Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 Part 4

Mr. Lincoln is very depressed at the condition of the Army of the Potomac, and decides-nothing for its reorganization. But for Halleck, Stanton would reorganize and give a new and healthy life to the army. I mean the upper grades, and not the rank and file, who are patriotic and healthy.

After Corinth, Halleck-Buell disorganized the Western, now Halleck is at work to do the same with the Potomac Army. I know that in the presence of a diplomat, Halleck complained that he is paid only five thousand dollars, and earned by far more in California. He had better return to California and to his pettifogging.

Since the beginning of this Administration, Mr. Seward wrote, I am sure, more dispatches than France, England, Prussia, Russia, Austria, Spain, and Italy put together during the Crimean war, and up to this day. Great is ink, and paper is patient!

January 13.-It is more than probable that Mr. Mercier stirred up, or at least heartily supported the mediation scheme. The Frenchmen in New York maintain that Mr. Mercier derives his knowledge of America and his political inspirations from that foul sheet, the Courrier des etats Unis. There is some truth in this a.s.sertion, as the reasons enumerated to justify mediation can be found in various numbers of that sheet. I am sorry that Mr. Mercier has fallen so low; as for his master, he is a fit a.s.sociate for the Courrier.

January 13.-Ralph Waldo Emerson, inspired and not silenced by the storm. He alone stands up from among the Athenian school. He alone is undaunted. So would be Longfellow, but for the terrible domestic calamity whose crushing blow no man's heart could resist. I never was a great admirer of Emerson, but now I bow, and burn to him my humble incense.

January 15.-The patriotic, and at times inspired orator-not rhetor-Kelly, from Pennsylvania, told me that all is at sixes and sevens in the Administration, and in the army. I believe it. How could it be otherwise, with Lincoln, Seward and Halleck at the head?

Mr. Seward did his utmost to defeat the re-election of Judge Potter from Wisconsin, one among the best and n.o.blest patriots in the country. For this object Mr. Seward used the influence of the pro-Catholic Bonzes. Then Mr. Seward wrote a letter denying all this-a letter which not in the least convinced the brave Judge, as I have it from himself.

If all the lies could only be ferreted out with which Seward bamboozles Lincoln, even the G.o.d of Lies himself would shudder.

January 15.-The n.o.ble and lofty voice of the genuine English people, the voice of the working cla.s.ses, begins to be heard. The people re-echo the key-note struck by a J. S. Mills, by a Bright, a Cobden, and others of like pure mind and n.o.ble heart. The voice of the genuine English people resounds altogether differently from the shrill falsetto with which turf hunters, rent-roll devourers, lords, lordlings, and all the like shams and whelps try to intimidate the patriotic North, and comfort the traitors, the rebels.

January 16.-But for the truly enlightened and patriotic efforts of the Senators Wade, Lane, (of Kansas) and Trumbull, the debate of yesterday, Thursday, on the appropriation for the West Point Military Academy would have gone to the country, absolutely misleading and stultifying the n.o.ble and enlightened people. It was most sorrowful, nay, wholly disgusting to witness how Senators who, until then, had stood firmly against small influences and narrow prejudices, blended together in an unholy alliance to sustain the accursed clique of West Point engineers. Much allowance is to be made for the allied Senators' ignorance of the matter, and for the natural wish to appear wise. The country, the people, ought to treasure the names of the ten patriotic Senators whose voices protested against further sustaining that cursed nursery of arrogance, of pro-slavery, or of something worse.

Whatever might have been the efforts of the Senatorial patrons and the allies of the engineers, the following facts remained for ever unalterable: 1st. That the spirit of close educational corporation which have exclusive monopoly and patronage, is perfectly similar to the spirit which prevailed and still prevails in monasteries, and permeates the pupils during their whole after life; 2d. That the prevailing spirit in West Point was and is rather monarchical and altogether Pro-Slavery; 3d, that of course some n.o.ble exceptions are to be found and made,-but they are exceptions; 4th, that such educational monasteries nurse conceit and arrogance; and this the ma.s.s of West Pointers have prominently shown during this war in their relations with the n.o.ble and devoted volunteers, and that this arrogant spirit of clique and of caste works mischievously in the army; 5th, that exceptions, n.o.ble and patriotic, as a Reno, a Lyons, a Bayard, a Stevens, and other such heroes and patriots, do not disprove the general rule; 6th, that Lyons, Grant, Rosecrans, Hooker, Heintzelman, etc., have shown glorious qualities not on account of what they learnt in West Point, but by what they did not learn there; 7th, that these heroes rose above the dry and narrow school wisdom, and are what they are, not because educated in West Point, but notwithstanding their education there. And here I interrupt the further enumeration to give an extract from a private letter directed to me by one of the most eminent pupils from West Point, and the ablest true, not mock, engineer in our army:

