Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 Part 15

July 9.-Chewing and spitting paramount here, require incalculable numbers of spittoons. The lickspittles outnumber the spittoons.

July 10.-The politicians already begin to broadly play their game. I use the sacramental expressions. What a disgusting monstrosity is a thorough politician! Not even a eunuch! There is nothing in a politician to be emasculated: no mind, no heart, no manhood. In what a galere I got-not by personal contact-but by intellectually observing the worms on the body politic of my-at any rate heartily adopted-country.

July 11.-Repeatedly and repeatedly certain newspaper correspondents announce to the world that Senator Sumner exercises considerable influence on the supreme power. All things considered, I wish it may be so, but I see it is not. Sumner's influence ought to have produced some palpable results. I see none.

The international maritime complications are watched and defeated by Welles.

Drapez vous, messieurs, drapez vous-in the statesman toga, history and truth will take it off from your shoulders.

July 12.-Mr. Seward is very ardently at work-Weed marshaling Seward-to reconstruct slavery and Union, to give a very large if not a general amnesty to the rebels, to shake hands with them, in pursuance of the Mercier-Richmond programme, and to be carried into the White House on the shoulders of the grateful Union-saviours, Copperheads, and blood-stained traitors. The Herald, the World, the National Intelligencer and others of that creed will sing gloria in excelsis to Seward.

July 13.-What is Meade doing? It is exciting to know why a blow is not yet dealt on the head of retreating rebels. Or is it that though West Point generals-on both sides-tolerably understand how to fight a battle, they subside when the finishing stroke is to be dealt. Oh for a general who understands how to manuvre against the enemy!!!

I hear from a very reliable source, that during the excitement brewing before the day of Gettysburgh, the honorable Post Master General by a special biped message insinuated to the honorable governor of New York that the governor may ask the removal of Stanton for the safety of the country and of patriots of the Postmaster's and the governor's species.

July 13.-Besides what Meade has in hand, there must be a considerable number of troops in Baltimore, in Fortress Monroe and the volunteer militia. Why not, Lincoln-Halleck! ma.s.s them on the south side of the Potomac under such generals as Heintzelman, Sigel, etc., and take the enemy between two fires?

July 14.-b.l.o.o.d.y riots in New York. The teaching of the Woods, of their former hireling, the World, and of those who pay that offal now. Seymour's democracy; mob, pillage, ma.s.sacre.

July 14.-Lincoln has nominated so many Major-Generals who are relieved from duty, so many of them, that the Major-Generals ought to be formed into a squadron, and, Halleck at the head, McClellan at the tail, make them charge on Lee's centre. In such a way the major-generals would be some use.

July 14.-I meet many who attempt to exculpate Mr. Seward from this or that untruth which he is accused having told to the President. Such Seward's men often contradict not the fact, but attempt to insinuate that somebody else might have told it. To all this I answer with the Roman Praetor:

Ille fecit cui prodest

July 14.-Grant has overpowered men, soil-and elements. Grant, Porter, Farragut, and their men overpowered land and waters. They overpowered the Mississippi, hear: the Mississippi's and its mighty affluents as the Yazoo, the Red River, and others. McClellan caved in before a brook, as the Chickahominy. McClellan had the most gigantic resources in men and material ever put in the hands of a commander, and caved in. O, worshippers of heavy incapacity, take and digest it if you can.

July 16.-Lee re-crossed the Potomac! Thundering storms, rising waters and about one hundred and fifty thousand at his heels! What a general! And our brave soldiers again baffled, almost dishonored by domestic, know-nothing generalship. We have lost the occasion to crush three-fourths of the rebellion. But where is the responsibility? Foul work somewhere, but, as always, it will be n.o.body's fault.

July 15.-Stanton in rage and despair. Riots everywhere. All these riots must be the result of a skillfully laid mine. They coincide with the invasion by the rebels. At the best, these riots are generated by Fourth of July Seymourite speeches and by the long uninterrupted series of incendiary articles in New York papers, like World, etc., and in Boston, where emasculated parasites as Hilliard, a Cain Curtis etc., soothingly tried their hands to disgrace their city and to mislead the people. All the Lincoln-Seward-Halleck actions cannot excuse these riots and their matricidal, secret inciters.

July 15.-The Administration ought to recall Wool and put Butler in New York. Butler understands how to deal with riotous traitors.

July 15.-Good news from Banks. Now he comes out and will recover the confidence of all good men.

July 15.-If it is true that Meade convoked a council of war, and that the generals decided not to attack Lee, then whoever voted and decided so, ought, at the best, to be sent to the hospital of mental invalids, and the army put in the hands of fighting men. Lee's escape will henceforth occupy the cardinal place in the annals of disgraceful generalships of the Potomac army.

July 16.-One of the truest men and citizens in this country, George Forbes, of Milton Hill, returned from England. Forbes says that aristocracy and the commercial cla.s.ses (with few exceptions) are generally against us. But the people at large are on our side.

