Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 Part 1

Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863.

by Adam Gurowski.

DIARY.

NOVEMBER, 1862.

Secretary Chase - French Mediation - the Decembriseur - Diplomatic Bendings.

November 18.-In the street a soldier offered to sell me the pay already several months overdue to him. As I could not help him, as gladly I would have done, being poor, he sold it to a curb-stone broker, a street note-shaver. I need not say that the poor soldier sustained a loss of twenty-five per cent. by the operation! He wanted to send the money home to his poor wife and children; yet one fourth of it was thus given into the hands of a stay-at-home speculator. Alas, for me! I could not save the poor fellow from the remorseless shaver, but I could and did join him in a very energetic cursing of Chase, that at once pompous and pa.s.sive patriot.

This induced me to enter upon a further and more particular investigation, and I found that hundreds of similar cases were of almost daily occurrence; and that this cheating of the soldiers out of their n.o.bly and patriotically earned pay, may quite fairly be denounced as rather the rule than as the exception. The army is unpaid! Unspeakable infamy! Before,-long before the intellectually poor occupant of the White House, long before any civil employe, big or little, the Army ought to be paid. Common humanity, common sense, and sound policy affirm this; and common decency, to say nothing about chivalric feelings, adds that when paymasters are sent to the army at all, their first payments should be made to the rank and file; the generals and their subordinate officers to be paid, not before, but afterwards. Oh! for the Congress, for the Congress to meet once again! My hope is in the Congress, to resist, and sternly put an end to, such heaven-defying and man-torturing injustice as now braves the curses of outraged men, and the anger of G.o.d. How this pompous Chase disappoints every one, even those who at first were inclined to be even weakly credulous and hopeful of his official career. And why is Stanton silent? He ought to roar. As for Lincoln-he, ah! * * * * The curses of all the books of all the prophets be upon the culprits who have thus compelled our gallant and patriotic soldiery to mingle their tears with their own blood and the blood of the enemy!

Nov. 18.-Again Seward a.s.sures Lord Lyons that the national troubles will soon be over, and that the general affairs of the country "stand where he wanted them." Seward's crew circulate in the most positive terms, that the country will be pacified by the State Department! England, moved by the State papers and official notes-England, officially and non-officially, will stop the iron-clads, built and launched in English ports and harbors for the use of the rebels, and for the annoyance and injury of the United States. England, these Americans say, England, no doubt, has said some hard words, and has been guilty of some detestably treacherous actions; but all will probably be settled by the benign influence of Mr. Seward's despatches, which, as everyone knows, are perfectly irresistible. How the wily Palmerston must chuckle in Downing Street.

The difference between Seward and a real statesman, is this: that a statesman is always, and very wisely, chary about committing himself in writing, and only does it when compelled by absolutely irresistible circ.u.mstances, or by temptations brilliant enough to overrule all other considerations; for, such a statesman never for one moment forgets or disregards the old adage which saith that "Verba volant, scripta manent." But Seward, on the contrary, literally revels in a flood of ink, and fancies that the more he writes, the greater statesman he becomes.

At the beginning of this month, I wrote to the French minister, M. Mercier, a friendly and respectful note, warning him against meddling with politicians and busybodies. I told him that, before he could even suspect it, such men would bring his name before the public in a way neither pleasant nor profitable to him. M. Mercier took it in good part, and cordially thanked me for my advice.

Nov. 19.-Burnside means well, and has a good heart; but something more is required to make a capable captain, more especially in such times as those in which we are living. It is said that his staff is well organized; G.o.d be praised for that, if it really is so. In that case, Burnside will be the first among the loudly-lauded and self-conceited West-Point men, forcibly to impress both the military and the civilian mind in America, with a wholesome consciousness of the paramount importance to an army of a thoroughly competent and trustworthy staff.

The division of the army into three grand corps is good; it is at once wise and well-timed, following the example set by Napoleon, when he invaded Russia in 1812. If his subordinate generals will but do well, I have entire confidence in Hooker. He is the man for the time and for the place. As a fighting man, Sumner is fully and unquestionably reliable; but I have my doubts about Franklin. He is cold, calculating, and ambitious, and he has the especially bad quality of being addicted to the alternate blowing of hot and cold. Burnside did a good thing in confiding to General Siegel a separate command.

