Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 Part 17

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 pa.s.sive 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 the superior command; here the palm belongs to the incapable, the slow, 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 a.s.sure 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 ma.s.ses 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.

As a, not only as the President, Mr. Lincoln represents nothing beyond the unavoidable const.i.tutional 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 country among 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 hea.r.s.e. 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 n.o.blest, 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, are as 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 of slowness and 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 the pretorian regime. General McClellan and other generals have forced the President to postpone the investigation into the conduct of the slow and of the insubordinate generals, all three special favorites of McClellan. General McClellan appeared before the soldiers surrounded by his old identical staff, by a tross of flatterers, and, Oh heavens! in the cortege Senator Wilson! Oh, sancta not simplicitas, 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 it may 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 a flying (oh hear, oh hear!) expedition to Richmond, but Lincoln and Stanton opposed it. This lie divides itself into two points. 1st lie. In January, n.o.body 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 sufficient to 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 a.s.serts 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, a.n.a.lyze, 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 ma.s.s 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 4 P. M. with a long train of well-packed wagons 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 pa.s.sion of slavery, now all-powerful throughout the South. Here, Lincoln, Seward, McClellan, Blair, Halleck, etc., incarnate the negation of the purest and n.o.blest 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 not a 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 grat.i.tude 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 intellectually brought 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 with France and England for any such purpose, or for mediation. The language of the article is n.o.ble 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 n.o.body, 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 sh.e.l.l 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, manuvres of Napoleon, to witness every day the combinations of McClellan is more 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 Mana.s.sas 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 mattra.s.s 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 more man, 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.