Chapter 19

_Oct. 8._--General McClellan's order to the army concerning the President's proclamation shows up the man. Not a word about the object in the proclamation, but rather unveiled insinuations that the army is dissatisfied with emancipation, and that it may mutiny. The army ought to feel highly honored by such insinuations in that lengthy disquisition about his (McClellan's) position and the duties of the army. For the honor of the brave, armed citizen-patriots it can be emphatically asserted that the patriotic volunteers better know their duties than do those who preach to them. Some suspect that Mr. Seward drew the paper for McClellan, but I am sure this cannot be. It may have been done by Bennett or some other of the Herald, or by Barlow. If this order is the result of Mr. Lincoln's visit to the camp, and of a transaction with Mac-Napoleon, then the President has not thereby increased the dignity of his presidential character.

Wilkes's Spirit of the Times incommensurably towers above the New York Press by its dauntless patriotism; by its clear, broad, and deep comprehension of the condition of the country.

Colonel Key's disclosures concerning the McClellan-Halleck programme, not to destroy the rebels and the rebellion until the next presidential election, are throttled by the dismissal of the colonel. But what he said, if put by the side of the words of the order to the army, that "the remedy for political errors, if any are committed, is to be found only in the action of the people at the polls,"--all this ought to open even the most obtuse intellects.

Poor (Carlyle fashion) old Greeley hurrahs for McClellan and for the order No. 163 to the army. O for new and young men to swim among new and young events!

_Oct. 11._--Will any body in this country have the patriotic courage to reform the army? that is, to dismiss from the service the West Point clique in Washington and in the army of the Potomac. Such a proof of strong will cannot be expected from the President; but perhaps Congress may show it. Those first and second scholars or graduates from West Point are all routine engineers; and who ever heard of whole armies commanded, moved, and manoeuvred by engineers? American invention; but not to be patented for Europe.

_Oct. 11._--The rebel raid into Pennsylvania, under the nose of McClellan. Is there any thing in the world capable of opening this people's eyes?

I doubt if at any time, and in the life of any great or small people, there existed such a galaxy of civil and military rulers, chiefs, and leaders, stripped of nobler manhood, as are the _great men_ here. The blush of honor never burned their cheeks! O, the low politicians! Some persons doubt Stanton's sincerity in his dealings with individuals. I am not a judge thereof; but were it so, it can easily be forgiven if he only remains sincere and true to the cause.

One is amazed and even aghast at the impudence of the McClellan and West Point cliques. In their lingo, heroes like Kearney, like Hooker and Heintzelman, all such are superciliously mentioned as _only fighting generals_. O, unfighting strategians!

Stuart's brilliant raid was executed the day of McClellan's bombastic proclamation about his having cleared Pennsylvania and Maryland of the enemy. On the same day McClellan and other generals straggled about the country, visiting cities hundreds of miles distant from the camp. And such generals complain of straggling! Make the army fight! inspire with confidence the soldier--then he will not straggle.

The Evening Post, October 13, demonstrates that up to this day Mr. Lincoln's administration is "a grand and brilliant success." Well, _de gustibus non est disputandum_. Others may rightly think that the achievements enumerated by the Evening Post are exclusively due to the people; that by the people they were forced upon the administration, (Stanton and the navy excepted;) and that the numerous failures, the waste of human life, of money, and of time, are to be logically and directly traced to the administration. O, subserviency!

The McClellanites are indignant against the Pennsylvanians for not having caught Stuart and his three thousand horses. Bravo! And what is the army for? and, above all, what are the so expensive commander and his staff for?

It is perhaps natural that many from among the republican leaders attempt to prop up the reputation of Mr. Lincoln's administrative capacity, to kindle a halo around his name, and to sponge the waste of blood, of means, and of time, from the tracks of his Seward-Scott-Blair administration; but stern historical justice shall not, and cannot, do it.

