Chapter 3

How, unless Chase has drank of the waters of Lethe, how can he possibly look, now, in the face of, for instance, Fessenden of Maine, to whom he has said so many bitter things against the now belauded "Secretary Seward!" Bah! Chase most certainly must have a forty-or-fifty-diplomatist power of commanding--literally and not slangishly be it spoken!--his _cheek_, if, without burning blushes he can look in the face of Fessenden, Sumner or any honest man and say,--"I admire and I support Secretary Seward!" God! If all who, during the last two years, have come into contact with Chase, would but come forward and speak out! In that case, thousands would stand forth, a "cloud of witnesses," to confirm this statement. Chase! Faugh! I hereby brand him, and leave him to the bitter judgment of all men who can conscientiously claim to be even _half honest_.

In merest and barest justice to Seward, greatly as I disapprove of his general course, I must here note the fact that he is by no means addicted to evil speaking about any one. Not that this reticence proceeds from scrupulous feeling or a proud stern spirit. Seward, however, never speaks evil of any one unless to destroy, and to one who sympathises in that same amiable wish. To undermine a rival or to destroy an enemy, Seward will expend any amount of slander; but, in the absence of personal interest, Seward, though officially civilian, is, by nature, far too good and too old a soldier to waste ammunition upon worthless game.

_Dec. 23._--Why could not Mr. Lincoln choose for his Secretary of State some man who has a holy and wholesome horror of pen, ink, and paper? Some man gifted with a sound brain, who never is quick at writing a dispatch, and would demand double salary as the price of writing one? Oh! Mr. Lincoln, had you but done this, not only would all America, but all Europe also be truly thankful for great immunity from the curse of morbid attempts at diplomacy and statesmanship.

_Dec. 23._--Mr. Lincoln's proclamation to the butchered army! For heaven's sake let us know, pray, _pray_ let us know who was Lincoln's amanuensis? I hope it was not Stanton. The army is defiled. "An accident," says this precious proclamation, "has prevented victory." _What_ accident? Let the country know the precise nature of that same accident, and the manner, time, and place of its occurrence! Burnside talks about a fog! Oh! yes, a deep, dense terribly foul fog--in the _cerebellum_! Is that the _accident_ of which the precious proclamation so impudently speaks? Lincoln makes the wonderful discovery that the crossing and the recrossing of the river are quite peerless, absolutely unparallelled military achievements.

Happy it was for the army, and happy for the country that at Fredericksburgh, our heroic soldiers gave far other and nobler proofs of more than human courage and fortitude than the mere crossing and recrossing of a river.

The _Tribune_ is either in its dotage, or still worse. Burnside's unsoldierly blundering is compared to the great victorious splendors of Asperm, Esslingen, Wagram, and the tyrant-crushing three days of immortal Waterloo! The _Tribune_ lauds the crossing and the recrossing of the river, as an act of superhuman bravery; and Lincoln sympathises with the heavily wounded, and twaddles extensively about _comparative_ losses. Comparative to what? Oh! spirits of Napoleon and his braves; oh! spirit of true history, veil your blushing brows! And the _Tribune_ dares to make this impudent attempt at befogging the American people, and at the same time dares to tell that people that it is "intelligent."

But let us not forget those comparative losses! Comparative to what? To those of the enemy? What knows he about them?

_Dec. 24._--Crisis in the Seward cabinet. The "little Villain" of the _Times_, repeated what he did after the first "Bull Run." But he did not now confess to his dining with Seward, as formerly he did with the great "anaconda Scott!" The New York Republican press is attracted to Seward by natural affinity of election. Seward, however, holds the honey pot, and the flies are all eager to dip into it.

I wish, yet dread to hear the exact particulars of Stanton's behavior during the crisis in the cabinet. It is so very, _very_ painful to be rudely awakened to distrust of those whom once we have too implicitly, too fondly believed. Lincoln has now become accustomed to Seward, as the hunchback is to his protuberance. What man who has an ugly excrescence on his face does not dread the surgeon's knife, although he knows that momentary pain will be followed by permanent relief?

At the public dinner of "The New England Society," John Van Buren nominated McClellan for next President, and proposed the health of Secretary Seward. _Oh! quam pulchra societas!_

I am charged with being "dissatisfied with every thing, and abusing every body." The charge is unjust. I speak most lovingly and in most sincere admiration of the millions, of the great, toiling, brave, honest People, and of the hundreds of thousands of the gallant people-militant--the army! But I _do_ censure some thirty or forty individuals who dispense favors and appoint to fat offices, and, quite naturally, every dirty-souled lickspittle is indignant against me therefor! The blame of such people is far preferable to their praise!

