggestions, which I discussed with him. Gen. Casey is honestly at work, and the new tactics will be in print.
Stanton would wish to establish a thorough military camp on a large scale, for organizing Africo-Americans. But the higher powers are against it. Virginia, the most populous slave state, the nursery of slaves, must, scorpion-like, be surrounded with glowing contraband camps. What a splendid position for such a camp is Harper's Ferry under the shadow of immortal John Brown!
A few days ago, Mr. Lincoln was full of joy because the defences of Washington are in excellent condition. Thus the country will learn with joy that the——spade is still at work, that the military curse hurled by Scott and McClellan is still influencing the operation of the war, that Halleck is the worthy continuator of his predecessors, that Mr. Lincoln's fears and uneasiness about the fate of the city of Washington are slowly, slowly assuaged, that the President's fancy is nursed, that the construction of the extensive fortifications around the capital is still continued, that new forts are continually erected, that the fear of an attack on Washingtonis still paramount, and that to-day—sixty to seventy thousand troops are kept idle in these old and new forts—when Rosecrans has no succor, when Texas is lost, and when the whole rebel region trembles under the tread of savage hordes.
Through one of its clerks, the State Department intends to sue me for libel, contained, as they say, in the first volume of myDiary. Well, great masters, if you swallow me, you may not digest me. Let us try.[2]
February 10.—... mens agitat molem ... oh, could I only believe that such is the case with Mr. Lincoln, how devoted I could become, and loyal to him, according to the new theory of the lickspittles and politicians!
February 10.—Resolute Senator Grimes did what was the duty of Sumner to have done long ago. Grimes presented resolutions relative to the mission of Mercier to Richmond, a mission allowed, almost authorized by Mr. Seward. Mercier cannot be blamed, and his veracity is supported by the fact that Lord Lyons was at once informed of the whole transaction, and Lord Lyons is to be believed. Seward will play the innocent, and take his refuge in the god of—lies.
February 12.—In his answer to the Senate, Mr. Seward gives to Mercier the lie direct. It will be rich if Mercier stands square.
February 12.—Congress draws to its close. Lincoln accumulates powers, responsibilities, and hereafter perhaps curses, sufficient to break the turtle on which stands the elephant that sustains the Sanscrit world.
February 13.—The almost imperceptible ripple on the diplomatic pool of Washington has disappeared. Simple people might have believed that there was an issue of veracity between Mr. Seward and the French Minister. But since a long, a very long time, Seward and veracity have run in different orbits, and diplomats, Talleyrand-like, ought to be the incarnation of equanimity even if any one—diplomatically—treads on their toes. Besides, the answer given to the Senate before it reached its destinationmight have been arrangedat any such confidential chat as was that one where the little innocent, nobody-hurting (no, not even the people's honour) trip to Richmond was concocted. The French Minister's nameappears notin the document sent to the Senate; so the lie direct is after all only a constructive lie; nobody is hurt. A general shaking of hands and all is well. But strange things may come out yet, and others may not be so blazened out.
The soap bubble of mediation exploded under thenose of the French schemers. The soap used by them was of the finest and most aromatic quality, but the democratic nerves of the American people resisted the Franco-diplomatic cunningly mixed aroma. The applause gained by Mr. Seward's very indifferent document, wherein the great initiator of the Latin race on this free continent was rebuked, the satisfaction shown by the public, ought to open the eyes of the sentimental French trio. They ought to understand, by this time, that Seward's argumentative dispatch, incomplete and below mark as it is, won applause, although it expresses only the hundredth of the patriotic ire bursting from the people's bosom. Otherwise the people would have at once found out all skillfully, cunningly, chameleon-like Seward dodges, which ignore before Europe the sublime character of the struggle forced by treason upon the loyal free States; and in which how he avoids to hurt the slavocracy.
The Imperial mediator and bottle-holder to slavocracy belies not his bloody origin and his bloody appetites. The events in Egypt, the negro kidnapping in Alexandria, have torn the mask from his astute policy. If, for his filibustering raid into Mexico, Louis Napoleon wanted colored soldiers accustomed to the climate, he could raise them among the free colored population of the French possessions in Martinique, Guadaloupe, etc. But to use the freemen from the Antilles would have set a badexample to the Africo-Americans in the revolted States; Louis Napoleon wished not to hurt or offend his slaveocratic pets and traitors; by kidnapping slaves in Egypt the French ruler showed how highly he values the stealing qualities of the Southern chivalry—and he paid a tribute to the principle of slavery.
