Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 Part 9

McClellan organized a board of generals, arriving daily from the camps, to discuss some new fancy army equipment. And Lincoln, Seward, Blair, and all the tail of intriguers and imbeciles, still admire him. In no other country would such a futile man be kept in command of troops opposed to a deadly and skilful enemy.

For several weeks, McClellan and his chief of the staff (such as he is) are sick in bed, and no one is ad interim appointed to attend to the current affairs of our army of 600,000, having the enemy before their nose. Oh human imbecility! No satirist could invent such things; and if told, it would not be believed in Europe.

The McClellan-worship by the people at large is to be explained by the firm, ardent will of the people to crush the rebels, and by the general feeling of the necessity of a man for that purpose. Such is the case with the true, confiding people in the country; but here, contractors, martinets, and intriguers are the blowers of that worship. Lincoln is as is the people at large; but a Seward, a Blair, a Herald, a Times, and their respective and numerous tails,-as for their motives, they are the reverse of Lincoln and of the people.

Victories in Kentucky, beyond the circ.u.mference or the direct action from here; they are obtained without strategy and by rough levies. But this voice of events is not understood by the McClellan tross.

Change in the Cabinet: Stanton, a new man, not from the parlor, and not from the hacks. His bulletin on the victory in Kentucky inaugurated a new era. It is a voice that n.o.body hitherto uttered in America. It is the awakening voice of the good genius of the people, almost as that which awoke Lazarus. This Stanton is the people; I never saw him, but I hope he is the man for the events; perhaps he may turn out to be my statesman.

I wish I could get convinced of the real superiority of Fremont. It is true that he was treated badly and had natural and artificial difficulties to over come; it is true that to him belongs the credit of having started the construction of the mortar fleet; but likewise it is true that he was, at the mildest, unsurpa.s.singly reckless in contracts and expenditures, and I shall never believe him a general. With all this, Fremont started a great initiative at a time when McClellan and three-fourths of the generals of his creation considered it a greater crime to strike at a gentleman slaveholder than to strike at the Union.

The courtesies and hospitalities paid to Thurlow Weed by English society are clamored here in various ways. These courtesies prove the high breeding and the good-will of a part, at least, of the English aristocracy and of English statesmen. I do not suppose that Thurlow Weed could ever have been admitted in such society if he were travelling on his own merits as the great lobbyist and politician. At the utmost, he would have been shown up as a rara avis. But introduced to English society as the master spirit of Mr. Seward, and as Seward's semi-official confidential agent, Thurlow Weed was admitted, and even petted. But it is another question if this palming of a Thurlow Weed upon the English high-toned statesmen increased their consideration for Mr. Seward. The Duke of Newcastle and others are not yet softened, and refuse to be humbugged.

Whoever has the slightest knowledge of how affairs are transacted, is well aware that the times of a personal diplomacy are almost gone. The exceptions are very rare, very few, and the persons must be of other might and intellectual mettle than a Sandford, Weed, or Hughes. Great affairs are not conducted or decided by conversations, but by great interests. Diplomatic agents, at the utmost, serve to keep their respective governments informed about the run of events. Mr. Mercier does it for Louis Napoleon; but Mr. Mercier's reports, however friendly they may be, cannot much influence a man of such depth as Louis Napoleon, and to imagine that a Hughes will be able to do it! I am ashamed of Mr. Seward; he proves by this would-be-crotchety policy how little he knows of events and of men, and how he undervalues Louis Napoleon. Such humbug missions are good to throw dirt in the eyes of a Lincoln, a Chase, etc., but in Europe such things are sent to Coventry. And Hughes to influence Spain! Oh! oh!

Dayton frets on account of the mission of Hughes. Dayton is right. Generally Dayton shows a great deal of good sense, of good comprehension, and a n.o.ble and independent character. He is not a flatterer, not servile, and subservient to Mr. Seward, as are others-Mr. Adams, Mr. Sandford, and some few other diplomatic agents.

The active and acting abolitionists ought to concentrate all their efforts to organize thoroughly and efficiently the district of Beaufort. The success of a productive colony there would serve as a womb for the emanc.i.p.ation at large.

Mr. Seward declares that he has given up meddling with military affairs. For his own sake, and for the sake of the country, I ardently wish it were so; but-I shall never believe it.