I am rejoiced, I am almost proud that Hooker insisted upon crossing the Rappahannock, and marching to Fredericksburgh, and that he opposed the subsequent attack.

But of what benefit to me is this fatal, this Cassandra gift of foreseeing? Alas! Better, happier would it be for me could I not have foreseen and vainly, all vainly foretold, the terrible butchery of a brave people during two long and fatal years!

_Dec. 24._--It is impossible to keep cool while reading Burnside's report. Once more this report justifies and corroborates Prince Napoleon's judgment on American generals, _i. e._, that their plan of campaigns will always be deficient in practice, like the theoretical war-exercises of schoolboys. From this sweeping and terribly true charge, however, we must except the Grants and the--alas! how few!--Rosecranses.

The report says, "but for the fog," etc. All lost battles in the world had for cause some _buts_--except the genuine _but_--in the brains of the commander.

"How near we came to accomplishing," etc.--is only a repetition of what, _ad nauseam_, is recorded by history as lamentations of defeated generals.

"The battle would have been far more decisive." Of course it would have been so, if--won.

"As it was, we were very near success," etc. So the man who takes the chance in the lottery. He has No. 4, and No. 3 wins the prize.

The apostrophe to the heroism of the soldiers is sickly and pale. The heroism of the soldiers! It is as brilliant, as pure, and as certain as the sun.

The attack was planned, (see paragraph 2 of the report,) on the circumstance or supposition that the enemy extended too much his line, and thus scattered his forces. But in paragraph 4, Burnside stated that the fog, (O, fog!) etc., gave the enemy twenty-four hours' time to concentrate his forces in his strong positions--when the calculation based on the enemy's _division of forces_ failed, and the attack lost all the chances considered propitious.

The whole plan had for its basis probabilities and impossibilities--schoolroom speculations--instead of being, as it ought to have been, as every plan of a battle should be, based on the chances of the _terrain_, by the position of the enemy, and other conditions, almost wholly depending upon which the armies operate. It is natural that martial Hooker objected to it.

Oh! could I have blood, blood, blood, instead of ink!

Constructing the bridge over the Rappahannock, our engineers were killed in scores by the sharp-shooters of the enemy. Malediction on those imbecile staffs! The _A B C_ of warfare, and of sound common sense teach, that such works are to be made either under cover of a powerful artillery fire, or, what is still better, if possible, a general sends over the river in some way, with infantry to clear its banks, and to dislodge the enemy. In such cases one engineer saved, and time won, justify the loss of almost twenty soldiers to one workman. Some one finally suggested an expedition and they did at the end what ought to have been done at the start. O West Point! thy science is marvellous! The staff treated the construction of a bridge over the Rappahannock as if it were building some railroad bridge, in times of peace!

I am told that Stanton took sides with Seward. I deny it; Stanton remained rather passive. But were it true that Stanton, too, is _Sewardized_,--then, Oh Mud, how powerful thou art!

In Boston, the B.s and Curtises, and all of that kidney, make a great fuss and invoke the name of Webster. If so, they are only _excrementa Websteriana_.

_Dec. 24._--Patriots in both Houses of Congress! your efforts to put the conduct of the national affairs in honorable hands, and on honorable tracks, to prevent the very life blood of the people from being sacrilegiously wasted, to prevent the people's wealth from being recklessly squandered; your efforts to introduce order and spirit in certain parts of a spiritless Administration, to fill the higher and inferior offices with men whose hearts and minds are in the cause, and to expel therefrom, if not absolute disloyalty, at least, the most criminal indifference to the people's cause and welfare; your efforts to make us speak to Europe like men of sense, and not in the senseless oracles which justly evoke the scorn and the sneers of all European statesmen; all these your efforts as patriots rebounded against a nameless stubbornness.

Nevertheless you fulfilled a noble, sacred and patriotic duty. Whatever be to-day the outcry of the Flatfoots, lickspittles, intriguers, imbeciles; whatever be the subserviency or want of civic courage in the public press--when all these stinking, suffocating, deleterious vapors shall be destroyed by the ever-living light of truth, then the grateful people will bless your names, which, pure and luminous, will shine high above the stupidity, conceit, heartlessness, turpitude, selfish ambition, indirect and direct treason darkening now the national horizon.