But while treating with all possible horror and disrespect the French officiousness, the American people ought not to forget the innermost interconnection of events. If the French diplomacy, if the French Cabinet became sentimental at the sight of our deadly struggle with the demon of treason, it was because they witnessed our helplessness, and witnessed the uninterrupted chain of faults and of bad policy; it was because they and the whole world saw the want of earnestness in our official leaders; and from all this theseMessieursconcluded that the patriots of the North never will be able to crush the traitors in the South. So speak the French diplomatic documents, so speaks Mercier, Drouyn de l'Huys and Louis Napoleon; and has not the Seward-Weed influence, paramount in the policy of the Government, brought about all these bad results, palsied the war, and thus almost justified the officiousness of theMessieurs?
February 13.—Many forebode the downfall, the dissolution, and the disappearance of the Republican party. That may be, and if so then one ofthe cardinal laws of human progress, development and ascension, will be fullfilled.The initiator either perishes by the initiated, or the initiator perishes, disappears because his special mission, his task is done.
The progress of humanity is marked by the sacrifice and death of its initiators. Such was the end of the founders of religions, of societies; such of political bodies. Osiris, Lycurgus, Romulus, Christ, the martyrs, the apostles, are a few from numberless illustrations that might be cited. The Long Parliament, the French Convention, disappeared after having fullfilled the work of destruction pointed out to them by the genius of progress and of our race. As an organized political party the Republican may disappear with the war, for slavery is finally destroyed. This is the noble initiation and solution fulfilled by the Republican party. To destroy slavery and the political defenders and props of slavery, was the mission that was fatally thrown or entrusted by inexorable destiny to the Republican party. With the destruction of slavery, disappears from the political life of America theNorthern man with Southern principles; those very dregs of dregs of all times and of all political bodies and societies. Slavery is destroyed both virtually andde facto, new issues are looming, new solutions will be given, and new men will bear the new word.
All in creation, and in every party, has its lightand its shadow, its pure principle, its pure men and its dregs. Every party has its faults and its shortcomings. The dregs fall, and the work of the party is done. Some of the chiefs and leaders of the Republican party became faithless, (Seward,) went over to darkness, but thereby the onward march to the sacred aim was not arrested. The irresistible current of events and of human affairs carried onwards the Republican party. Perhaps unconsciously, but nevertheless emphatically, the Republican party in itsensemblewas a providential agency; it became the incarnation of the loftiest aspirations of the best among the American people. Against its wish and will, contrary to expectations, the Republican party was challenged to action; the sword of law, of justice and of right, was forcibly thrust into the party's hand, and slavocracy, the challenger, is already bleeding its life-blood, and its death-knell resounds from pole to pole. To speak the language of politicians; abolition, emancipation by the sword, was forced upon the Republican party.
And the Republican party carried out the principle of the preamble of the bill of rights; a principle eternal as right, but nevertheless hitherto only partially realized. The Republican party has borne the brunt, and accomplished the appointed evolutions of progress; and the Republican party has deserved well of the American people, of history and of humanity. And the children and grandchildrenof those who to-day cavil, defile and stone the party, they hereafter will bless the Republican party, who, with noble consciousness can say to the spirit of light and of duty:Nunc dimitte in pacem servum tuum Domine.
One of the best evidences of purity and of the elevation of the Republican party in its noblest representative men is that the obtusest among the great diplomats shunned the Republicans as little monsters shun the daylight. I mention this as a collateral illustration without intending to raise a diplomat or the poor diplomacy of the world to an undeserved significance, for I bear in mind the behest,ne misceantur sacra prophanis.
The nobleness of the accomplished mission, the glorious Sunset wherein will disappear the Republican party, frees, not from reproaches nor from maledictions, those Republicans who, by their selfishness and faithlessness, obstructed its progress, and polluted the party. Their names remain nailed to the pillory.
I may here observe that I never belonged and never claimed to belong to the Republican party. For nearly half a century my creed has been—Onward! onward! struggle, fight, sacrifice for light, for progress, for human rights; for that cause fight and struggle under every banner, under every name, and in rank and file with every body.