"In regard to your views of West Point's influence I am at a loss to make any answer," (the writer is a great defender of West Point,) "but would suggest that it may be after all not West Point, but the want of a supreme hand to our military affairs to combine and use the materials West Point furnishes, that is in fault. * * * West Point cannot make a general-no military school can-but it can and does furnish good soldiers. All the distinguished Confederate generals are West Pointers, and yet we know the men, and know that neither Lee, nor Johnson nor Jackson, nor Beauregard, nor the Hills are men of any very extraordinary ability," etc., etc., etc.

To this I answer: the rebels are with their heart and soul in their cause, and thus their capacities are expanded, they are inspired on the field of battle. (Similar answer I gave to General McDowell about six months ago.) So was our Lyon, so are Rosecrans, Hooker, Grant, and a few others; and for such generals, Senators Trumbull, Wade and Lane ardently called in the above debate.

I continue the enumeration: 8th. The military direction of the war is exclusively in the hands of a West Point clique, and of West Point engineers,-not very much with their hearts in the people's cause; 9th, that that clique of West Point engineers from McClellan down to Halleck prevents any truly higher military capacity getting a free untrammelled scope, (General Halleck with all his might opposes giving the command of the army to Hooker,) and this Halleck, an engineer from West Point, who never saw a cartridge burnt or a file of soldiers fighting, to-day decides the military fate of our country on the authority of a book said to be on military science, but if such a book had been written by any officer in the armies of France, Prussia or Russia, the ignorant author would have had the friendly advice from his superiors to resign and select some pursuit in life more congenial to his intellectual capacities; further, this Halleck complains in following words: "that they (the Administration) made him leave a profitable business in San Francisco, and pay him only 5,000 dollars to fight THEIR (not his) battles." So much for a Halleck. 10th. That the West Point clique of engineers, the McClellans, the Hallecks, the Franklins, etc., have brought the country to the verge of the grave, as stated by Senator Lane.

Such were the facts established by the patriotic and not would-be-wise Senators; and there is an ill.u.s.tration recorded in history as proof that the above not engineering Senators were right in their a.s.sertions. Frederick II. was in no military school; the captains second to Napoleon in the French wars were Hoche, Moreau, and Ma.s.sena, all of them from private life.

-The clique of engineers has the Potomac Army altogether in its grasp, and has reduced and perverted the spirit of the n.o.ble children of the people. Oh, the sooner this army shall be torn from the hands of the clique the nearer and surer will be the salvation of the country.

The clique accuses the volunteers; but the clique, the engineers in power have disorganized, morally and materially, and disgraced the Army of the Potomac. They did this from the day of the encampments around Washington, in the fall of 1861, down to the day of Fredericksburgh. Fredericksburgh was altogether prepared by engineers; at Fredericksburgh the engineer Franklin did not even mount his horse when his soldiers were misled and miscommanded-by himself.

-Stragglers are generated by generals. Besides, to explain straggling, I quote from a genuine book on genuine military science, published in Berlin in 1862, by Captain Boehn, the most eminent professor at the military school in Potsdam: "The greatest losses, during a war, inflicted on an army are by maladies and by straggling. Such losses are five times greater than those of killed and wounded; and an intelligent administration takes preparatory measures to meet the losses and to compensate them. Such measures of foresight consist in organizing depots for battalions, which depots ought to equal one sixth of the number of the active army." O, Halleck, where are the depots?

-"In any ordinary campaign, excepting a winter campaign, the losses amount (as established by experience) to one half in infantry, one fourth in cavalry, and to one third in artillery." (Do you know any thing about it, O, Halleck?)