_Dec. 25._--_Christmas._ The Angel of Death hovers over thousands and thousands of hearths. Thousands and thousands of families in tears and shrouds. Communities, villages, huts and log-houses, nursing their crippled, invalid, patriotic heroes! A year ago, all was quiet on the _Potomac_--now all is quiet on the _Rappahannock_.

What a progress we have made in a year! and at the small, insignificant cost of about sixty to eighty thousand killed or crippled, and of one thousand millions of dollars! But it matters not! The quietude of the official butchers and money squanderers is, and must remain undisturbed in their mansions, whatever be the moral leprosy dwelling therein!

A young man from New England, (whom I saw for the first time,) told me that my Diary stirred up the youth. Oh, if so, then I feel happy. Youth! youth! you are all the promise and the realization! But why do you suffer yourselves to be crushed down by the upper-crust of senile nincompoops? Oh youth, arise, and sun-like penetrate through and through the magnitude of the work to be accomplished, and save the cause of humanity!

_Dec. 25._--As it was and is in all Revolutions and upheavals, so here. A part of the people constitute the winners, in various ways, (through shoddy names, jobs, positions, etc.) while the immense majority bleeds and sacrifices. Here many people left poorly salaried desks, railroads, shops, &c. to become great men but poor statesmen, cursed Generals, and mischief-makers in every possible way and manner. The people's true children abandoned homes, families, honest pursuits of an industrious and laborious life--in one word, their ALL, to bleed, to be butcherer, to die in the country's cause. The former are the winners, the sacrificers, and the butchers; the second are the victims.

The evidence before the War Committee shows, to a most disgusting satiety, that General Halleck is exclusively a red-tapist, and a small pettifogger, who is unworthy to be even a non-commissioned officer; General Burnside an honest, well intentioned soldier, thoroughly brave, but as thoroughly destitute of generalship; General Sumner an unquestionably brave but headlong trooper; and Hooker alone in possession of all the capacity and resources of a captain. General Woodbury's evidence is that of a man under difficulties, on whom his superiors in rank have thrown the responsibility of their own crime.

Halleck alone is responsible for the non-arrival of the pontoons. Burnside could not look for them; it was the duty of Halleck to order some of the semi-geniuses of his staff to the special duty of seeing to their delivery at Fredericksburgh, to give them necessary power to use roads, steamers, water, animals and men for transportation, and make it a capital responsibility if Sumner finds not the pontoons on the spot, and at the precise day and hour when he wanted them. Then, Gen. Meigs, who coolly asserts that he "gave orders." O yes! but he never dreamed it was his duty to look for their execution. The fate of the campaign depended upon the pontoons, and Halleck-Meigs "gave orders," and there was an end of it. In any other country, such culprits would have been at the least dismissed--cashiered, if not shot; here, their influence is on the increase. Halleck and Meigs are still great before Mr. Lincoln, and before the mass of nincompoops.

Rhetors and sham-erudites are ecstatic about Burnside's conduct. Well! Burnside is good-natured--that is all. They forget the example of Canrobert and Pellisier, in the Crimea. Canrobert, after having commanded the army, gave up the command, and served under Pellisier. Oh declaimers! Oh imbeciles! ransack not the world--let Rome alone, and its Punic wars, its Varrus, etc.--Disturb not history, which, for you, is a book with seventy-seven seals. You understand not events under your long noses, and before your opaque eyes.

When in animal bodies the brains are diseased, the whole body's functions are more or less paralyzed. The official brains of the nation are in a morbid condition. _That_ explains all.

_Dec. 27._--I wish I could succeed in bringing about the organization of a good Staff for the army. _Etat Major General de l'Armée_ Stanton seems to understand it, but the Hallecks and other West Pointers have neither the first idea of it, nor the will to see it done.

_Dec. 28._--The so-called great papers of the Republican party in New York, as well as some would-be statesmen here, discuss the probability of some new manifestation by Louis Napoleon, or by other European powers, of interference in our internal affairs. The probability of such a demonstration by European meddlers can only have one of the following causes:--Our terrible disaster at Fredericksburg, or, what even is worse than that slaughter, the absolute incapacity of our leaders to cope with such great and terrible events as this last one. The bravery, the heroism of our soldiers will be applauded, admired, and pitied in Europe, but the utter intellectual marasmus, as shown by our administration, will and must embolden the European marplots to attempt to stop what they consider a further unnecessary massacre. General Burnside's report, and the evidence before the War Committee are before the country and before Europe. Therefore Europe and our country are to judge.