February 13.—Seward seizes by the hair theoccasion proffered to him by theDecembriseur'soffer of mediation, and tries to reconquer the confidence of the public. This shows to Drouyn de l'Huys and to his master, that they are misinformed concerning the condition of America, (also M. Mercier misinformed them; how could he do otherwise?) The despatch to Dayton, February 7, will lead astray public opinion. The majority will forget and lose sight of the intercatenation of events and actions perpetrated by Mr. Seward. O Chase! O Sumner! Seward rises with his patient pen and paper in the inky glory of a patriot, and you——cave in.
Speaking of Mr. Seward's answer to France, a diplomat observed to me: "The European Cabinets are so accustomed to Mr. Seward's duplicity and want of veracity, that now that Seward refuses to accept mediation, in Europe they will conclude that Seward's acceptation of mediation is at hand."
February 14.—The struggle is for the rights of man, for the Christian idea, purified of all dogma and worship. Those who see it not, are similar to a fish from the Kentucky Cave.
February 14.—Could Mr. Lincoln only be inspired, be warmed by the sacred fire of enthusiasm, then his natural and selected affinities would be other minds than those of a Seward, a Weed, a Halleck, etc.; then what is night could become light; and where he painfully gropes along his path, Mr.Lincoln would march with a firm, almost with a godlike step, at the head of such a peerless people as those of whom he is the Chief Magistrate.
But as it is now, I may turn the mind in any direction whatever, all the causes of mishaps and disasters converge on Mr. Lincoln. According to his partisans, Mr. Lincoln's intentions are the best, and he is always trying to conciliate—and to shift. It is useless to discuss Mr. Lincoln's peculiar ways. In most cases, Mr. Lincoln uses old, rotten tools for a new and heavy work. I have it from the most truthful and positive authority, that Mr. Lincoln is fully acquainted with the opinions of the so calleddissatisfied, of those with Southern propensities, proclivities and affinities, of whom many are in the superior civil and military service. Contrary to the advice of patriots in the Cabinet and out of it, Mr. Lincoln insists upon keeping such at their post—doubtless always expecting that they willturn round. Such a heavy difficulty and task as is the present, must be worked out, with absolute devotion and sincerity; and can this logically be expected from men whose hearts and minds are not in their actions? Mr. Lincoln forgets that thousands of lives and millions of money are sacrificed to the experiment as to whether the insincere officials willturn round.
The cause will not fail, light will not be extinguish, even if the leaders break down or betray,even if the Copperheads frighten some of the pilots, or if some of the faithless pilots shake hands with the Copperheads, as was the case in the elections of November last in New York and elsewhere. The people will save light, dissipate darkness, save the cause, save the leaders, the pilots and the politicians.
February 15.—Some days ago in compliance with summons, that pedler of all corruptions, Thurlow Weed, came to Washington, and with Mr. Seward, hisfidus Achates, was for days or nights closeted with Mr. Lincoln, pouring into the president's soul as much poison and darkness as was possible. That such was the case can, besides, easily be concluded from what that incarnation of all perversions predicated to all who came within his nauseous preachings here. According to Mr. T. Weed's revelations, "The proclamation is an absurdity, and the Union will soon—as it ought—be ruled by the rebels." So it was told me. Perhaps it is already done through Thurlow Weed's mediation and instrumentality.
Continually inspired by Weed, Mr. Seward is therefore untiring in his over-patriotic efforts to preserve the former Union and Slavery—to save the matricide slave-holders.
In what clutches is Mr. Lincoln! Even I pity him. Even I am forced to give him credit for being what he is—considering his intimacies andhis surroundings. Few men entrusted with power over nations have resisted such fatal influences,—not even Cromwell and Napoleon. History has not yet settled how it was with Cæsar, and so far as I know, Frederick the Great of Prussia is of the very few who have been unimpressionable. Pericles coruscates over ruins and the night of the ancient world; Pericles's intimacy was with the best and the manliest Athenians.
But has Mr. Lincoln an unlimited confidence in the few men with large brains and with big hearts, brains and hearts burning with the sacred and purest patriotic fire? Or are not rather all his favorites—not even whitened—sepulchres of manhood, of mind and of sacred intellect?