Oh! that some method may be found to separate the interests of the good and n.o.ble English people, from the interests of the other cla.s.ses; then to have intercourse only with the people; and towards the other English fulfil:

Vos autem o Tyrii prolem gentemque futuram,

and that not one of those lords, lordlings, of inborn sn.o.bs and flunkeys, that not one of that English social sham may ever be allowed to tread the sacred American soil. And if such an Englishman ever touches these sh.o.r.es, then be he treated as leprous, and as carrying in him the most contagious plague, and let the house of any American that shall be opened to such an Englishman, be torn down and burned, and its ashes scattered to the winds; and the curse of the people upon any American harboring those sn.o.bbish upstarts of liberty.

July 16.-The incendiaries and murderers in New York cheered McClellan and came to his house. Bravo! Can, now, any honest man who is not an idiot, doubt where are the main springs and the animus of those New York blood-thirsty miscreants, and who are those of whose hearts McClellan got hold? What a nice Copperhead combination for saving the Union. Very likely Seymour, Dictator or President, McClellan Commander-in-chief, or Secretary of War, some of the Woods or Duncans or Barlows in the Treasury, their hireling any Marble for Foreign Affairs, and with them some others from among the favorites of the New York blood-thirsty incendiaries.

I read in one of the New York poison-dealers, alias Copperhead newspapers, that McClellanites was ruined by politicians. So-called honest, but idiotic conservatives sanctimoniously repeat that lie. It was McClellan, who, inspired by Barlow, by the Herald and by his aristocratic West Point pro-slavery friends, introduced democratic politics into the army at a time when the army was yet in an embryo state, already in September and October, 1861. O, impudent liars! history will nail your names to the gallows, together with the name of your fetish and of his military tail.

July 16.-In that fated, cursed council of war which allowed Lee to escape, my patriot Wadsworth was the most decided, the most out-spoken in favor of attacking Lee. Wadsworth never fails where honor and patriotism are to be sustained. Warren with Wadsworth. So Humphries, Pleasanton and Howard. Those names ought to coruscate as the purest light of patriotism for future generations. Meade's vote is of no account. He, the commander, ought to have acted up to his vote. If only Meade had imitated Radetzky. In 1849 after the denunciation of the Armistice of Milan, Radetzky called a council of war to decide whether the Po was to be crossed and Piedmont invaded. All the best Austrian generals-Hesse with them, voted against the proposition. Radetzky quietly listened, then rose and give orders to cross immediately.

The result was the battle of Novara and the temporary humiliation of the house of Savoy. That was a model for Meade. And this General French who advised to entrench! To entrench in pursuit of a retreating enemy! This French honors West Point and engineering. The generals who voted to entrench and not to attack Lee, and Meade with them, they can never, never retrieve. Whatever be their future or eventual success it will not heal the wound given to the country by thus allowing Lee to escape. O, G.o.d! O, G.o.d!

Such Frenches and others a.s.serted that "Lee will attack before he crosses." Oh what Ma.r.s.es! Lee's position at Williamsport was on heights, etc., etc., a.s.sert those braves.

When a country is hilly and undulating there will always be found one point or hill commanding the others. I shall risk my head on the fact, that around Lee's entrenchments at Williamsport, there exist other elevations which command Williamsport, and are within artillery distance. Natura semper sibi consona. I am sure that better positions than that selected by Lee could easily have been occupied by our troops or artillery. The same must have been the case at Hagerstown. And if the generals were afraid to fight Lee's whole army they ought to have more vigilantly watched his crossing. There was a time when a part only of the rebel army was facing us, and at least this part ought to have been attacked and crippled, if not destroyed. Sound common sense teaches it. But it seems that no will to fight Lee, or to impede his safe recrossing, no such will animated the majority of the council of war. It seems that some of the West Point nurslings are still awe-struck at the sight of their slavocratic former companions, as they were at the time of their studies at West Point.

I was told by an officer coming from the army that the soldiers are exasperated. The soldiers say that the generals did not wish to destroy Lee's army and finish the rebellion, because their "stars were to set down." Who knows how far the soldiers are right?

July 17.-In New York the unterrified democracy went to arson and murder, hand in hand with the immense majority of Irishry. Meagher, Nugent, Corcoran and thousands like you, are exceptions. The O'Connors, O'Gormans, etc., are the unterrified. For these b.l.o.o.d.y saturnalia the wedding was consecrated by the Iro-Roman priesthood. As the unterrified Democrats pollute the sacred name of genuine Democracy, so the Irishry stain even the Catholic confession. The Iro-Roman Church in this country is not even a Roman-Catholic end. This Iro-Romanism here is a mixture of cunning, ignorance, brutality and extortion. A European Roman-Catholic at once finds out the difference in the spirit, and even to a certain extent, in the form. The incendiaries and murderers in the New York riots are the nurslings and disciples of the Iro-Roman clergy and the Iro-hierarchy.

