Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 Part 6

The patriots may throb with joy! The President intends great changes in his policy, and has telegraphed for--Thurlow Weed, that prince of dregs, to get from him light about the condition of the country.

The conservative "Copperheads" of Boston and of other places in New England press as a baby to their bosom, and lift to worship McClellan, the conservative, and all this out of deepest hatred towards all that is n.o.ble, humane, and lofty in the genuine American people. Well they may! If by his generalship McClellan butchered hundreds of thousands in the field, he was always very conservative of his precious little self.

Biting snow storm all over Virginia! Our soldiers! our soldiers in the camp! It is heart-rending to think of them. Conservative McClellan so conservatively campaigned until last November as to preserve-the rebel armies, and make a terrible winter campaign an inevitable necessity. O, Copperheads and Boston conservatives! When you bend your knees before McClellan, you dip them in the best and purest blood of the people!

February 3.-The Secretary of War appointed General Casey to shorten the general tactics for the use of Africo-American regiments to use them as light infantry.

The devotion of American women to the sick and wounded soldiers, makes them be envied by the angels in Heaven (provided there are any). This devotion of these genuine gentlewomen atones for the ign.o.ble flippancy of dancing crinolines.

Down, down goes slavery notwithstanding the gates of h.e.l.l, and their guard, the McClellans, the Sewards, amorously embracing the Copperheads and all that is dark and criminal. Humanity is avenged and Eternal Justice is satisfied.

February 4.-Sumner is re-elected to the Senate. His re-election vindicates a sound principle, because his opponents were all the Copperheads and slavery-saviours in Ma.s.sachusetts. Sumner's influence in the Senate is rather limited. Politically he is on all points most honest; but his conduct towards Seward is not calculated to impress one with any very high esteem for his manhood.

It is not force, or decision, or power, that is cruel in revolutionary times-but, weakness. All societies have had their epochs of progress and of retrogression. Sylla was a conservative, and so too was Phocion. The Pharisees were reactionists and conservatives. Europe has millions of them, of various hues, shapes, tendencies and convictions. But the reactionists and conservatives in the past of Europe all have been and are of a purer metal than the conservatives here, and their impure organs, as the National Intelligencer, the World, the Boston Courier, and the rest of that fetish creed.

February 4.-The French Yellow Book, or State Correspondence, justifies my forebodings of November last. Mr. Mercier's diplomatic sentimentalism, and his a.s.sociations, germinated the Decembriseur's scheme for mediation and humiliation.

Further is to be found in the Yellow Book the evidence how, from the start of this dark rebellion, Mr. Seward, the master spirit of the Administration, dealt death blows to all energetic, unyielding prosecution of the war for crushing the rebellion, and that he was double-dealing in all his public actions. The published state papers of the French government disclose the fact that nine months ago Mr. Seward sent the French minister to Richmond with a mission to invite the Jeff. Davises, Hunters, Wigfalls, Benjamins and others to come back to their seats in the Senate, and in the name of the cruelly outraged North, Mr. Seward proffered to the traitors a hearty welcome. So says the French diplomat in his official dispatch to the French Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Such underhanded dealings should not be allowed, and most a.s.suredly would be stringently punished, if perpetrated under similar circ.u.mstances by the minister of any European government dealing with treason in arms. But here, Mr. Seward's impudence-if not worse-displays its flying colors. The Republican press will swallow all this, and Senator Sumner as Chairman of the Committee will-keep quiet.

That confidential mission entrusted to the French diplomat by Mr. Seward, was more than sufficient to evoke the subsequent attempt at mediation, because it revealed to the piercing eye of European statesmanship, how the Administration, and above all how its master spirit had little confidence in the cause; it revealed the want of earnestness in official quarters. I hate and denounce all attempts, even by the most friendly foreign power, to meddle with the internal affairs of our country. But I have some little knowledge of European statecraft, of European diplomacy, of European rulers, and of European diplomats; and I a.s.sert, emphatically, that they are emboldened to offer their meddlesome services because they have very little if any respect for our official leaders; and because the want of energy and of good faith to the principles of the North as displayed by Seward, he nevertheless remaining at the helm, has firmly settled the conviction in European minds, that the rebels cannot be crushed by such traffickers and used up politicians as have in their hands the destinies of the Union.

February 5.-The new Copperhead Senators-in their appearance resembling bushwhackers; the pillars of Copperheadism in the House, take umbrage at the sight and the name of New England, and abuse the New England spirit with all their coppery might. Well they may. So did Satan hate and abuse light.

