Chapter 16

_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 bloody 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 asserted 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 manoeuvring 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 shell democrats, and cheer McClellan. These murderers are the "friends" of Seymour--they are the pets of that _World_, itself below the offal of hell--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 noble, 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 Cæsar'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, God! 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 emancipation nor the transformation of slave into free states, are of your special, individual work, O, great men; but you strut now.

_Mirmidons, race féconde, enfin nous commandons._

Some say that the generals who let Lee off, intended not to humiliate their former chief and pet McClellan.

_July 20._--Cavalry wanted. Stables and corrals filled with horses, but no saddles. No saddles in this most industrious country! No brains in the Quartermasters or in those to whom it belongs. And perhaps no will, and perhaps no honesty. No saddles! Oh! I am sure it is nobody's fault; no workmen are to be found, and no leather, and no men to look after the country's good. That is the rub.

_July 20._--Captain Collins, commanding a United States man-of-war, captures an English blockade-runner near an isolated shoal somewhere in the vicinity of Bermuda. England asserts that the shoal is a shore, and that the maritime league is violated. Mr. Seward at once yields, Neptune defends as he always does, the rights of the national _Tritons_, and of the national flag. The supreme power sides with Seward, and an order is given to reprimand Collins or something like it: it is done, and the prize-court decides that Captain Collins has made a lawful capture. I hope Collins will be consoled, and light his segar with the reprimand.

The future historian will duly ponder and establish Mr. Seward's claims to the _salvage_ of the country.

_July 20._--From all that I learn, _Meade_ has a better and larger army than Lee; oh, may only Meade establish that he has the biggest brains of the two.

_July 20._--From time to time, I read the various statutes issued by the last Congress, and am strengthened in my opinion that Congress served the people well. The various statutes are the triumph of legislation. They are clear, precise, well-worded results of patriotic, devoted, far-seeing and undaunted minds and brains. All glory to the majority of the Thirty-seventh Congress!

_July 21._--A manly and patriotic letter from James T. Brady is published in the papers. Such Democrats, Irishmen and lawyers, like Brady, honor the party, the nationality, and the profession.

_July 21._--A mystery surrounds the appointment of _Grant_ to the command of the fated Potomac army. _Yes_ and _no_ say the helmsmen. The truth seems to be, it was offered to Grant, and he respectfully refused to accept it. If so, it is an evidence in favor of Grant. To give up glory and devoted companions in arms, to give all this up for the sake of running into the unknown, and into the jaws of the still breathing McClellanism, and into the vicinity of the central telegraphic station! Grant believes in volunteers; and for this reason it is to be regretted that he refused to correct the West Point notions.

_July 21._--The draft occasions much bad blood, and evokes violent dissatisfaction. The draft is a dire necessity; but it could have been avoided if time, men, and the people's enthusiasm had not been so sacrilegiously wasted. The three hundred dollar clause is not a happy invention, and its omission would have given a better character to that law.

_July 21._--If the New York traitors succeed in preventing the draft, then they will riot against taxes; after breaking down the taxes, they will riot against the greenbacks, against the emancipation, and finally force the reconstruction of the Union with the murderous rebel chiefs in the senatorial chairs, according to the Seward-Mercier-Richmond programme. Any one can see in the Cain-Copperhead newspapers of New York, of Boston, of Philadelphia, and in the letters and speeches of those matricides, what are their aims, and how their plans are laid out.

_July 21._--Again I am most positively assured that some time ago a friendly offensive and defensive alliance was concluded between W. H. Seward and Edwin Stanton. The high powers were represented by Thurlow Weed and Morgan for Seward, and the virtuous, lachrymose, white-cravated Whiting acted for Stanton. I was told that this alliance drove Watson, (Assistant Secretary,) from the War Department. This would be infernal, if true. I know that no _Weed_ whatever could approach such a man as Watson; but Watson assured me that he returns back, and I cannot believe that Stanton could consent to be thus sold.

_July 22._--Honorable, virtuous, tear-shedding, jockey-dressing Whiting wanted to make a trip to Europe. Sharp and acute, the great expounder found out at once that Mr. Seward is one of the greatest and noblest patriots of all times. Reward followed. Whiting goes to Europe on a special mission--to dine, if he is invited, with all the great and small men to whom Mr. Adams or Mr. Dayton may introduce him, and to convince everybody in Europe that the Sewards, the Whitings, &c., are the _crème de la crème_ of the American people. _Vive la bagatelle._

_July 22._--How putrescent is all around! But it is not the nation, not the people. And as the sun raises above the darkest and heaviest vapors, so in America the spirit of mankind, incarnated in and animating the people, towers above the filth of politicians, of cabinet-makers, of presidential-peddlers, etc. Look to the masses to find consolation. How splendidly acts Massachusetts and New England's sons! And what free State is not New England's son? The youth of Massachusetts are almost all in the field--the rich and the poor, those of the best social standing, and of the genuine good blood and standing; scholars and mechanics, all of them shouldered the musket.