The Investigating Committee has made the most thorough disclosures of the thorough incapacity of McClellan; but the McClellan men, Seward, Blair, etc., neutralize, stifle all the good which could accrue to the country from these disclosures. And Lincoln is in their clutches. The administration by its influence prevents the publication of the results of this investigation, prevents the truth from coming to the people. Any hard name will be too soft for such a moral prevarication.

McClellan is either as feeble as a reed, or a bad man. The disorder around here is nameless. Banks compares it to the time of the French Directory. Banks has no guns, no cavalry, and is in the vanguard. He begs almost on his knees, and cannot get anything. And the country pays a chief of the staff, and head of the staffers.

The time must come, although it be now seemingly distant, that the people will awake from this lethargy; that it will perceive how much of the n.o.blest blood of the people, how much time and money, have been worse than recklessly squandered. The people will find it out, and then they will ask those Cains at the wheel an account of the innocent blood of Abel, the country's son, the country's cause.

The defenders of, and the thus called moderate men on the question of slavery, utter about it the old rubbish composed of the most thorough ignorance and of disgusting fallacies, in relation to this pseudo science, or rather lie, about races. More of it will come out in the course of the Congressional discussions. Not one of them is aware that independent science, that comparative anatomy, physiology, psychology, anthropology, that philosophy of history altogether and thoroughly repudiate all these superficially a.s.serted, or tried-to-be-established, intrinsic diversities and peculiarities of races. All these would-be axioms, theories, are based on sand. In true science the question of race as represented by the Southern school partisans of slavery, with Aga.s.siz, the so-called professor of Charleston by European savans, at their head,-that question is at the best an illusive element, and endangers the accuracy of induction. As it presents itself to the unprejudiced investigator, race is nothing more than the single manifestation of anterior stages of existence, the aggregate expression of the pre-historic vicissitudes of a people.

If those would-be knowing arguers on slavery, race, etc., were only aware of the fact that such people as the primitive Greeks, or the ancestors of cla.s.sical Greeks, that the ancestors of the Latins, that even the roving, robbing ancestors of the Anglo Saxons, in some way or other, have been anthropophagi, and worshipped fetishes; and even as thus called already civilized, they sacrificed men to G.o.ds,-could our great pro-slavers know all this, they would be more decent in their ignorant a.s.sertions, and not, so self-satisfied, strut about in their dark ignorance.

Those who are afraid that the freed negroes of the South will run to the Northern free States, display an ignorance still greater than the former. When the enslaved colored Americans in the South shall be all thoroughly emanc.i.p.ated in that now cursed region, then they will remain in the, to them, congenial climate, and in the favorable economical conditions of labor and of existence. Not only those emanc.i.p.ated will not run North, but the colored population from the free States, incited and stirred up by natural attractions, will leave the North for the South, as small streamlets and rivulets run into a large current or river.

The rebels extend on an immense bow, nearly one hundred miles, from the lower to the upper Potomac. Our army, two to one, is on the span of the arc, and we do nothing. A French sergeant would be better inspired than is McClellan.

FEBRUARY, 1862.

Drifting - The English blue book - Lord John could not act differently - Palmerston the great European fuss-maker - Mr. Seward's "two pickled rods" for England - Lord Lyons - His pathway strewn with broken gla.s.s - Gen. Stone arrested - Sumner's resolutions infuse a new spirit in the Const.i.tution - Mr. Seward beyond salvation - He works to save slavery - Weed has ruined him - The New York press - "Poor Tribune" - The Evening Post - The Blairs - Illusions dispelled - "All quiet on the Potomac" - The London papers - Quill-heroes can be bought for a dinner - French opinion - Superhuman efforts to save slavery - It is doomed! - "All you worshippers of darkness cannot save it!" - The Hutchinsons - Corporal Adams - Victories in the West - Stanton the man! - Strategy (hear! hear!)

We are obliged, one by one, to eat our official high-toned a.s.sertions and words, and day after day we drift towards putting the rebels on an equal footing with ourselves. We declared the privateers to be pirates (which they are), and now we proffer their exchange against our colonels and other honorable prisoners. So one radical evil generates numberless others. And from the beginning of the struggle this radical evil was and is the want of earnestness, of a firm purpose, and of a straight, vigorous policy by the administration. Paullatim summa petuntur may turn out true-but for the rebels.