Patriot Stanton is earnestly at work concerning the organization of Africo-Americans on a mighty scale; busy against him, likewise, are the intriguers, the traitors, the cavillers, the Sewardites and the McClellanites, all being of the same kidney. Seward sighs for McClellan. But Stanton will override the muddy storm. He has at his side men as pure, energetic and devoted as Watson, a patriot without a flaw.

Stanton surrounds himself and selects young men-as far as he can, he crowds out the remains of Scott, so tenderly protected by Lincoln. Could he only have swept out the rest of the old fogies! Undoubtedly these young men in the War Department would give new life to it.

February 6.-The people at large are at a loss to find the cause of the recent disasters. The general axiom is, "we are not a military nation." Neither is the South. But here they forget that every great or small effect has its-not only-cause, but several causes. Many such causes have been repeatedly pointed out. Old routine in military organization stands foremost. Few, if any, understand wherein consists the proper organization of an army, and most have notions reaching back sixty years. The medical and surgical bureaus are obsolete. Governor Andrew of Ma.s.sachusetts, who is always on the right side, and with him many young men, insisted upon organizing the above services as they are organized in the Continental armies of Europe. But even in the Senate prevailed the respect for dusty, rusty, domestic tradition. The few changes forced by the outcry of the people cure not the evil. Skeletons and not men are at work, and if they are not skeletons they are leeches of the government and of the people's blood.

Thus likewise, when the organizations of the staffs was discussed, no one had the first notion of the nature and duties of a staff; and the military authorities were as ignorant as the civilians. Of course a McClellan, then a Halleck, Meigs, Hitchc.o.c.k, etc., could not disperse the fog. Many Congressmen were thunderstruck by the display of words which, as they were purely technical terms, the Congressmen in question could not understand. Others sought for guidance in the Staff of Wellington, and thus oddly but unmistakably proved themselves completely in the dark as to the difference between the personal staff of the commander of an army, and the Staff of that Army itself. And all this in a country of the most rapid movement and progress, and amongst a people which unhesitatingly adopts and adapts to its own needs and welfare almost every novelty from almost every part of the world. The great fault committed by the People is its too great respect for false authorities and false prophets.

The so-called honest Conservatives have exercised and still continue to exercise a most fatal influence on public affairs, and especially on what is called the domestic policy. These same "honest Conservatives" are more dangerous than the out-spoken Copperheads; more dangerous, perhaps, than all the friends of slavery and foes of the Union combined. These "honest Conservatives" have contrived to surround themselves with a halo of honesty and respectability. But they as cordially hate and dread every vivid light and vigorous progress as the traitors themselves do. Those Conservatives opposed every vigorous measure. They spoke tenderly of the "misguided brethren" in the South, and took their own servile and blundering, though quite possibly sincere fancies, for actual and tangible facts. The honest Conservatives will support whatever is slow, double-dealing, and, therefore, conservative. The honest Conservatives took McClellan to their honest hearts, and not one of them has any clear notion of military affairs, and still less can any of them fathom the awful depth of McClellan's military criminality. I repeat what I said in the first volume of my Diary: McClellan and his tail fell, not on account of their Democratism, or their pro-slavery creed, but because McClellan repeatedly displayed all the worst qualities of a thoroughly unsoldierly commander. No one would have uttered a word of censure if McClellan with his hundred and eighty thousand men had surrounded the thirty to forty thousand rebels in Centreville and Mana.s.sas in the winter of 1861-2, and taken some n.o.bler trophies than camp manure and maple guns! The honest Conservatives attack and hate Stanton, yet not one of them has any notion whatever of Stanton's action towards McClellan. Stanton would have been the first to raise McClellan sky-high if McClellan had preferred to fight instead of reposing in his bed in Washington, and then in various muds. Such is your knowledge of this and of all other public affairs, O respectable soul and spiritless body of honest Conservatives! Historians of this country! collect the names of the honest Conservatives, but expose them not to the abomination of coming generations.

February 7.-The Sanitary Commission, with all its branches and subdivisions, is among the n.o.blest manifestations of what can be done by a free people, and how private enterprise of intelligent, patriotic and unselfish men can confer benefit. Nor must the praise of that great work be limited to men. Warm-hearted gentlewomen also have done their share in it. The Sanitary Commission is one of the best out-croppings of self-government, and does honor to the people, and softens and ameliorates the warlike roughness of the times.

The Sanitary Commission marks a new era in the history of genuine and not bogus and merely verbal philanthropy, and its spontaneity and expansion were only possible in free, and therefore humane and enlightened America.