The New York Times begins to mend its bad ways; but how long will it continue in the better path?

Nov. 20.-England stirs up and backs up rebellion and disunion here; but, in Europe, for the sake of the unity of barbarism, Islamism, and Turkey, England throttles, and manacles, and lays prostrate beneath the feet of the Osmanli, the Greeks, the Sclavi, the heroic Montenegrins. England is the very incarnation of a treachery and a perfidy previously unexampled in the history of the world. The Punica fides, so fiercely denounced and so bitterly satirized by the historians and poets of old Rome, was truthful if compared to the Fides Anglica of our own day.

Nov. 22.-Our army seems to be ma.s.sed so as to be able to wedge itself in between Jackson in the valley and Lee at Gordonsville. By a bold manuvre, each of them could be separately attacked, and, I firmly believe, destroyed. But, unfortunately, boldness and manuvre, that highest gift, that supreme inspiration of the consummate captain, have no abiding place in the bemuddled brains of the West-Pointers, who are a dead weight and drag-chain upon the victimised and humiliated Army of the Potomac.

Nov. 25.-The Army is stuck fast in the mud, and the march towards Fredericksburgh is not at all unlikely to end in smoke. There seems to be an utter absence of executive energy. Why not mask our movements before Gordonsville from the observation of Lee? Or, if preferable, what is to hinder the interposition of un rideau vivant, a living curtain, in the form of a false attack, a feint in considerable force, behind which the whole army might be securely thrown across the Rappahannock, by which at least two days' march would be gained on Lee, and our troops would be on the direct line for Fredericksburg, if Fredericksburg is really to be the base for future operations. In this way, the army would have marched against Fredericksburg on both sides of the river. Or, supposing those plans to be rejected, why not throw a whole army corps at once, say 40,000 to 50,000 strong, across the Rappahannock. On either plan, I repeat it, at least two days' march would have been stolen upon Lee; three or four days of forced marches would have been healthy for our army, and a bloodless victory would have been obtained by the taking of the seemingly undefended Fredericksburg. A dense cloud enveloped this whole enterprise, and it is not even improbable, that the campaign may become a dead failure even before it has accomplished the half of its projected and loudly vaunted course. But bold conceptions, and energetic movements to match them, are just about as possible to Halleck or Burnside as railroad speed to the tedious tortoise.

Nov. 25.-Oh! So Louis Napoleon could not keep quiet. He offers his mediation, which, in plain English, means his moral support to the South. Oh! that enemy to the whole human race. That Decembriseur.[1] Our military slowness, if nothing else is the matter, our administrative and governmental helplessness, and Seward's lying and all-confusing foreign policy have encouraged foreign impertinence and foreign meddling. I have all along antic.i.p.ated them as an at least very possible result of the above mentioned causes. [See vol. I of the Diary.] Nevertheless, I scarcely expected such results to appear so soon. Perhaps this same impertinent French action may prove a second French faux pas, to follow in the wake of the first and very egregious faux pas in Mexico. The best that we can say for the Decembriseur is, that he is getting old. England refuses to join in his at once wild and atrocious schemes, and makes a very Tomfool of the b.l.o.o.d.y Fox of the Tuileries. My, Russia-ah! I am very confident of that-will refuse to join in the dirty and treacherous conspiracy for the preservation of slavery. Well for mediation. But Mr. Decembriseur, what think you and your diplomatic lackeys; what judgment and what determination do you and they form as to the terms and the termination, too, of your diabolical scheme? Descend, sir, from your shilly-shally generalities and verbal fallacies. Is it to be a commercial union, this hobby of your minister here? What is it; let us in all plainness of speech know what it is that you really and positively intend. Propound to us the plain meaning and scope of your imperial proposition.