Whatever be the high _military and scientific prowess_ shown by the first West Point graduates and scholars, all this in no way compensates for the _summum_ of perverted notions which are reared there, and for the mock, sham, and clownish aristocracy by which a high-toned West Pointer is easily recognized. Of course many and many are the exceptions; many West Point pupils are animated by the noblest and purest American spirit; but the genuine West Point spirit consists in sneering and looking down with contempt at the mother and nurse; that is, at the purely republican, purely democratic political institutions, at the broad political and intellectual freedom to which those clown-aristocrats owe their rearing, their little bit of information, and those shoulder-stripes by which they are so mightily inflated.

What silly talk, to compare the St. Domingo insurrection with the eventual results of emancipation in the South! In St. Domingo the slaves were obliged to tear their liberty from the slaveholding planter, and from a government siding with the oppressor. Here the lawful government gives liberty to a peaceful laborer, and the planter is an outlawed traitor. But the genuine pro-slavery democrat is stupidly obtuse.

_Oct. 18._--A few days ago the President wrote a letter to McClellan, with ability and lucidity, exposing to view the military urgency of a movement on the enemy with an army of one hundred and forty thousand men, as has now McClellan at Harper's Ferry. But the letter ends by saying that all that it contains is _not_ to be considered by McNapoleon as being an order. Of course Mac obeys--the last injunction of the letter. Mr. Lincoln wishes not to hurt the great Napoleon's feelings; as for hurting the country, the people, the cause, this is of--no consequence! Ah! to witness all this is to be chained, and to die of thirst within the reach of the purest water.

Reverend Dr. Unitarian Sensation's broad church, admirer of the Southern gentleman, and a Jeremy Diddler.

_Oct. 18._--The elections in several of the States evidence the deep imprint upon the country of Lincoln-Seward disorganizing, because from the first day vacillating, undecided, both-ways policy. The elections reverberate the moral, the political, and the belligerent condition in which the country is dragged and thrown by those two _master spirits_. No decided principle inspires them and their administration, and no principle leads and has a decided majority in the elections; neither the democrats nor the republicans prevail; neither freedom nor submission is the watchword; and finally, neither the North nor the South is decidedly the master on the fields of battle. All is confusion!

Scarcely one genuine republican was, or is, in the cabinet; the republican party is completely on the wane--and perhaps beyond redemption; all this is a logical result, and was easily to be foreseen by any body,--only not by the wiseacres of the party, not by the republican papers in New York, as the Times, the Tribune, and the Evening Post, only not by the Sumners, Doolittles, and many of the like leaders, all of whom, when, about a year ago, warned against such a cataclysm, self-confidently smiled; but who soon will cry more bitter tears than did the daughters of Judah over the ruins of Jerusalem.

And now likewise the phrase in McClellan's order No. 163, about "the remedy at the polls," the disclosures made by Colonel Key, receive their fullest, but ominous and cursed, signification; and now the blind can see that it is policy, and not altogether incapacity, in McClellan to have made a war to preserve slavery and the rebels. And thus McClellan outwitted Mr. Lincoln.

In general, human nature is passionately attracted, nay, is subdued, by energy, above all by civic intrepidity. It would have been so easy for Mr. Lincoln to carry the masses, and to avoid those disasters at the polls! But stubbornness is not energy.

From a very reliable source I learn that a few days after the battle of Antietam, General McClellan, or at least General or Colonel Marcy, of McClellan's staff, insinuated to the President that General McClellan would wish to be relieved from the command of the army, and be assigned to quiet duties in Washington--very likely to supersede Halleck. And the President seized not by the hairs the occasion to get rid of the nation's nightmare, together with the pets of the commander of the army of the Potomac. McClellan acted honestly in making the above insinuation; he is now, in part at least, irresponsible for any future disaster and blood.

_Oct. 20._--I have strong indications that European powers, as England and France, are very sanguine to mediate, but would do it only if, and when, _asked_ by our government. Those two governments, or some other half-friendly, may, semi-officially, insinuate to Mr. Seward to make such a demand. A few months ago, already Mr. Dayton wrote from Paris something about such a step. Mr. Seward is desperate, downcast, and may believe he can serve his country by committing the cabinet to some such combination. I must warn Stanton and others.