February 8.-Mr. Seward is busily at work endeavoring to crush the radicals, and to make the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation a mere sheet of waste paper. All that is mean and nasty, all that is reeking and foul with all kinds of corruptions, takes Seward for its standard-bearer. The so-called radical press aids Seward with all its might.

February 9.-Gen. Casey adopts some of my ideas and suggestions, which I discussed with him. Gen. Casey is honestly at work, and the new tactics will be in print.

Stanton would wish to establish a thorough military camp on a large scale, for organizing Africo-Americans. But the higher powers are against it. Virginia, the most populous slave state, the nursery of slaves, must, scorpion-like, be surrounded with glowing contraband camps. What a splendid position for such a camp is Harper's Ferry under the shadow of immortal John Brown!

A few days ago, Mr. Lincoln was full of joy because the defences of Washington are in excellent condition. Thus the country will learn with joy that the--spade is still at work, that the military curse hurled by Scott and McClellan is still influencing the operation of the war, that Halleck is the worthy continuator of his predecessors, that Mr. Lincoln's fears and uneasiness about the fate of the city of Washington are slowly, slowly a.s.suaged, that the President's fancy is nursed, that the construction of the extensive fortifications around the capital is still continued, that new forts are continually erected, that the fear of an attack on Washington is still paramount, and that to-day-sixty to seventy thousand troops are kept idle in these old and new forts-when Rosecrans has no succor, when Texas is lost, and when the whole rebel region trembles under the tread of savage hordes.

Through one of its clerks, the State Department intends to sue me for libel, contained, as they say, in the first volume of my Diary. Well, great masters, if you swallow me, you may not digest me. Let us try.[2]

February 10.-... mens agitat molem ... oh, could I only believe that such is the case with Mr. Lincoln, how devoted I could become, and loyal to him, according to the new theory of the lickspittles and politicians!

February 10.-Resolute Senator Grimes did what was the duty of Sumner to have done long ago. Grimes presented resolutions relative to the mission of Mercier to Richmond, a mission allowed, almost authorized by Mr. Seward. Mercier cannot be blamed, and his veracity is supported by the fact that Lord Lyons was at once informed of the whole transaction, and Lord Lyons is to be believed. Seward will play the innocent, and take his refuge in the G.o.d of-lies.

February 12.-In his answer to the Senate, Mr. Seward gives to Mercier the lie direct. It will be rich if Mercier stands square.

February 12.-Congress draws to its close. Lincoln acc.u.mulates powers, responsibilities, and hereafter perhaps curses, sufficient to break the turtle on which stands the elephant that sustains the Sanscrit world.

February 13.-The almost imperceptible ripple on the diplomatic pool of Washington has disappeared. Simple people might have believed that there was an issue of veracity between Mr. Seward and the French Minister. But since a long, a very long time, Seward and veracity have run in different orbits, and diplomats, Talleyrand-like, ought to be the incarnation of equanimity even if any one-diplomatically-treads on their toes. Besides, the answer given to the Senate before it reached its destination might have been arranged at any such confidential chat as was that one where the little innocent, n.o.body-hurting (no, not even the people's honour) trip to Richmond was concocted. The French Minister's name appears not in the doc.u.ment sent to the Senate; so the lie direct is after all only a constructive lie; n.o.body is hurt. A general shaking of hands and all is well. But strange things may come out yet, and others may not be so blazened out.

The soap bubble of mediation exploded under the nose of the French schemers. The soap used by them was of the finest and most aromatic quality, but the democratic nerves of the American people resisted the Franco-diplomatic cunningly mixed aroma. The applause gained by Mr. Seward's very indifferent doc.u.ment, wherein the great initiator of the Latin race on this free continent was rebuked, the satisfaction shown by the public, ought to open the eyes of the sentimental French trio. They ought to understand, by this time, that Seward's argumentative dispatch, incomplete and below mark as it is, won applause, although it expresses only the hundredth of the patriotic ire bursting from the people's bosom. Otherwise the people would have at once found out all skillfully, cunningly, chameleon-like Seward dodges, which ignore before Europe the sublime character of the struggle forced by treason upon the loyal free States; and in which how he avoids to hurt the slavocracy.

The Imperial mediator and bottle-holder to slavocracy belies not his b.l.o.o.d.y origin and his b.l.o.o.d.y appet.i.tes. The events in Egypt, the negro kidnapping in Alexandria, have torn the mask from his astute policy. If, for his filibustering raid into Mexico, Louis Napoleon wanted colored soldiers accustomed to the climate, he could raise them among the free colored population of the French possessions in Martinique, Guadaloupe, etc. But to use the freemen from the Antilles would have set a bad example to the Africo-Americans in the revolted States; Louis Napoleon wished not to hurt or offend his slaveocratic pets and traitors; by kidnapping slaves in Egypt the French ruler showed how highly he values the stealing qualities of the Southern chivalry-and he paid a tribute to the principle of slavery.