Nov. 27.-Lee, with his army, marches or marched on the south side of the river, in a parallel to the line of Burnside on the north side of the river, and Jackson quietly, but quickly follows. They are at Fredericksburg, and our army looms up, calm, but stern; still, but defiant and menacing. I heartily wish that Burnside may be successful, and that I may prove to have been a false prophet. But the great Fatum, Fate, seems to declare against Burnside, and Fate generally takes sides with bold conceptions and their energetic execution.

Nov. 28.-The French despatch-scheme reads very like a Washington concoction, and does not at all bear the marks of Parisian origin. I find in it whole phrases which, for months past, I have repeatedly heard from the French minister here. Perhaps Mr. Mercier, in his turn, may have caught many of Mr. Seward's much-cherished generalities, unintelligible, very probably, even to himself, and quite certainly so to every one but himself. Perhaps, I say, Mr. Mercier may have caught up some of them, and making them up at hap-hazard into a macedoine, a hash, a hotch-potch, has served up the second-hand and heterogeneous mess to his master in Paris. The despatch expresses the fear of a servile war; this may very well have been copied from Mr. Seward's despatch to Mr. Adams, (May, 1862,) wherein Seward attempted to frighten England by a prophecy of a servile war in this country.

Nov. 30.-Mr. Seward semi-officially and conveniently accepts the French impudence. Computing the time and s.p.a.ce, the scheme corresponds with McClellan's inactivity after Antietam, and with the raising of the banner of the Copperheads. I spoke of this before, (see Diary for November and December, 1861, in Vol. I.) and repeatedly warned Stanton.

Nov. 30.-Mercier, the French diplomat, rapidly gravitates towards the Copperheads-Democrats. Is he acting thus in obedience to orders? After all, some of the diplomats here, and especially those of what call themselves the "three great powers," almost openly sympathize and side with secessionists, and patronize Copperheads, traitors, and spies. The exceptions to this rule are but few; strictly speaking, indeed, I should except only one young man. Some diplomats justify this conduct on the plea that the Republican Congressmen are "great bores," who will not play at cards, or dine and drink copiously; accomplishments in which the Secesh was so pre-eminent as to win his way to the inner depths of the diplomatic heart. The people, I am sure, will heartily applaud those of its representatives for thus incurring the contempt of dissipated diplomats.

Some persons maintain that Stanton breaks down, perhaps that he suffers, physically as well as mentally, from his necessitated contact with his official colleagues and his and their persistent, inevitable and inexorable hangers-on and supplicants. I do not perceive the alleged failure of his health or powers, and I do not believe it; but a.s.suredly, it were no marvel if such really were the case. It must be an adamantine const.i.tution and temper that could long bear with impunity the daily contact with a Lincoln, a Seward, a Halleck, and others less noted, indeed, but not the less contagious.

DECEMBER, 1862

President's Message - Political position - Fredericksburgh - Fog - Accident - Crisis in the Cabinet - Secretary Chase - Burnside - Halleck - the Butchers - The Lickspittle Republican Press - War Committee patriots - Youth - People - Ring out.

Grammarians may criticize the syntax of the President's message, and the style. It reads uneasy, forced, tortuous, and it declares that it is impossible to subdue the rebels by force of arms. Of course it is impossible with Lincoln for President, and first McClellan and then Halleck to counterfeit the parts of the first Napoleon, and the at once energetic and scientific Carnot. Were the great heart of THE PEOPLE left to itself, it would be very possible and even quite easily possible.

The message is written with an eye turned towards the Democrats; they are to be satisfied with the prospect of a convention. Seward puts lies into Lincoln's pen, in relation to foreign nations. But all is well, in the judgment of our Great Statesmen. Even the poor logic is, according to them, quite admirable.

Contrariwise, Stanton's report corresponds to the height and the gravity of events, and is worthy alike of the writer, and of the people to whom it is addressed.

Dec. 6.-Nearly four weeks the campaign has been opened; the enemy adds fortifications to fortifications before the very eyes of our army, yet nothing has been done towards preventing the rebels from working upon the formidable strongholds.

Does Halleck-Burnside intend to wait until the rebels shall be thoroughly prepared to repel any attack that may be made upon them? Either there is foul play going on, or there is stupendous stupidity pervading the entire management. But no one sees it, or rather few, if any, wish to see it. Stanton, I am quite sure, has nothing to do with the special plans of this enterprise. All is planned and ruled by Lincoln, Halleck and Burnside.