Let the people be warned, and they may understand the location of the cause generating further disasters. If the Army of the Potomac shall win glory, it will win it notwithstanding the West Point clique of engineers. The disasters have root in the White House, where the advice of such a Halleck prevails.

-I know very well that the formation of the volunteers in respective States and by the Governors of such States raises a great difficulty in organizing and preparing reserves. But talent and genius reveal themselves by overpowering difficulties considered to be insurmountable. And Halleck is a man both of genius and talent.

Taking into account the patriotism, the devotion of the governors of the respective states, [not a la Copperhead Seymour], it would have been possible, nay, even easy to organize some kind of reserves. O, Halleck, O, fogies!

January 17.-Mr. Lincoln loads on his shoulders all kinds of responsibilities, more so than even Jackson would have dared to take. Admirable if generated by the boldness of self-consciousness, of faith, and of convictions. True men measure the danger-and the means in their grasp to meet the emergency; others play unconsciously with events, as do children with explosive and death-dealing matters.

January 17.-General and astronomer Mitchel's death may be credited to Halleck. Halleck and Buell's envy-if not worse-paralysed Mitchel and Turtschin's activity in the West. Mitchel and Turtschin were too quick, that is, too patriotic. In early summer, 1862, they were sure to take Chattanooga, a genuine strategic point, one of those princ.i.p.al knots and nurseries in the life of the secesh. How imprudent! Chattanooga is still in the hands of the rebels, and if we ever take it, it will cost streams of blood and millions of money. Down with Mitchel and Turtschin. Mitchel's excrementa were more valuable than are Halleck's heavy, but not expanding, brains. Mitchel revealed at once all the qualities of an eminent, if not of a great general. Quickness of mind, fertility of resources. An astronomer, a mathematician, Mitchel's mind was familiar with broad combinations. Such a mind penetrated s.p.a.ce, calculated means and chances, balanced forces and probabilities. Not to compare, however, is it to be borne in mind that Napoleon was a mathematician in the fullest sense, and not an engineer, not a translator.

January 18.-Mr. Lincoln's letter to McClellan when the hero of the Copperheads was in search of mud in the Peninsula. The letter rings as sound common sense; it shows, however, that common sense debarred of strong will remains unproductive of good. Mr. Lincoln commonly shows strong will, in the wrong place.

--ein Theil von jener Krafft, Die stehts das Guthe will, und stehts das Boese schaff.

January 18.-The emanc.i.p.ation proclamation is out. Very well. But until yet not the slightest signs of any measures to execute the proclamation, at once, and in its broadest sense. Now days, even hours, are equal to years in common times. Had Lincoln his heart in the proclamation, on January 2d he would begin to work out its expansion, realization, execution. I wish Lincoln may lift himself, or be lifted by angels to the grandeur of the work. But it is impossible. Surrounded as he is, and led in the strings by Seward, Blair, Halleck, and by border-state politicians, the best that can be expected are belated half measures.

Stanton comprehends broadly and thoroughly the question of emanc.i.p.ation and of arming the Africo-Americans. As I intend to realize my plans of last year and organise Africo-American regiments, I had conversations with Stanton, and find him more thorough about the matter than is any body whom I met. He agreed with me, that the cursed land of Secessia ought to be surrounded by camps to enlist and organise the enslaved, as a scorpion surrounded with burning coals. Such organizations introduced rapidly and simultaneously on all points, would shake Secessia to its foundations, and put an end to guerillas, alias murderers and robbers. We will again think and talk it over. But as is wont with Lincoln, he will hesitate, hesitate, until much of precious time will be lost.

January 18.-A surgeon in one of the hospitals in Alexandria writes in a private note:

"Our wounded bear their sufferings n.o.bly; I have hardly heard a word of complaint from one of them. A soldier from the 'stern and rock bound coast' of Maine-a victim of the slaughter at Fredericksburgh-lay in this hospital, his life ebbing away from a fatal wound. He had a father, brothers and sisters, a wife, and one little boy of two or three years old, on whom his heart seemed set. Half an hour before he ceased to breathe, I stood by his side, holding his hand. He was in the full exercise of his intellectual faculties, and knew he had but a brief time to live. He was asked if he had any message to leave for his dear ones whom he loved so well. "Tell them," said he, "how I died-they know how I lived!"