The publication of the English blue book, or of official correspondence between Lord Lyons and Lord John Russell, throws a new light on the conduct of the English Cabinet; and, anglophobe as I am, I must confess that, all things considered, above all the unhappily-justified distrust of England in Mr. Seward's policy,-from the first day of our troubles Lord John Russell could not act differently from what he did. Lord John Russell had to reconcile the various and immense interests of England, jeopardized by the war, with his sincere love of human liberty. Therein Lord John Russell differs wholly from Lord Palmerston, this great European fuss-maker, who hates America. As far as it was possible, Lord J. Russell remained faithful to the n.o.ble (not hereditary, but philosophical) traditions of his blood. Lord John Russell's letter to Lord Lyons (No. 17), February 20, 1861, although full of distrust in the future policy of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet towards England, is nevertheless an honorable doc.u.ment for his name.

Lord J. Russell was well aware that the original plan of Mr. Seward was to annoy and worry England. Everything is known in this world, and especially the incautious words and conversations of public men. Months before the inauguration, Mr. Seward talked to senators of both parties that he had in store "two pickled rods" for England. The one was to be Green (always drunken), the Senator from Missouri, on account of the colored man Anderson; the other Mr. Nesmith, the Senator from Oregon, and the San Juan boundaries. Undoubtedly the Southern senators did not keep secret the like inimical forebodings concerning Mr. Seward's intentions towards England. Undoubtedly all this must have been known to Lord J. Russell when he wrote the above-mentioned letter, No. 17.

More even than Lord John Russell's, Lord Lyons's official correspondence since November, 1860, inspires the highest possible respect for his n.o.ble sentiments and character. Above all, one who witnessed the difficulties of Lord Lyons's position here, and how his pathway was strewn with broken gla.s.s, and this by all kinds of hands, must feel for him the highest and most sincere consideration. From the official correspondence, Lord Lyons comes out a friend of humanity and of human liberty,-just the reverse of what he generally was supposed to be. And during the whole Trent affair, Lord Lyons's conduct was discreet, delicate, and generous. Events may transform Lord Lyons into an official enemy of the Union; but a mind soured by human meanness is soothingly impressioned by such true n.o.bleness in a diplomat and an Englishman.

Gen. Stone, of Ball's Bluff infamous ma.s.sacre, arrested. Bravo! At the best, Stone was one of those conceited regulars who admired slavery, and who would have wished to save the Union in their own peculiar way. I wish he may speak, as in all probability he was not alone.

Sumner's resolutions infuse a new spirit in the Const.i.tution, and elevate it from the low ground of a dead formula. The resolutions close the epoch of the Stories, of the Kents, of the Curtises, and inaugurate a higher comprehension of American const.i.tutionalism. During this session Charles Sumner triumphantly and n.o.bly annihilated the aspersions of his enemies, representing him as a man of one hobby, but lacking any practical ideas. His speech on currency was among the best. Not so with his speech about the Trent affair. It is superficial, and contains misconceptions concerning treaties, and other blunders very strange in a would-be statesman.

Ardently devoted to the cause of justice and of human rights, Sumner weakens the influence which he ought to exercise, because he impresses many with the notion that he looks more to the outside effect produced by him than to the intrinsic value of the subject; he makes others suppose that he is too fond of such effect, and, above all, of the effect produced in Europe among the circle of his English and European acquaintances.

It is positively a.s.serted that Lincoln agreed to take Mr. Seward in the Cabinet, because Weed and others urgently represented that Mr. Seward is the only man in the Republican party who is familiar with Europe, with her statesmen, and their policy. O Lord! O Lord! And where has Seward acquired all this information? Mr. Seward had not even the first A B C of it, or of anything else connected with it. And, besides, such a kind of special information is, at the utmost, of secondary necessity for an American statesman. Marcy had it not, and was a true, a genuine statesman. Undoubtedly, nature has endowed Seward with eminent intellectual qualities, and with germs for an eminent statesman. But the intellectual qualities became blunted by the long use of crotchets and tricks of a politician, by the a.s.sociations and influence of such as Weed, etc.; thereby the better germs became nipped, so to speak, in the bud. Mr. Seward's acquired information by study, by instruction, and by reading, is quite the reverse of what in Europe is regarded as necessary for a statesman. Often, very often, I sorrowfully a.n.a.lyze and observe Mr. Seward, with feelings like those evoked in us by the sight of a n.o.ble ruin, or of a once rich, natural panorama, but now marred by large black spots of burned and dead vegetation, or by the ashes of a volcano.