Dec. 7.-The political situation to-day, may be summarily stated as follows: the Republicans are confused by recent electoral defeats, and by the administrative and governmental helplessness, as exhibited every day by their leaders; the Democrats, flushed with success, display an unusual activity in evil doing, and are risking everything to preserve Slavery and the South from destruction. I speak of the Simon-pure Democrats, alias Copperheads, such as the Woods, the Seymours, the Vallandighams, the c.o.xes, the Biddles, &c. The Sewards and the Weeds are ready for a compromise. The ma.s.ses of the people, staggered by all this bewildering turmoil and impure factiousness, are nevertheless, stubbornly determined to persevere and to succeed in saving their country.

Dec. 7.-The European wiseacres, the would-be statesmen, whether in or out of power, especially in England, and that opprobrium of our century, the English and the Franco-Bonapartist press, have decided to do all that their clever brains can scheme towards preventing this n.o.ble American people from working out its mighty and beneficent destinies, and from elaborating and making more glorious than ever its own already very glorious history. As well might the brainless and heartless conspirators against human progress and human liberty endeavor to arrest the rotation of a planet by the stroke of a pickaxe.

Ah! Mr. Decembriseur, with your base crew of lickspittles, your pigmy, though treacherous efforts, even contending with those of the English enemies of light, and of right, your common hatred of Freedom and Freemen will end in being the destruction of yourself.

Dec. 7.-Burnside complains of the manner in which he is victimised, and explains his inactivity by the fact that the War Department neglected to furnish him with the necessary pontoons. How, in fact, was Burnside to move a great army without pontoons? But it was the duty of Halleck, and his lazy or incompetent, or traitorous staff, to have seen to the sending on of the pontoons. However, supposing Burnside and his staff to have as much wit as an average twelve-year-old school boy, they could have found in the army not merely hundreds, but even thousands of proficient workmen in a variety of mechanical trades, who would have constructed on the spot, and at the shortest notice, any number of bridges, pontoons, &c. Oh, how little are those wiseacre generals, the conceited and swaggering West Pointers; oh, how very little, if at all are they aware of the inexhaustible ingenuity and resources, the marvelous skill and power of such intelligent ma.s.ses as those of which they are the unintelligent, the unsympathising and the thoroughly unblessed leaders!

On a Sunday, exactly four weeks back from the day which I wrote these lines, McClellan was dismissed, and was succeeded by Burnside. But, after the established McClellan fashion, the great, great army was marched 30 to 50 miles, and then halts for weeks up to its knees in mud, and occupies itself in throwing up earthworks. And this is called making War! and the Hallecks are great men in the sight of Abraham Lincoln, and of all who profess and call themselves Lincolnites, and the rest stand around wondering and agape:

Conticuere omnes intentique ora (asinina) tenebant.

Stanton's magnificent report states that there are about 700,000 men under arms; yet this tremendous force is paralysed by the inactivity of most of the generals; those in the West, however, forming a bright and truly honorable exception. But, to be candid, how can activity and dash be expected from generals who have at their head, a shallow brained pedant like Halleck? Napoleon had about 500,000 men, when, in between four and five months, he marched from the Rhine to Moscow. Yet he had the aid of no railroad, on land, no steam, that practical annihilator of distance, no electric telegraph, with which to be in all but instantaneous communication with his distant generals, and had not similar material resources.

Dec. 10.-Mr. Seward's long correspondence with Mr. Adams shows to Europe that Mr. Seward imitated the rebels, and tried to frighten England with the bugbear of King Cotton; and also that he has no solid and abiding convictions whatever. Now, he preaches emanc.i.p.ation, yet, at the beginning of his great diplomatic activity, he openly sided with slavery; aye, he is still willing to save it for the sake of the Union, and, above all, and before all, for his own chances for the next Presidency.

Dec. 10.-Burnside has finally crossed the Rappahannock. Of course I do not know the respective positions. But I am sure that if the rebels have not a perfectly enormous advantage of position, and if the leading of the generals be worthy of the courage of their men, the victory must be ours. Oh! were all our generals Hookers, and not Burnsides!