February 16.—It is asserted, and some day or other it will be verified, that the Committee on the Conduct of the War have investigated how far certain generals from the army on the Rappahannock used their influence with the President to paralyze a movement against the enemy ordered by Burnside. That facts discovered may be published or not, for the Administration shuns publicity.The Committee discovered that Mr. Seward was implicated in that conspiracy of generals against Burnside.Any qualification of such conduct is impossible, and the vocabulary of crimes has no name for it; let it, therefore, beSewardism. The editors of the NewYorkTribunedid their utmost to preventSewardismbeing exposed.
February 16.—Often, so to speak, the hand refuses to record what the head hears and sees, what the reason must judge. To witness how one of the greatest events in the development of mankind, how the deadly struggle between right and crime, between good and evil, how the blood and sweat ofsuch a peopleare dealt with by—counterfeits!
February 17.—Poor Banks! He is ruined by having been last year pressed to Seward's bosom, and having been thus initiated into the Seward-Weed Union and slavery-restoring policy. Banks and Louis Napoleon in Mexico and in his mediation scheme; both Banks and Napoleon were ruined by yielding to bad advice—Banks to that of Seward, and Louis Napoleon to that of his diplomats. I hope that Banks will shake off the nightmare that is throttling him now; that he will no more write senseless proclamations, will give up the attempt to save slave-holders, and will march straight to the great task of crushing the rebellion and rebels. He will blot slavery, that Cain's mark on the brow of the Union; blot it and throw it into the marshes of the parishes of Louisiana. I rely upon Banks's sound common sense. He will come out from among the evil ones.
February 18.—Under no other transcendent leadership than that of its patriotism and convictions, the majority of this expiring Congress boldly and squarelyfaced the emergencies and all the necessities daily, hourly evoked by the Rebellion, and unhesitatingly met them. If the majority was at times confused, the confusion was generated by many acts of the administration, and not by any shrinking before the mighty and crushing task, or by the attempt to evade the responsibility. The impartial historian will find in the Statutes an undisputable confirmation of my assertions. The majority met all the prejudices against taxation, indebtedness, paper currency, draft, and other similar cases.
And all the time the majority of Congress was stormed by traitors, by intriguers, by falsifiers and prisoners of public opinion; the minority in Congress taking the lead therein. Many who ought to have supported the majority either fainted or played false. The so-called good press, neither resolute nor clear-sighted, nor far-seeing, more than once confused, and as a whole seldom thoroughly supported the majority.
If the good press had the indomitable courage in behalf of good and truth, that theHeraldhas in behalf of untruth and of mischief, how differently would the affairs look and stand!
February 19.—Jackson first formed, attracted and led on the people's opinion. Has not Mr. Lincoln thrown confusion around?
February 19.—The Supreme Court of the United States has before it the prize cases resulting from captures made by our navy. The counsel for the Englishand rebel blockade-runners and pilferers find the best point of legal defence in the unstatesmanlike and unlegal wording of the proclamation of the blockade, as concocted and issued by Mr. Seward, and in the repeated declarations contained in the voluminous diplomatic correspondence of our Secretary of State,—declarations asserting thatno war whatever is going on in the Federal Republic. No war, therefore no lawful prizes on the ocean. So ignorance, and humbug mark every step of this foremost among the pilots of a noble, high-minded, but too confiding people.
The facts, the rules, and the principles in these prize cases are almost unprecedented and new; new in the international laws, and new in the history of governments of nations. Seldom, if ever, were so complicated the powers of government, its rights, and the duties of neutrals, the rights and the duties of the captors, and the condition of the captured. This rebellion is, so to speak,sui generis, almost unprecedented on land and sea. The difficulties and complications thus arising, became more complicated by the either reckless or unscientific (or both) turn given by the State Department in conceding to the rebels the condition of belligerents. Thus the great statutory power of the sovereign, (that is, of the Union through its president) for the suppression of the rebellion was palsied at the start. The insurrection of the Netherlands alone has some very small similarity with our civil war; however, that insurrection tookplace at a time when very few, if any, principles of international laws were generally laid down and generally recognized. Here the municipal laws, the right of the sovereign and his duty to save itself and the people, the rights and the laws of war, wrongly applied to such virtual outlaws as the rebels, the maritime code of prize laws and rules, play into and intertwine each other. When Mr. Seward penned his doleful proclamation of the blockade, etc., he never had before his mind what a mess he generated; what complications might arise therefrom. I am sure he never knew that such proclamation wasa prioripregnant with complications, and that at least its wording ought to have been very careful. Mr. Seward was not at all cognizant of the fact that the wording of a proclamation of a blockade, for the time being, lays down a rule for the judges in the prize courts. For him it was rather a declamation than a proclamation; he who believed the rebellion would end in July, 1861, and that no occasion would arise to apply the rules of the blockade.