In the Express and in the World the New York Herald found its masters in ignominy.

More or less mean, contemptible ambition among the helmsmen, but patriotism, patriotic ambition are below zero--here in Washington. For the sake and honor of human nature, I pray to destiny Stanton may not fail, and still count among the Wadsworths, the Wades, and the like pure patriots.

The democratic elections and majorities united to Mr. Seward may enforce a compromise, and God knows if Mr. Lincoln will oppose it to the last. Then the only seeming salvation of the north will be the indomitable decision of the rebels not to accept any terms except a full recognition.

_Oct. 22._--The incapacity of the military wiseacres borders on idiotism, if not on something worse. To do nothing McClellan absorbs every man, and keeps one hundred and forty thousand men on the Maryland side of the Potomac. Sigel has only a small command of twelve thousand men, in a position where, with one quarter of what is useless under McClellan, with his skill, his activity, and the _truly_ patriotic devotion of his troops, of his officers, and of the commanders under him, Sigel would force the rebels to retreat from Winchester, and otherwise damage them far more than _will_ or can do such McClellans, Hallecks, and all this c----e.

One of the greatest misfortunes for the American people is to have considered as statesmen the rhetors, the petty politicians, and the speech-makers. Now, those rhetors, petty politicians, and speech-makers are at the helm, are in the Senate, and--ruin the country.

The optimists and the subservients still console themselves and confuse the people by asserting that Mr. Lincoln will yet _come out_ as a man and a statesman. Previous to such a happy change the country's honor and the country's political and material vitality will _run out_.

More than a year ago Mr. Seward said to the Prince Salm and to me, that this war ought to be fought out by foreigners; that the Americans fought the revolutionary war, but now they are devoted to peaceful pursuits; and that it is the duty of Europeans to save this refuge from the thraldoms in the old world.

Now, I see that Mr. Seward was right, although in a sense different from that in which he uttered the above sentence.

The Irish excepted, all the other foreign-born Americans, but preeminently the Germans, are more in communion with the lofty, pure, and humane element in the thus called American principle, are therefore more in communion with the creed of the immense majority of Americans, than are they, the present dabblers in politics, the would-be leaders, (civil and military,) the would-be statesmen, all of whom are eaten up by the admixture into what is vital and perennial in the signification of America, of all that in itself is local, muddy, petty, accidental, and transient.

_Oct. 23._--The recent publication of General Scott's letter, and of a writing to President Buchanan, confirms my opinion that "the highest military authority in the land" faltered after March 4, 1861, and inaugurated that defensive warfare wherein we _stick_ on the Potomac until this day.

Pseudo-liberal right-honorable Gladstone asserts that Jeff. Davis "has made the South a nation;" then Abraham Lincoln, with W. H. Seward and G. B. McClellan, have destroyed a noble and generous nation.

England may now recognize the South, France may join in it, but other great European powers, as Russia, Spain, Prussia, Austria, will not follow in such a wake. The recognition will not materially improve the condition of the rebels, nor raise the blockade. But as soon as recognized, Jeff. D. may ask for a mediation, which the people--if not Mr. Seward--will spurn. An armed mediation remains to be applied, wherein, likewise, the other European powers will not concur. An armed mediation between the two principles will be the _summum_ of infamy to which English aristocracy and English mercantilism can degrade itself; if Louis Napoleon joins therein, then his crown is not worth two years lease, provided the Orleans have ----

If we should succumb under the united efforts of imbecility, of pro-slavery treason, of Anglo-Franco-European and of American perjury, then

Ultima coelestis terram Astraea reliquit.

_Oct. 25._--Only two or three days ago, in a conversation with a diplomat, Mr. Seward asserted that both the extreme parties will be mastered--that is, the secessionists and the abolitionists. So Mr. Seward confesses the _credo_ and the gospel of the New York Herald, the World, the Journal of Commerce, the National Intelligencer, and other similar organs of secession.