Now, Mr. Seward is beyond salvation-a "disappointed man," as he called himself in a conversation with Judge Potter, M. C.; he changed aims, and perhaps convictions. For Mr. Seward, slavery is no more the most hideous social disease; he abandoned that creed which elevated him in the confidence of the people. Now he works to preserve as much as possible of the curse of slavery; he does it on the plea of Union and conservatism; but in truth he wishes to disorganize the pure Republican party, which he hates since the Chicago Convention and since the days of the formation of the Cabinet. Under the advice of Weed, Mr. Seward attempts to form a (thus called) Union and conservative party, which at the next turn may carry him into the White House.

Seward considers Weed his good genius; but in reality Weed has ruined Seward. Now Mr. Seward supports strategy, imbecility, and McClellan. The only explanation for me is, that Seward, partic.i.p.ating in all military counsels and strategic plans, and not understanding any of them, finds it safer to back McClellan, and thus to deceive others about his own ignorance of military matters.

The press-the New York one-worse and worse; the majority wholly degraded to the standard of the Herald and of the Times. The poor Tribune, daily fading away, altogether losing that bold, lofty spirit of initiative to which for so many years the Tribune owed its all-powerful and unparalleled influence over the free ma.s.ses. Now, at times, the Tribune is similar to an old, honest s.e.xagenarian, attempting to draw a night-cap over his ears and eyes. The flames of the holy fire, so common once in the Tribune, flash now only at distant, very distant epochs. The Evening Post towers over all of them. If the Evening Post never at a jump went as far as once did the Tribune, the Evening Post never made or makes a retrograde step; but perhaps slowly, but steadily and boldly, moves on. The Evening Post is not a paper of politicians or of jobbers, but of enlightened, well-informed, and strong-hearted patriots and citizens.

Mr. Blair, after all, is only an ambitious politician. My illusion about both the brothers is wholly dispelled and gone. I regret it, but both sustain McClellan, both look askant on Stanton, and belong to the conditional emanc.i.p.ationists, colonizationists, and other RADICAL preservers of slavery. All such form a cla.s.s of superficial politicians, of compromisers with their creed, and are corrupters of others.

How ardently I would prefer not to so often accuse others; but more than forty years of revolutionary and public life and experience have taught me to discriminate between deep convictions and a.s.sumed ones-to highly venerate the first, and to keep aloof from the second. Gold is gold, and pinchbeck is pinchbeck, in character as in metal.

McClellan acts as if he had taken the oath to some hidden and veiled deity or combination, by all means not to ascertain anything about the condition of the enemy. Any European if not American old woman in pants long ago would have pierced the veil by a strong reconnoissance on Centreville. Here "all quiet on the Potomac." And I hear generals, West Pointers, justifying this colossal offence against common sense, and against the rudiments of military tactics, and even science. Oh, n.o.ble, but awfully dealt with, American people!

At times Mr. Seward talks and acts as if he lacked altogether the perception of the terrible earnestness of the struggle, of the dangers and responsibilities of his political position, as well now before the people as hereafter before history. Often I can scarcely resist answering him, Beware, beware!

Lincoln belittles himself more and more. Whatever he does is done under the pressure of events, under the pressure of the public opinion. These agencies push Lincoln and slowly move him, notwithstanding his reluctant heaviness and his resistance. And he a standard-bearer of this n.o.ble people!

Those mercenary, ignorant, despicable scribblers of the London Times, of the Tory Herald, of the Sat.u.r.day Review, and of the police papers in Paris, as the Const.i.tutionnel, the Pays, the Patrie, all of them lie with unparalleled facility. Any one knows that those hungry quill-heroes can be got for a good dinner and a douceur.

I am sorry that the Americans ascribe to Louis Napoleon and to the French people the hostility to human rights as shown by those echappes des bagnes de la litterature. Louis Napoleon and the French people have nothing in common with those literary blacklegs.