Thus Mr. Seward, with his thorough knowledge of international law rendered difficult the position of the captors; he equally increased the difficulty for the judge to administer justice. By this proclamation and the commentaries put on it, Mr. Seward curtailed the rights of the government of which he is a part, conceded undue conditions to the rebels, and facilitated to the neutrals the means of violating his blockade.So much is clear and palpable to-day, and I am sure more complications and imbecilities are in store. If Mr. Seward had had good advisors for these nice and difficult questions, he would not have blundered in this way. Thus Charles Eames, who in the pleadings before the Superior United States Court has shown a consummate mastery in prize questions—Eames could teach Mr. Seward a great deal about the constitutional powers of the president to suppress the rebellion, and about the meaning and the bearing of international maritime laws, rights, duties and rules.
February 20.—A Mr. Funk, a member of the Illinois Senate, a farmer, and a man of sixty-five years, on February 13, made a speech in that body which sounds better than all the rhetories and oratories. It was the sound and genuine utterance of a man from the people, and I hope some future historian will record the speech and the name of the old, indomitable patriot.
February 20.—Stimulated by a pure Athenian breeze, the Congress passed a law organizing an Academy of Sciences. What a gigantic folly; the only one committed by this Congress. The pressure was very great, and exercised by the bottomless vanity of certain scientific, self-styled magnates, and by the Athenians. Up to this day, the American scientific development and progress consisted in its freedom and independence. No legal corporation impeded and trammeled the limitless scope of the intellectualand scientific development. That was the soul and secret of our rapid and luminous onward march. Now fifty patented, incorporated respectabilities will put the curb on, will hamper the expansion. Academies turn to fossils. My hope is that the true American spirit will soar above the vanity and pettiness of corporated wisdom, and that this scientific Academy bubble will end in inanity and in ridicule. I am sorry that Congress was taken in, and committed such a blunder. It was caught napping.
Mr. Chase's bank bill, prospective of money, and as many say, prospective of presidency, passed the house. What fools are they already begin to direct their steps and their ardent wishes toward the White House.
February 22.—The, at any price, supporters of the Administration, point with satisfaction to the various successes, and to the space of land already redeemed from rebellion. I protest against such explanation given to events, and call to it the attention of every future historian. Never had thesuum cuiquerequired a more stringent, philosophical application. With the various inexhaustible means at its disposal, with the unextinguishable enthusiasm of the people, far different and more conclusive results,couldand ought to have been obtained. The ship makes headway if even, by the negligence of the officers and of the crew, she drags a cable or an anchor. The ship is the people dragging its administrators.
A western Democrat, but patriot, said to me thatLincoln compares to Jeff Davis, as a wheel-barrow does to a steam engine!
The Democrats claim to be the genuine fighting element, and to be possessed of the civic courage, and of governmental capacity. How, then, can the Democrats rave for McClellan, the most unfighting soldier ever known?
The future historian must be warned not to look to the newspapers for information concerning facts and concerning the spirit of the people. TheTribune'ssenile clamor for peace, for arbitration, for meditation, its Jewitt, Mercier, Napoleon, and Switzerland combinations, fell dead and in ridicule before the sound judgment of ninety-nine hundredths of the people.
February 24.—In Europe I had experience of political prisons and of their horror. But I would prefer to rot, to be eaten up by rats, rather than be defended by such arch-copperheads as are the Coxes, the Biddles, the Powells, etc., etc.