Notwithstanding the numerous complications naturally generated by the vicinity of Cuba to Secessia, the Spanish government, Count Serrano, the captain-general of Cuba, and Tassara, the Spanish minister here, all have maintained the most loyal relations towards the Federal government. It were to be very much regretted if a drunkard or a brute, as in the affair of the Montgomery, should disturb such relations.

_Oct. 26._--McClellan-Blair-Seward tactics are crowned with splendid success. By his _simplicity_ Mr. Lincoln aided therein as much as he could. The bad season is in; any successful campaign impossible. The rebels will be safe, and Gladstone justified.

It is so difficult to find out the truth concerning Fremont's campaign against Jackson, that some generalship may, after all, be credited to him. At any rate Fremont is a better general than McClellan and the pets in command under him, and Fremont is with his heart and soul in the cause, of which the McClellanites cannot be accused, all of them, their fetish included, having no heart and no soul.

Old Europe, and, above all, official Europe, and even the Gladstones, must be vindicated. Official Europe generally appreciates nations by their leaders. Europe demands from such leaders actions and proofs of statesmanship, of high capacity, if not of heroism. The attempt to astonish Europe by speeches, by oratory, and, still worse, by second-rate legal arguments, by what is called papers here, and in Europe diplomatic circulars and despatches, is the same as the attempt to eclipse bright sunlight with a burning candle. But our orators, and, above all, Mr. Seward, flooded the European and the English statesmen with their, at the best, indifferent productions. Official Europe was favored with a shower of three various editions of _papers relating to foreign relations_ in 1862, issued by the _State Department_, together with the Sanfords, the Weeds, the Hugheses, _et hoc genus omne_. Undoubtedly, the traitor Mason shows in England more of fire than does the cold, stiff, prickly, and dignified son and grandson of Presidents; and then the average of our press! O, Jemima!

In his circular, September 22, to our agents in Europe, Mr. Seward belies not himself. The emancipation is rather coldly announced, and it is visible that neither Mr. Seward's heart nor soul is in it.

The President has now the most reliable information that when Corinth was invested by Halleck, the rebel troops were wholly demoralized, and the enemy was astonished not to be attacked, as very little resistance would have been made. So much for General Scott's gift in Halleck.

The almost daily occurrences here long ago would have exasperated the hot-headed and warm-hearted nations in Europe, and treason would have become their watchword. O American people! thou art warm-hearted, but of _unparallelled endurance_!

No European nation, not even the Turks, would patiently bear such a condition of affairs. Every where the sovereign would have been forced to change, or to modify, the _personnel_ of his ministers and advisers; and Mr. Lincoln is in the hands of Messrs. Seward and Blair, both worse even than McClellan, and--cannot shake them off.

Now, for the first time in my life, I realize why, during the last stages of the dissolution of the Roman empire, honest men escaped into monasteries, or why, at certain epochs of the great French revolution, the best men went to the army.

Ah! to witness here the meanest egotism, imbecility, and intrigue, coolly, one by one, destroy the honor and the future of this noble people. Curse upon my old age! above all, curse upon my obesity! Curse upon my poverty! What a cesspool! what a mire! Only legal slaughterers all around! O, could I go to a camp! but, of course, not to one under McClellan. Sigel's camp. Sigel's men are not soulless; they fight for an idea, without an eye to the White House.

The rhetors, the stump-speakers, the politicians, and the intriguers hold the power, and--humanity and history shudder at the results.

_Oct. 29._--McClellan, with his wonted intrepidity and rapidity, crossed the Potomac from all directions, pushes on Winchester, and--will find there wherefrom every animal willingly discharges itself.

A foreign diplomat, one of the most eminent in the whole _corps_, said yesterday, "No living being so ardently prays for rain as does McClellan; rain will prevent fighting, marching, &c." Such is the estimation of our hero.

Fevers decimated many regiments at Harper's Ferry. If McClellan would have marched only five miles a day, fighting even such battles without any generalship, as he did at Antietam, the army would be healthier, and by this time would be in Richmond.

The decision of the court of inquiry between a patriot and the incarnation of West Point McClellanism, between Martindale and that Fitz-John Porter, ought to open the eyes of any one, but--not those of Mr. Lincoln.