The Journal des Debats, the Opinion Nationale, the Presse, the Siecle, etc., const.i.tute the true and honest organs of opinion in France. In the same way A. de Gasparin speaks for the French people with more authority than does Michel Chevalier, who knows much more about free trade, about ca.n.a.ls and railroads, but is as ignorant of the character, of the spirit, and of the inst.i.tutions of the American people, as he is ignorant concerning the man in the moon. So the lawyer Hautefeuille must have received a fee to show so much ill-will to the cause of humanity, and such gigantic ignorance.

Who began the civil war? is repeatedly discussed by those quill cut-throats and allies on the Thames and on the Seine.

Here some smaller diplomats (not Sweden, who is true to the core to the cause of liberty), and, above all, the would-be fashionable galopins des legations, are the cesspools of secession news, picked up by them in secesh society. Happily, the like galopins are the reverse of the opinions of their respective chiefs.

What superhuman efforts are made in Congress, and out of it, in the Cabinet, in the White House, by Union men,-Seward imagines he leads them,-by the weak-brained, and by traitors, to save slavery, if not all, at least a part of it. Every concession made by the President to the enemies of slavery has only one aim; it is to mollify their urgent demands by throwing to them small crumbs, as one tries to mollify a boisterous and hungry dog. By such a trick Lincoln and Seward try to save what can be saved of the peculiar inst.i.tution, to gratify, and eventually to conciliate, the South. This is the policy of Lincoln, of Seward, and very likely of Mr. Blair. Such political gobe-mouche as Doolittle and many others, are, or will be, taken in by this manuvre.

Scheme what you like, you schemers, wiseacres, politicians, and would-be statesmen, nevertheless slavery is doomed. Humanity will have the best against such pettifoggers as you. I know better. I have the honor to belong to that European generation who, during this half of our century, from Tagus and Cadiz to the Wolga, has gored with its blood battle-fields and scaffolds; whose songs and aspirations were re-echoed by all the horrible dungeons; by dungeons of the blood-thirsty Spanish inquisition, then across Europe and Asia, to the mines of Nertschinsk, in the ever-frozen Altai. We lost all we had on earth; seemingly we were always beaten; but Portugal and Spain enjoy to-day a const.i.tutional regime that is an improvement on absolutism. France has expelled forever the Bourbons, and universal suffrage, spelt now by the French people, is a progress, is a promise of a great democratic future. Germany has in part conquered free speech and free press. Italy is united, Romanism is falling to pieces, Austria is undermined and shaky, and broken are the chains on the body of the Russian serf. All this is the work of the spirit of the age, and our generation was the spirit's apostle and confessor. And so it will be with slavery, and all you worshippers of darkness cannot save it.

Not the one who strikes the first blow begins a civil war, but he who makes the striking of the blow imperative. The Southern robbers cannot claim exemption; they stole the a.r.s.enals, and struck the first blow at Sumpter. So much for the infamous quill-heroes of the London Times, the Herald, and tutti quanti.

The highest crime is treason in arms, and this crime is praised and defended by the English would-be high-toned press. But sooner or later it will come out how much apiece was paid to the London Times, the Herald, and the Sat.u.r.day Review for their venomous articles against the Union.

McClellan expelled from the army the Hutchinson family. It is mean and petty. Songs are the soul and life of the camp, and McClellan's heroic deeds have not yet found their minstrel.

After all, McClellan has organized-nothing! McDowell has, so to speak, formed the first skeletons of brigades, divisions, of parks of artillery, etc. The people uninterruptedly poured in men and treasures, and McClellan only continued what was commenced before him.

I positively know that already in December Mr. Lincoln began to be doubtful of McClellan's generalship. This doubtfulness is daily increasing, and nevertheless Mr. Lincoln keeps that incapacity in command because he does not wish to hurt McClellan's feelings. Better to ruin the n.o.ble people, the country! I begin to draw the conclusion that Mr. Lincoln's good qualities are rather negative than positive.

Mr. Adams complains that he is kept in the dark about the policy of the administration, and cannot answer questions made to him in London. But the administration, that is, Lincoln and Seward, are a little a la Micawber, expecting what may turn up. And, besides this, the great orator de lana caprina (Mr. Adams) deliberately degraded himself to the condition of a corporal under Mr. Seward's orders.

Victories in the West, results of the new spirit in the War Department. Stanton will be the man.