January 19.-Senator Wright, of Indiana, stirred the hearts of the Senate and of the people. It was not the oration of a rhetor-it was the confession of an ardent, pure patriot. I never heard or witnessed anything so inspiring and so kindling to soul and heart.

January 20.-General Butler palsied and shelved, Halleck all powerful and with full steam running the country and the army to destruction-such is the truest photograph of the situation. But as an adamantine rock among storms, so Mr. Lincoln remains unmoved. Unmoved by the yawning, bleeding wounds of the devoted, n.o.ble people-unmoved by the prayers and supplication of patriots-of his-once-best friends. Mr. Lincoln answers, with dignity not Roman, and with obstinacy unparallelled even by Jackson, that he will stand or fall with his present advisers, and that he takes the responsibility for all the cursed misdeeds of Seward, Halleck, Chase, and others. So children are ready to set a match to a powder magazine unconscious of the terrible results-unconscious of the awful responsibility for its destructive action.

A death pang runs through one's body to see how rapidly the dial marks the disappearing hours, and how unrelentingly approaches March 4th, and the death-knell of this present patriotic, devoted Congress. For this terrible storm and clash of events, the people, perhaps, feel not the immensity of the loss. Paralyzed as Congress has been and now is, by the infernal machinations of Seward, Chase, and others, and by Mr. Lincoln's stubborn helplessness, the patriots in both Houses nevertheless, succeeded in redeeming the pledge which the name of America gives to the expansive progress of humanity. The patriots of both Houses, as the exponents of the n.o.ble and loftiest aspirations of the American people, whipped in-and this literally, not figuratively-whipped Mr. Lincoln into the glory of having issued the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation. The laws promulgated by this dying Congress initiated the Emanc.i.p.ation-generated the Proclamation of the 22d September, and of January 1st. History will not allow one to wear borrowed plumage.

-Congress ought not to have so easily abdicated its well established rights of more absolute and direct control of the deeds of the Administration and of its clerks, alias Secretaries of Departments. It is to be eternally regretted that Congress has shown such unnecessary leniency; but in justice it must be said that the patriotic and high-minded members of Congress wished to avoid the degrading necessity of showing the nation the prurient administrative sores. Advised, directed, tutored and pushed by Seward, Blair and Chase, Mr. Lincoln is-innocently-as grasping for power, as are any of those despots not over respectfully recorded by history.

With all this, the presence of Congress keeps in awe the reckless and unscrupulous Administration, as, according to the pious belief of medieval times, holy water awed the devil. But Congress once out of the way, without having succeeded in rescuing Mr. Lincoln from the hands of those mean, ignorant, egotistic bunglers, all the time squinting towards the succession to the White House, and unable to surround the President with men and patriots, then all the plagues of Egypt may easily overrun this fated country. Such conjurors of evil as the Sewards, Hallecks, and others, will have no dread of any holy water before them, and they will be sure that the great party of the "Copperheads" in the future Congress will applaud them for all the mischief done, and lift them sky high, if they succeed in treading down in the gutter, or in any way palsying emanc.i.p.ation, tarnishing the people's n.o.ble creed, and endangering the country's holiest cause.

General Fitz-John Porter's trial before court-martial ended in his dismissal, but ought punishment to fall on him alone, when the butchers of Fredericksburgh and when the pontoon men are in high command? when a Franklin is still sustained, when a Seward and a Halleck remain firm in their high places as the gates of h.e.l.l?

January 20.-Wrote a respectful letter to the President on Halleck's military science, his book, and capacity. Told respectfully to Mr. Lincoln that not even the Sultan would dare to palm such a Halleck on his army and on his people.

Mr. Lincoln in his greatness says that "he will stand and fall with his Cabinet." O, Mr. Lincoln! O, Mr. Lincoln! purple-born sovereigns can no more speak so!

Mr. Lincoln! with the gang of politicians, your advisers and friends, you all desire immensely, and will feebly. You desire the reconstruction of the Union, and you almost shun the ways and means to do it. And thus this n.o.ble people is dragged to a slaughter house.

Parumne campis atque Neptuno super Fusum est-[Yankee] sanguinis?