But while treating with all possible horror and disrespect the French officiousness, the American people ought not to forget the innermost interconnection of events. If the French diplomacy, if the French Cabinet became sentimental at the sight of our deadly struggle with the demon of treason, it was because they witnessed our helplessness, and witnessed the uninterrupted chain of faults and of bad policy; it was because they and the whole world saw the want of earnestness in our official leaders; and from all this these Messieurs concluded that the patriots of the North never will be able to crush the traitors in the South. So speak the French diplomatic doc.u.ments, so speaks Mercier, Drouyn de l'Huys and Louis Napoleon; and has not the Seward-Weed influence, paramount in the policy of the Government, brought about all these bad results, palsied the war, and thus almost justified the officiousness of the Messieurs?

February 13.-Many forebode the downfall, the dissolution, and the disappearance of the Republican party. That may be, and if so then one of the cardinal laws of human progress, development and ascension, will be fullfilled. The initiator either perishes by the initiated, or the initiator perishes, disappears because his special mission, his task is done.

The progress of humanity is marked by the sacrifice and death of its initiators. Such was the end of the founders of religions, of societies; such of political bodies. Osiris, Lycurgus, Romulus, Christ, the martyrs, the apostles, are a few from numberless ill.u.s.trations that might be cited. The Long Parliament, the French Convention, disappeared after having fullfilled the work of destruction pointed out to them by the genius of progress and of our race. As an organized political party the Republican may disappear with the war, for slavery is finally destroyed. This is the n.o.ble initiation and solution fulfilled by the Republican party. To destroy slavery and the political defenders and props of slavery, was the mission that was fatally thrown or entrusted by inexorable destiny to the Republican party. With the destruction of slavery, disappears from the political life of America the Northern man with Southern principles; those very dregs of dregs of all times and of all political bodies and societies. Slavery is destroyed both virtually and de facto, new issues are looming, new solutions will be given, and new men will bear the new word.

All in creation, and in every party, has its light and its shadow, its pure principle, its pure men and its dregs. Every party has its faults and its shortcomings. The dregs fall, and the work of the party is done. Some of the chiefs and leaders of the Republican party became faithless, (Seward,) went over to darkness, but thereby the onward march to the sacred aim was not arrested. The irresistible current of events and of human affairs carried onwards the Republican party. Perhaps unconsciously, but nevertheless emphatically, the Republican party in its ensemble was a providential agency; it became the incarnation of the loftiest aspirations of the best among the American people. Against its wish and will, contrary to expectations, the Republican party was challenged to action; the sword of law, of justice and of right, was forcibly thrust into the party's hand, and slavocracy, the challenger, is already bleeding its life-blood, and its death-knell resounds from pole to pole. To speak the language of politicians; abolition, emanc.i.p.ation by the sword, was forced upon the Republican party.

And the Republican party carried out the principle of the preamble of the bill of rights; a principle eternal as right, but nevertheless. .h.i.therto only partially realized. The Republican party has borne the brunt, and accomplished the appointed evolutions of progress; and the Republican party has deserved well of the American people, of history and of humanity. And the children and grandchildren of those who to-day cavil, defile and stone the party, they hereafter will bless the Republican party, who, with n.o.ble consciousness can say to the spirit of light and of duty: Nunc dimitte in pacem servum tuum Domine.

One of the best evidences of purity and of the elevation of the Republican party in its n.o.blest representative men is that the obtusest among the great diplomats shunned the Republicans as little monsters shun the daylight. I mention this as a collateral ill.u.s.tration without intending to raise a diplomat or the poor diplomacy of the world to an undeserved significance, for I bear in mind the behest, ne misceantur sacra prophanis.

The n.o.bleness of the accomplished mission, the glorious Sunset wherein will disappear the Republican party, frees, not from reproaches nor from maledictions, those Republicans who, by their selfishness and faithlessness, obstructed its progress, and polluted the party. Their names remain nailed to the pillory.

I may here observe that I never belonged and never claimed to belong to the Republican party. For nearly half a century my creed has been-Onward! onward! struggle, fight, sacrifice for light, for progress, for human rights; for that cause fight and struggle under every banner, under every name, and in rank and file with every body.