_July 23._--How strangely and how slowly Meade manoeuvres! It looks McClellan-like. O, God of battles, warm and inspire Meade!

_July 23._--Only boys in the corps of invalids. It has its good. For scores of years to come, these invalids will be the living legend of this treasonable, matricidal rebellion, and of the atrocious misconduct of our helmsmen. I hope that when returned home, these invalids will be as many extirpators of all kinds of _Weeds_ in their respective townships and villages. They will become the lights of the new era.

_July 23._--Were it not for the murdered, these New York riots could be considered welcome. The rioting cannibals, and their prompters and defenders showed their hands. No one in his senses can now doubt how heartily and devotedly Jeff Davis was served by his hirelings among the Copperhead leaders and among the New York Copperhead press. The cannibals cheered for McClellan, and the Administration has neither enough courage nor self respect to put that fetish on the retired list.

In the old, flourishing times of Romanism and papacy, such a Most Eminent Hughes would long ago have been suspended by the Holy See. The Most Eminent's standing among the continental European Episcopacy is not eminent at all, whatever be Mr. Seward's opinion. The Most Eminent is a curious observer of the canons, of the papal bulls, and of other clerical and episcopal paraphernalia. The spirit animating the Most Eminent is not the spirit of the Roman Sapienzia. I well recollect what I heard lectured in that Roman papal university.

_July 24._--As a dark and ominous cloud, Lee with his army hovers around Washington, keeps the Shenandoah valley, and may again cross over to the Cumberland valley. It seems that the generals whose council-of-war allowed Lee to recross the river unhurt, believed that Lee with all speed would run to Richmond; and now they hang to his brow and eye.

The crime of Williamsport bears fruit. Never, never in this or in the other life, can the perpetrators of the Williamsport crime atone for it.

It may come that the western armies and generals will bring the civil war to an end, the Potomac army all the time marching and countermarching between the Potomac and the Rappahannock. And such a splendid army, such heroic soldiers and officers, to be sacrificed to the ignorant stubbornness of sham military science!

_July 25._--I positively learn that Gilmore has scarcely ten thousand men, infantry, and is to storm the various forts and defenses around the Charleston harbor. If Gilmore succeeds, then it is a wonder. But in sound valuation, Gilmore has not men enough to organize columns of attack so that the one shall follow the other within a short, very short supporting distance. And the losses will almost hourly reduce Gilmore's small force. I dread repulse and heavy losses. Some one at the head-quarters deserves to be quartered for such a distribution of troops. With the immense resources and means of transportation, it is so easy to send twenty thousand troops to Gilmore, attack, make short work of it, and then carry the troops back to where they belonged. But to concentrate and act in masses is not the _credo_ of the--not yet quartered--head-quarters.

_July 26._--Old--but not slow--Welles again gives to Seward a lesson of good-behavior, of sound sense, and of mastery of international laws. The prize courts side with Welles. Because Neptune has a white wig and beard, he is considered slow, when in reality he is active, unflinching, and progressive.

_July 26._--O, could I only exclaim, _Exegi monumentum aere perennius_, to the noble, the patriotic, and the good, as well as to the helpless, the selfish, and the counterfeits.

_July 27._--_Philadelphia._ Flags in all the streets, volunteers parading and drilling. Prosperity, activity and devotion permeate the country. So at least I am led to believe. All this is so refreshing, after witnessing in Washington such strenuous efforts how not to do it.

Bad news. I learn that Gilmore is repulsed. When the _forlorn hope_ entered Fort Wagner, no support promptly came, and the heroes, black and white, were massacred or expelled. Gilmore ought to have been more cautious, and not to have undertaken an operation which was on its outside stamped with impossibility. Perhaps Gilmore obeyed peremptory orders. Who gave them?

Lee's army escapes through Chester Gap, and thus we have not cut the rebels from Richmond, and now they are ahead of us. Again out-manoeuvred! and _nobody's fault_, only the campaign prolonged _ad infinitum_. Perhaps it is in the programme!

_July 28._--_Philadelphia._ The petty, narrow, school conceit imbibed in the West Point nursery, is the stumbling-block barring everywhere the expansion of a healthy and vigorous activity. I listened to the heaviest absurdities and fogyism on military affairs _oracularly_ preached by one of the great West Pointers on duty here.

_July 31._--_Long Branch._ Away from personal contact, even from the view of politicians, of plotters, of lickspittles. How refreshing, how invigorating, how soothing!

Mr. Seward, with a due tail, visits Fortress Monroe. What for? Is it to organize some underground road to reunion on the Mercier-Seward-Richmond programme?

One well-informed writes me that the last programme of Lincoln, Halleck and Meade is, that the army of the Potomac is to keep Lee at bay, but not to attack. If true, how well designed to give time to Lee to do what he likes, to reorganize, to send away his troops where he may please, to call them back--in one word to be fully at his ease on our account. Will this country ever escape the tutorship of sham science?