In the discussion concerning the issue of the letters of marque, Sumner was dwelling in sentimentalities and generalities, altogether losing sight of the means of defense of the country, and the genuine national resources. With all respect for high and sentimental principles and patriotism, with due reverence of the opinion, the applause or the condemnatory verdict to be issued by philanthropists, by doctors, and other Tommities, my heart and my brains prefer the resolute, patriotic, manly Grimes, Wades, etc., the variousskippersand masters, all of whom look not over the ocean for applause, but above all have in view to save or to defend the country, whatever be the rules or expectations of the self-constituted Doctors of International laws.
February 25.—The Union-Slavery saviours, led on by theHerald, by Seward, by Weed, etc., all are busily at work.
Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
I hear that great disorder prevails in the Quartermaster's Department. It is no wonder. In all armies, countries, government and wars, the Quartermaster's Department is always disorderly. Why shall it not be so here, when want of energy is the word? At times Napoleon hung or shot such infamous thieves, as by their thefts skinned and destroyed the soldiers and the army; at times in Russia, such curses are sent to Siberia. But as yet, I have not heard that any body was hurt here, with the exception of the treasury of the country, and of the soldiers. The chain-gang of those quartermaster's thieves, contractors, jobbers and lobbyists must be strong, very long, and composed of all kind of influential and not-influential vampyres. Somebody told me, perhaps in joke, that all of them constitute a kind of free-masonry, and have signs of recognition. After all, that may be true. Impudence, brazen brow, and blank conscience may be among such signs of recognition.
February 26.—O, could I only win confidence in Mr. Lincoln, it would be one of the most cheerful days and events in my life. Perhaps, elephant-like, Mr. Lincoln slowly, cautiously but surely feels his way across a bridge leading over a precipice. Perhaps so; only his slowness is marked with blood and disasters. But the most discouraging and distressing is hiscortège, his official and unofficial friends. Mars Stanton, Neptune Welles, are good and reliable, but have no decided preponderance. Astrea-Themis-Bates is mostly right when disinfected from border-State's policy, and from fear of direct, unconditional emancipation. But neither in Olympus nor in Tartarus, neither in heaven nor in hell, can I find names of prototypes for the official and unofficial body-guard which, commanded by Seward, surrounds and watches Mr. Lincoln, so that no ray of light, no breath of spirit and energy may reach him.
February 26.—This civil war with itscortègeof losses and disasters, which after all fall most bloodily and crushingly on the laborious, and rather comparatively, poorer part of the whole people; perhaps all this will form the education of the rank and file of the political Democratic party. The like Democratic masses are intellectually by far inferior to the Republican masses. Experience will perhaps teach those unwashed Democrats how degrading was their submission to slavocracy, which reduced them to the condition of political helots. This rank and file mayfind out how they were blindfolded by slave breeders and their northern abettors. A part of the Democratic masses were, and still are kept in as brutal political ignorance and depravity as are the poor whites in the South, under whatever name one may record them. Now, or never, is the time for theunwashedto find out that during their alliance with the Southern traitors, all genuine manhood, all that ennobles, elevates the man and warms his heart, was poisoned or violently torn from them—that brutality is not liberty, and finally, that the Northern leaders have been or are more abject than abjectness itself. If the rank and file finds out all this, the blood and disasters are, in part at least, atoned for.
February 27.—O! could I from every word, from every page of this Diary, for eternities, make coruscate the nobleness, the simple faith with which the people sacrifices all to the cause. To be biblical, the sacrifice of the people is as pure as was that made by Abel; that made by the people's captains, leaders, pilots is Cain-like.
February 27.—All the Copperheads fused together have done less mischief, have less distorted and less thrown out of the track the holy cause, they have exercised a less fatal and sacrilegious influence, they are responsible for less blood and lives, than is Mr. Seward, with all his arguments and spread-eagleism. Even McClellan and McClellanism recede before Seward and Sewardism, the latter havinggenerated the former. In times of political convulsions, perverse minds and intellects at the helm, more fatally influence the fate of a nation than do lost battles. Lost battles often harden the temper of a people; a perverse mind vitiates it.