July 17.-Mr. Lincoln ought to dismiss every general who voted against fighting; dismiss Meade for not understanding his power as commander of an army, and give the places to such Howards, Warrens, Pleasantons, Humphreys, Wadsworths, and all others, generals, colonels, etc. who clamorously asked an order for attack. If the army shall depend upon such generals who let Lee escape, then lay down arms, and drag not the people's children to a slaughter house.

To excuse the generals, it is a.s.serted that at Chancellorsville Lee has allowed to Hooker to recross the river without annoying us, which Lee could easily do, and damage us considerably. Well! are our Generals to carry on a mere war of civilities? If Lee committed a fault, are you, gentlemen, in duty bound to imitate his mistakes? Imitation for imitation, then rather imitate Lee's several splendid manuvring and tactics.

July 17.-I learn that the deep-dyed Copperheads and slavery-saviours do not consider Seymour of New York safe enough. They turn now to a certain Seymour in Connecticut. It seems that the Connecticut Seymour still more hates human rights, self-government, light and progress, and is a still more ardent lickspittle of slavocracy, of barbarism, and of the slave-driving whip.

July 18.-Splendid Chase urged Wadsworth to go to Florida and organize that country-very likely to prepare votes for Chase's presidency. It is not such high-toned men as Wadsworth who become tools of schemers.

Again rumors say that Stanton joined the scheme of Lincoln's re-election. As far as I can judge, Stanton's cardinal aim is to crush the rebellion.

July 18.-The greatest glory for Wadsworth is that the majority against him in the last November elections is now murdering and arsoning New York. All of them are unterrified, hard sh.e.l.l democrats, and cheer McClellan. These murderers are the "friends" of Seymour-they are the pets of that World, itself below the offal of h.e.l.l-they are the "gentlemen" incendiaries of H. E. the Archbishop Hughes. On your head, most eminent Archbishop, is the whole responsibility. These "gentlemen" are brought up, Christianized and moralized under your care and direction, and under that of your tonsured crew. The "gentlemen" murderers are your herd, O most eminent shepherd! You ought to have and you could have stopped the rioters. And now your stola is a halter and your pallium gored with blood, otherwise innocent as is the blood of the lamb incensed on the altar of Saint Agnes in Rome.

Mr. Seward strongly opposed the appointment of General Butler to New York. Mr. Seward wished no harm to the "gentlemen" of his dear friend the Most Eminent Archbishop, and to the select ones who helped him to defeat Wadsworth.

July 19.-Difficult will be the task of the historian of these episodes of riots, as well as of the whole civil war. If gifted with the sacred spark, the future historian must carefully disentangle the various agencies and forces in this convulsion. Some such agencies are-

a The righteousness of the cause of the North, defending civilization, justice, humanity.

b The devotion, the self-sacrifice of the people.

c The littleness, helplessness, selfishness, cunning, heartlessness, empty-headedness, narrow-mindedness of the various leaders.

d The plague of politicians.

e The untiring efforts of the heathen, that is, of the Northern worshippers of the slavocrat and of his whip, efforts to uphold and save their idol.

f The fatal influence of the press. The republican or patriot press neither sufficiently vigilant, nor clear-sighted, nor intelligent, nor undaunted; not reinvigorated by new, young agencies; the bad press reckless, unprincipled, without honor and conscience, but bold, ferocious in its lies, and sacrificing all that is n.o.ble, human and pure to the idol of slavery.

July 19.-The more details about the shame of Hagerstown and of Williamsport, the more it rends heart and mind. I saw many soldiers and officers, sick, wounded and healthy. Their accounts agree, and cut to the quick. Our army was flushed with victory, craving for fight, and in a state of enthusiastic exaltation. But our generals were not therein in communion with the officers, with the rank and file. Enthusiasm! this highest and most powerful element to secure victory, and on which rely all the true captains; enthusiasm, that made invincible the phalanx of Alexander; invincible Caesar's legions and Napoleon's columns; enthusiasm was of no account for the generals in council. O Meade! better were it for you if your council was held among, or with the soldiers.

The Rebel army was demoralized, as a retreating army always is; no doubt exists concerning a partial, at least, disorganization of the rebels. But Lee and his generals understood how to make a bold show, and a bold, menacing front, with what was not yet disorganized, and our generals caved in, in the council.

This July 19th is heavy, dark and gloomy.... I wish it were all over.

July 19.-Thurlow Weed puffs Stanton and patronises him. O, G.o.d! It is a terrible blow to Stanton. How, now, can one have confidence in Stanton's manhood. Are contracts at the bottom of the puff, or is it only one of Weed's tricks to defile and to ruin Stanton?

July 20.-It is almost humiliating to witness how mongrels and pigmies attempt to rob the people of their due glory, how they attempt to absorb to their own credit what the pitiless pressure of events forced upon them. All of them limped after events as lame ducks in mud; not one foresaw any thing, not one understood the to-day. Neither emanc.i.p.ation nor the transformation of slave into free states, are of your special, individual work, O, great men; but you strut now.