_July 31._--_Long Branch._ Seward's concession policy towards France bears fruit in Mexico. Of course the _Decembriseur_ outwitted the Weed-Albany-Auburn politician statesman. But it is not the ignorant foreign policy which strengthened and strengthens the French policy in Mexico. It is the blunders, the tergiversations, the gropings, and the crimes of our internal domestic policy, which, protracting the war, allows the French conspirator to murder the Mexicans.

_July 31. L. B._--So the _Decembriseur_ amuses himself in creating an Imperial throne in Mexico for some European princely idiot or intriguer. All right. I have confidence in the Mexicans. The future Emperor, even if established for some time on the cushion of treason propped by French bayonets, that manikin before short or long will be _Iturbidised_. Further: I have confidence in the French people. The upper crust is pestilential. Bonapartists, lickspittles, lackeys and incarnations of all imaginary corruptions compose that upper crust. But I would bet a fortune, had I one, that in the course of the next five years, the _Decembriseur_ and his _Prince Imperial_ will be visible at Barnum's, and that some shoddy grandee from 5th Avenue, will issue cards inviting _to meet the Empress Eugénie_.

AUGUST, 1863.

Stanton -- Twenty Thousand -- Canadians -- Peterhoff -- Coffey -- Initiation -- Electioneering -- Reports -- Grant -- McClellan -- Belligerent Rights -- Menagerie -- Watson -- Jury -- Democrats -- Bristles -- "Where is Stanton?" -- "Fight the monster" -- Chasiana -- Luminaries -- Ballistic -- Political Economy, etc., etc., etc.

_August 2. Long Branch._--The organs of all shades and of all gradations of ill-wishers to the cause of the North, and to that of Emancipation, the secret friends of Jeff Davis, and the open supporters of McClellan are untiring in their open, slanderous, treacherous accusations of _Stanton_; others spread sanctimoniously perfidious suggestions against the Secretary of War, and so does the _National Intelligencer_, this foremost Whig-Conservative, double or treble-faced organ. _Stanton_ is called to account for all mishaps, mismanagement, disasters and disgraces which befall our armies between the Rio Grande and the Potomac. Such accusations, to a certain degree, could be justified if the Secretary of War were clothed with the same powers, and therefore with the same responsibilities as is the case in European governments.

But every one knows that here the war machinery is very complicated, because wheels turn within wheels. The Secretary of War is not alone to answer and he is not exclusively responsible for the appointment of good, middling, or wholly bad generals and commanders. Every one knows it. _Stanton_ may have all the possible shortcomings and faults with which his enemies so richly clothe him; one thing is certain, that _Stanton_ advocated and always advocates fighting, and Stanton furnishes the generals and commanders with all means and resources at the country's and the department's disposition. If many respectable men are to be trusted, _Stanton_ never interferes with intrinsic military operations, never orders or insinuates, or dictates to the commanders of our armies where and in what way they are to get at the enemy and to fight him. As far as I know Stanton keeps aloof from strategy.

Stanton _is insincere and untruthful_, say his enemies. Granted. I never found a man in power to be otherwise in personal questions or relations. It is almost impossible for the power-holders to be sincere and truthful.

Trust in thy sword, Rather than prince's (president's) word; Trust in fortuna's sinister, Rather than prince's minister.

But _Stanton_ is truthful and sincere to the cause, and that is all that I want from him. Stanton's alleged _malice_ against McClellan had the noblest and the most patriotic sources, which, of course, could not be understood or appreciated by Stanton's revilers.

The organs of treason and of infamy refer always to McClellan. _O race, knitted of the devils excrements mixed with his saliva_, [see Talleyrand about Thiers] your treason is only equal to your impudence and ignorance. If in February, 1862, Stanton had not urged McClellan to move, probably the Potomac Army would have spent all the year in its tents before Washington. McClellan's henchmen and minions thrusted and still thrust the grossest lies down the throat of a certain public, eager to gulp slander as sugar plums. McClellan's stupidity at Yorktown and in the Chickahominy is vindicated by his crew with the following counter accusation: that all disasters have been generated because McDowell with his twenty thousand men did not join McClellan. If McClellan had in him the soldiership of a non-commissioned officer, on his knees he ought to implore his crew not to expose him in this way. When a general has in hand about one hundred and ten thousand men, as McClellan had on entering the peninsula, and accomplishes nothing, then it is a proof that he, the general, is wholly unable and ignorant how to handle large masses. If McClellan could not manage one hundred thousand men, still less would he have been able to manage the twenty thousand more of McDowell's corps.

The stupidity of attempting to invest Richmond is beyond words, and for such an operation several hundred thousand men would have been necessary. [Spoke of it in Vol. I.] If twenty thousand men arrive not at a certain day or hour when a battle is raging, most surely this failure may occasion a defeat--Grouchy at Waterloo--but in McClellan's Chickahominy operations, twenty thousand men more would have served only still more plainly to expose his incapacity, and to be a prey to fevers and diseases.