General McDowell's Court of Inquiry produces some strange revelations. The inquiry will not end in making a thorough general of McDowell. He may have been somewhat unfortunate, no doubt; but his want of good fortune was at least equalled by his want of good generalship. I, and many others besides, were quite mistaken in our early estimate of McDowell. He should not so easily have swallowed the second Bull Run. He should at least have been wounded, if only ever so slightly; his best friends must wish that. But to be defeated, and come out without even a scratch! What a digestion the man must have for the hardest kinds of humiliation! But neither the President nor that curse of the country, McClellan, has great reason to plume himself much upon his share in the revelations that are made in the course of this Inquiry. McDowell himself seems to have been intended, by nature for a scheming and adroit politician. * * * *

Dec. 10.-The Congress feels the ground, hesitates, and apparently lacks the necessary energy to come to a determination. Lincoln, even such as he is, contrives to humbug most of the Congressmen. Well! The first of January is close at hand, and Seward, the Congressional cook, will concoct unpalatable and costly dishes for Congressional digestion. Seward is the incarnation of confusion, and of political faithlessness.

I have only now discovered certain of the reasons why the Battle of Antietam, so bravely fought by our army, had no ensemble and such marvelously poor results. Burnside, with his corps, got into line many hours too late. The rebels were thus enabled to concentrate on the wing opposed to Hooker and Sumner, the right wing and centre of the rebels being for the time unthreatened. And that is generalship! The blame of a blunder so glaring, and in its effect so mischievous, attaches equally to Burnside and to McClellan. The victory, such as it was, was due to the subordinate generals, and to the heroic bravery of the rank and file of the army.

When Burnside was invested with the command of the Army of the Potomac, he for nearly twenty-four hours retained McClellan in camp, with the intention of returning the command of the army to him if the rebels had attacked, as it was expected they would, during Sunday and Monday.

Dec. 13.-Night. Fight at Fredericksburgh. No news. O G.o.d!

Dec. 14.-As the consequence of Halleck-Burnside's slowness, our troops storm positions which are said to be impregnable by nature, and still farther strengthened by artificial works.

The President is even worse than I had imagined him to be. He has no earnestness, but is altogether in the hands of Seward and Halleck. He cannot, even in this supreme crisis, be earnest and serious for half an hour. Such was the severe but terribly true verdict pa.s.sed upon him by Fessenden of Maine.

Dec. 15.-Slaughter and infamy! Slaughter of our troops who fought like t.i.tans, though handled in a style to reflect nothing but infamy upon their commanders. When the rebel works had become impregnable, then, but not until then, our troops were hurled against them! The flower of the army has thus been butchered by the surpa.s.sing stupidity of its commanders. The details of that slaughter, and of the imbecility displayed by our officers in high command,-those details, when published, will be horrible. The Lincoln-Seward-Halleck-influence gave Burnside the command because he was to take care of the army. And how Burnside has fulfilled their expectations! It seems that the best way to take care of an army is to make it victorious.

My brave and patriotic Wadsworth has gone in the field, also his two sons; one of them, (Tick,) was at Fredericksburgh, and his bravery was remarkable, even among all the heroism of that most glorious and most accursed day. How many such patriots as Wadsworth, can we boast of? Yet the miserable Halleck had the impudence to say-"Wadsworth may go wherever he pleases, even if he pleases to go to h.e.l.l!"

h.e.l.l itself, would be too good a place for Halleck; imbeciles are not admitted there!

Dec. 17.-The details are coming in. The disaster of our army is terrible-indescribable; the heroic people bleeds, bleeds! And all this calamity and all this suffering and humiliation, are brought on by the stupidity of Burnside and Halleck, or both of them. The curse of the people ought to rest for centuries upon the very names of the authors of such frightful disaster. They are fiends, yea, worse, even, than the very fiends themselves.

Why, even the very rabble in Constantinople would storm the seraglio after such a ma.s.sacre. But here-oh, here, it just reminds Mr. Lincoln of a little anecdote.