Only two days ago Mr. Lincoln declared, that the reason why McClellan and his pets are not removed is, not any confidence in McClellan's capacity, but to preserve the political balance between the republican and the democratic parties.

If there exist such spiritual creations as providence, genii, or angels watching over the destinies of nations, then, at the sight of Lincoln-Seward-Blair doings, providence, angels, genii avert their faces in despair.

_Oct. 30._--New regiments coming in. It cuts into the deepest of the heart to see such noble and devoted fellows going to be again wantonly slaughtered by the combined military and civic inefficiency of McClellan-Lincoln-Seward, and, above all, by their utter heartlessness.

When the rebels invaded Maryland, the _fighting_ generals, as Heintzelman, advised to mass the troops between the rebels and the Potomac, cut them from their bases and communications, push them towards the North without a possibility of escape, instead of throwing them back on the Potomac. Harper's Ferry would have been saved. Every progress made by the rebels in a Northern direction would have assured their ruin; soon their ammunition would have been exhausted, and surrender was inevitable. But this bold plan of a _fighting_ general could not be comprehended by pets and pretorians. Since, daily and daily occasions occur to destroy the rebels; but that is not the game. Instead of cutting the rebels from Gordonsville and Richmond, which could have been done any time during the last five weeks if Heintzelman and Sigel were not so thoroughly weakened by an ignorant, or worse, distribution of troops, McClellan with all his might pushes the rebels back to Richmond, back on their bases and their resources. O, poor country!

Even I feel humiliated to continually ascertain, by various direct and indirect sources from Europe, in what little estimation--if not worse--is held our administration by the principal statesmen and governments of the old world.

NOVEMBER, 1862.

Empty rhetoric -- The future dark and terrible -- Wadsworth defeated -- The official bunglers blast every thing they touch -- Great and holy day! McClellan gone overboard! -- The planters -- Burnside -- McClellan nominated for President -- Awful events approaching -- Dictatorship dawns on the horizon -- The catastrophe.

O God, O God! to witness how, by the hands of Lincoln-Seward-McClellan, this noblest human structure is crumbled--and, perhaps, soon

Pulvere vix tactae poterunt monstrare ruinae.

May God preserve this people--those noble patriots, of which Wadsworth, Wade, Potter of Wisconsin, Stanton, Governor Andrew, and many others are the types, when the country will be ruined and rended by the firm, Lincoln-Seward-McClellan, to realize the pang,--

Nessun maggior' dolor' che ricordarsi dell tempo felice Nella miseria.

O, I know what it is!

Mr. Seward's letter, October 28, to Messrs. Connover and Palmer, is a display of that empty rhetoric whose dust he is wont to throw into the eyes of the good-natured masses. His plea for united action--of course with him--is the most bitter irony on himself. Mr. Seward's policy and action are at the helm, and he piloted "our noble ship of state" on worse breakers than those "of eighteen months ago."

Mr. Seward's letter is dumb on the object of the Cooper meeting. Of course, Mr. Seward would rather swallow a viper than applaud the abolition of slavery.

_Nov. 5._--Lincoln-Seward politically slaughtered the republican party, and with it the country's honor. The future looks dark and terrible. I shudder. Dishonor on all sides. Lincoln will not understand to use the lease of power left to him--or to fall as a man. But to be candid, most of the thus called leaders prepared this defeat, and most of them at the last moment may lack decision and dignity. How repeatedly I warned the Sumners, Wilsons, and other wiseacres, that such will be the end, that the people at large will become exasperated by Lincoln's administration!

The issue brought before the people was all but dignified. It would have been better to make a straightforward issue against the incapacity and the democratic ill-will of McClellan, than to dodge the question, and force honest and noble men to speak against their convictions. The issue, as made, was concocted by journalists, by politicians; but not by statesmen, not by genuine great leaders.

Seward triumphs. His insincerity preeminently contributed to defeat Wadsworth. Mephisto-like, he rejoices in thus having humbled the pure and radical patriots.