January 21.-Deep, irreconcilable as is my hatred of slavocrats and rebels, nevertheless I am forced to admire the high intellectual qualities of their chiefs, when compared with that of ours. Of Lincoln versus Jeff Davis I spoke in the first volume. But now Lee, Jackson, Hill, Ewall, versus Halleck, McClellan, McDowell, Franklin, etc.

January 22.-Wendell Phillips's Amen oration to the Proclamation is n.o.ble and torrent-like oratory. Greeley is the better Greeley of former times. I heartily wish to admire and speak well of Greeley, as of every body else. Is it my fault that they give me no occasion?

January 23.-General Fitz-John Porter, McClellan's pet, told me to-day, that after the battle at Hanover Court House, he supplicated McClellan to attack Richmond at once-which in Porter's opinion could have been taken without much ado,-and not to change his base to James River; and even Fitz-John could not prevail on this demiG.o.d of imbeciles, traitors and intriguers.

January 24.-Here is one of the thousand flagrant lies with which Seward entangles Lincoln, as with a net of steel. Lincoln a.s.sured General Ashley that the public is unjust toward Seward in accusing him of having worked for the defeat of Wadsworth. That they have been the best friends for long years; that, when Military Governor of Washington, Wadsworth was a daily visitor in Seward's house; and that, during the canva.s.s, Wadsworth consulted with Seward concerning his (Wadsworth's) actions.

Mr. Seward knows that every one of those a.s.sertions which he or Thurlow Weed pushed down the throat of Mr. Lincoln is a flagrant lie. Every one knows that for many, many years the high-toned Wadsworth had in utter detestation Mr. Seward's character as a lawyer or as a public man, and that he never spoke to him, and never was his political or private friend.

I am sorry to bring such details before the public, but how otherwise convict a liar? As for Thurlow Weed's secret and open machinations against the election of Wadsworth, only an idiot or a s.... doubts them. Ask the New York politicians, provided they have manhood to tell the truth.

January 24th.-Caveant Senators and Representatives! cannot be too often hurled into the ears of the people and of the Congressmen. The time runs lightning like-the 4th of March approaches with comet-like velocity. If the tempest is not roaring, its signs are visible, and most of the helmsmen are blind or unsteady. Oh! could every move of the pendulums of the clocks of the Senate Chamber and the Representatives' Hall, thunder-like repeat that caveant, transmitted by the purest and best days of Rome! The Republicans and many of the war Democrats are faithful and true to the people and to its sacred cause; but the names of the "filibustering" traitors in both houses ought to be nailed to the gallows!

European winds bring Louis Napoleon's opening speech, and the confession, that although once rebuked, he, the dissolute, the profligate, with his corrosive breath still intends to pollute the virginity of our country; for such is the indelible stain to any nation, to any people which accepts or submits to any, even the most friendly, foreign mediation or arbitration. Never, never any great nation or any self-respecting government, accepted or submitted to any similar foreign interference. Of the peoples, nations and governments, which allowed such interference, some collapsed into degradation for a long time, only slowly recovering, like Spain; others, like Poland, disappeared. Those who advocate such mediation unveil their weakness, their thorough ignorance of the world's history and of the historic and political bearings of the words, mediation, and arbitration; and to crown all, these advocates bring to market their imbecility.

The Africo-Americans ought to receive military organization and be armed. But it ought to be done instantly and without loss of time; it ought to be done earnestly, boldly, broadly; it ought to be done at once on all points and on the largest scale; it ought to be done here in Washington, under the eyes of the chief of the people; here in the heart of the country; here, so to speak, in the face of slave-breeding Virginia, this most intense focus of treason; it ought to be done here, that the loyal freemen of Virginia's soil be enabled to fight and crush the F. F. V's, the progeny of h.e.l.l; it ought to be done here on every inch of soil covered with shattered shackles; and not partially on the outskirts, in the Carolinas and Louisiana. Stanton, alone, and Welles among the helmsmen, are so inspired; but alas, for the rest of the crew.

On the flags of the Africo-Americans under my command, I shall inscribe: Hic niger est! hunc tu (rebel) caveto! I shall inculcate upon my men that they had better not make prisoners in the battle, and not allow themselves to be taken alive.