February 13.-Seward seizes by the hair the occasion proffered to him by the Decembriseur's offer of mediation, and tries to reconquer the confidence of the public. This shows to Drouyn de l'Huys and to his master, that they are misinformed concerning the condition of America, (also M. Mercier misinformed them; how could he do otherwise?) The despatch to Dayton, February 7, will lead astray public opinion. The majority will forget and lose sight of the intercatenation of events and actions perpetrated by Mr. Seward. O Chase! O Sumner! Seward rises with his patient pen and paper in the inky glory of a patriot, and you--cave in.

Speaking of Mr. Seward's answer to France, a diplomat observed to me: "The European Cabinets are so accustomed to Mr. Seward's duplicity and want of veracity, that now that Seward refuses to accept mediation, in Europe they will conclude that Seward's acceptation of mediation is at hand."

February 14.-The struggle is for the rights of man, for the Christian idea, purified of all dogma and worship. Those who see it not, are similar to a fish from the Kentucky Cave.

February 14.-Could Mr. Lincoln only be inspired, be warmed by the sacred fire of enthusiasm, then his natural and selected affinities would be other minds than those of a Seward, a Weed, a Halleck, etc.; then what is night could become light; and where he painfully gropes along his path, Mr. Lincoln would march with a firm, almost with a G.o.dlike step, at the head of such a peerless people as those of whom he is the Chief Magistrate.

But as it is now, I may turn the mind in any direction whatever, all the causes of mishaps and disasters converge on Mr. Lincoln. According to his partisans, Mr. Lincoln's intentions are the best, and he is always trying to conciliate-and to shift. It is useless to discuss Mr. Lincoln's peculiar ways. In most cases, Mr. Lincoln uses old, rotten tools for a new and heavy work. I have it from the most truthful and positive authority, that Mr. Lincoln is fully acquainted with the opinions of the so called dissatisfied, of those with Southern propensities, proclivities and affinities, of whom many are in the superior civil and military service. Contrary to the advice of patriots in the Cabinet and out of it, Mr. Lincoln insists upon keeping such at their post-doubtless always expecting that they will turn round. Such a heavy difficulty and task as is the present, must be worked out, with absolute devotion and sincerity; and can this logically be expected from men whose hearts and minds are not in their actions? Mr. Lincoln forgets that thousands of lives and millions of money are sacrificed to the experiment as to whether the insincere officials will turn round.

The cause will not fail, light will not be extinguish, even if the leaders break down or betray, even if the Copperheads frighten some of the pilots, or if some of the faithless pilots shake hands with the Copperheads, as was the case in the elections of November last in New York and elsewhere. The people will save light, dissipate darkness, save the cause, save the leaders, the pilots and the politicians.

February 15.-Some days ago in compliance with summons, that pedler of all corruptions, Thurlow Weed, came to Washington, and with Mr. Seward, his fidus Achates, was for days or nights closeted with Mr. Lincoln, pouring into the president's soul as much poison and darkness as was possible. That such was the case can, besides, easily be concluded from what that incarnation of all perversions predicated to all who came within his nauseous preachings here. According to Mr. T. Weed's revelations, "The proclamation is an absurdity, and the Union will soon-as it ought-be ruled by the rebels." So it was told me. Perhaps it is already done through Thurlow Weed's mediation and instrumentality.

Continually inspired by Weed, Mr. Seward is therefore untiring in his over-patriotic efforts to preserve the former Union and Slavery-to save the matricide slave-holders.

In what clutches is Mr. Lincoln! Even I pity him. Even I am forced to give him credit for being what he is-considering his intimacies and his surroundings. Few men entrusted with power over nations have resisted such fatal influences,-not even Cromwell and Napoleon. History has not yet settled how it was with Caesar, and so far as I know, Frederick the Great of Prussia is of the very few who have been unimpressionable. Pericles coruscates over ruins and the night of the ancient world; Pericles's intimacy was with the best and the manliest Athenians.

But has Mr. Lincoln an unlimited confidence in the few men with large brains and with big hearts, brains and hearts burning with the sacred and purest patriotic fire? Or are not rather all his favorites-not even whitened-sepulchres of manhood, of mind and of sacred intellect?

February 16.-It is a.s.serted, and some day or other it will be verified, that the Committee on the Conduct of the War have investigated how far certain generals from the army on the Rappahannock used their influence with the President to paralyze a movement against the enemy ordered by Burnside. That facts discovered may be published or not, for the Administration shuns publicity. The Committee discovered that Mr. Seward was implicated in that conspiracy of generals against Burnside. Any qualification of such conduct is impossible, and the vocabulary of crimes has no name for it; let it, therefore, be Sewardism. The editors of the New York Tribune did their utmost to prevent Sewardism being exposed.