February 27.—Gold rises, and no panic, a phenomenon upsetting the old theories of political economy. This rise will not affect the public credit, will not even ruin the poor. I am sure it will be so, and political economy, as every thing else in this country, will receive new and more true solutions for its old, absolute problems. The genuine credit, the prosperity of this country, is wholly independent of this or that financial or governmental would-be capacity; is independent of European exchanges, and of the appreciation by the Rothschilds, the Barings, and whatever be the names of the European appraisers. The American credit is based on the consciousness of the people, and on the faith in its own vitality, in its inexhaustible intellectual and material resources. The people credits to itself, it asks not the foreigners to open for it any credit. The foreign capitalists will come and beg. The nation is not composed here as it is composed all over Europe, of a large body of oppressed, who are cheated, taxed by the upper-strata and by a Government. Thus credit and discredit in America have other causes and foundations, their fluctuations differ from all that decides such eventualities in Europe.
I am sure that subsequent events will justify these my assertions.
February 28.—Inveterate West Pointers got hold of the dizzy brains of some Senators and of other Congressmen, and Congress wasted its precious time in regulating the military position of engineers. This action of Congress is apendantto the Academy of Sciences. The leaders in this discussion proved tonausea; 1st. Their utter ignorance of the whole military science, of its subdivisions, branches and classifications; 2d. Their ignorance of the nature of intellectual hierarchy in sciences; 3d. Those Congressional wiseacres proved how easily the West Point Engineers humbugged them. Congress consecrates the engineer as number one. Congress had better send a trustful man to Europe, to the continent, and find out what is considered as number one in the science of warfare. But every luminous body throws a shadow; the Academy of Sciences, and this number one, are the shadows thrown by that political body.
February 28.—Seldom, if ever, in history was the vital principle of a society, of a nation, of a Government, so bitterly assailed, and its destruction attempted by combined elements and forces of the most hellish origin and nature, as the vital principle of American institutions is now assailed. The enemies, the sappers, the miners, are the Union-Slavery-Saviours of all kinds and hues. But darknesscannot destroy light, nor cold overpower heat:—so the united conspiracy will not prevail against light and right and justice.
February 28.—The last batch of various generals sent for confirmation to the Senate, reflects and illustrates the manner in which promotion is managed, and military powers and capacity estimated at the White House.
Hooker and Heintzelman are made major generals because they brilliantly fought at Williamsburgh, and Sumner is likewise promoted for Williamsburgh, where, in pursuance of McClellan's orders, Sumner looked on when Heintzelman and Hooker were almost cut to pieces. The dignitaries of Halleck's pacific staff are promoted, and colonels who fight, and who, by their bravery and blood correct or neutralize the awful deadly blunders of Halleck and of his staff, such colonels arenotpromoted!
February 28.—Congress outlawed all foreign intervention, mediation! Catch it, foreign meddlers. Catch it,Decembriseurand your lackeys.
February 28.—Congress by its boldness, saved the immaculate Republican idea, saved the principle of self-government, and deserves the gratitude of all those from pole to pole, who have at heart the triumph of freedom, the triumph of light! To its last hours, this Congress had to overcome all the mean, petty appetites and cravings, which so often palsy, defile, or at the best, neutralize the noblest activity; Congresshad to overcome prejudices, narrow-mindedness and bad faith. Many of the so called political friends—vide, the great Republican press—are as troublesome, as much nuisances, as are the Sewardites and the Copperheads. Others accuse the Congress for not having done enough. Copperheads and Sewardites accuse Congress of having done too much. And thus, the majority of Congress marches on across impediments and abuses thrown in its way both by friends and by enemies.
TheTribunebitterly and boldly attacks Dahlgren, and trembling caves in before Seward. Of course! Dahlgren can only send 11 and 15 inch shells to crush the enemy; brother politician Seward can be useful for some scheme.
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-YorkTimes—one among the great beacons and authorities in the country—the New YorkTimesbelies its title as the "little villain." Gigantically, Atlas-like, that sheet upholds Seward and Weed. TheTimesmakes one admire the senile, compromising,mediating, arbitrating, and, at times, stumblingTribune, and the cautious but often ardentEvening Post.
TheTimesjoins in the outcry against the radicals. It is Seward-Weed's watchword. It is the watchword of theHerald. 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. TheHerald, theWorld, theExpress, 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 mischievousthan 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 butcheredsoldiers 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 inflagrante 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 bythisandthat factandactEngland violates the international laws and rules of neutrality and of good comity between twofriendlygovernments 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-SeventhCongress 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, aSeward, 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.—Thegoodpress 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.