During his last visit in summer to New York, etc. the French Minister came in contact with low French adventurers, (Courriers des États Unis) with copperheads and with democrats, and now he is taken with sickly diplomatic sentimentalism to conciliate, to mediate, to unite, to meddle, and to get a feather in his diplomatic cap. I am sorry for him, for in other respects he has considerable sound judgment. _Mais il est toqué sur cette question çi._ He is ignorant of the temper of the masses, and considers the assertions of adventurers, of traitors, and of meddlers, as being the expression of the sentiments of the people. But sensible diplomats are _rari aves_.

Hooker, because he alone is a _captain_, cannot be in command. Infamous intriguers, traitors, and imbeciles, prevent Hooker from being intrusted with the destinies of our army. Whole regiments claim to serve under him, and above all such regiments as fought under others in the peninsula, and always have been worsted, and who wish once to be led to success and victory, as were always Hooker's soldiers. The Franklins, and other marplotters in the Potomac Army, menace to resign if Hooker is put in command. The sooner the better for the army to get rid of such trash. But the imbeciles and the intriguers in power think not so; and all may remain as it was, and a new slaughter of our heroes may loom in the future.

_Dec. 29._--General Butler's proclamation to his soldiers in New Orleans is the best and noblest document written since this war. It is good, because it records noble and patriotic deeds. During those eighteen months General Butler has shown capacity, activity, energy, fertility of resources and readiness to meet any emergency, unequalled by any one in the administration or in command. And for this, Butler is superseded, because Seward promised it to the _Decembriseur_ in the Tuilleries, and because he is a _man_, and _conservative patriots_, _alias_ traitors, could not get at him.

_Dec. 30._--Angel of wrath, smite, smite! Oh, genius of humanity, take into thy mercy this noble people! Oh, eternal reason, send the feeblest breath of divine emanation and arrest this all-devouring torrent of imbecility, selfishness and conceit that is reigning paramount here. Only the PEOPLE'S devotion and patriotism, only the _unnamed_ save the country!

_Dec. 30._--Those foreign caterwaulings against Butler. England, in 1848-9, whipped women in Ireland, and how many thousands have been murdered by the _Decembriseur_? And the Russian minister joining in this music. A shame for him and for his government!

_Dec. 30._--Poor Greeley looks for intervention, mediation, arbitration; and selects Switzerland for the fitting arbitrator! How little--nay--nothing at all, he knows about Switzerland and the Swiss! Stop! stop! respectable old man!

_Dec. 31._--Stanton is not at all responsible for the slaughter at Fredericksburgh, or for the infamy of the belated pontoons. Halleck has the exclusive control of all military movements, etc., in the field. But Stanton ought not be benumbed by a Halleck or a Meigs.

The people at large cannot realize the really awful position of patriotic members of Congress, and above all, of such senators as Wade, Grimes, Fessenden, Wilson, Morrill, Chandler and others, or the almost similar position of Stanton, in his contact with the double-dealings or the obstinacy of Lincoln.

_Dec. 31._--To-morrow few, if any, shall miss the occasion to shake hands with the official butchers, with men dripping with the gore of their brethren. Oh, Cains! oh, fratricides!

_Dec. 31._--_Midnight._--Disappear! oh year of disgraces, year of slaughters and of sacrifices.

_Tschto den griadoustchi nam gotowit?_ (Puschkine.)

Ring out the false, ring in the true, Ring out the grief that saps the mind, * * * * * * Ring in REDRESS _for all mankind_!

JANUARY, 1863.

Proclamation -- Parade -- Halleck -- Diplomats -- Herodians -- Inspired Men -- War Powers -- Rosecrans -- Butler -- Seward -- Doctores Constitutionis -- Hogarth -- Rhetors -- European Enemies -- Second Sight -- Senator Wright the Patriot -- Populus Romanus -- Future Historian -- English People -- Gen. Mitchell -- Hooker in Command -- Staffs -- Arming Africo-Americans -- Thurlow Weed, &c.

_Jan. 1._--The morning papers. No proclamation! Has Lincoln played false to humanity?

The proclamation will appear. All right so far! Hallelujah! How the friends of darkness, how the demons must wince and tremble.

There! Red-tape commander-in-chief, field marshal (who never saw a field of battle!) parades at the head of victorious generals, of intelligent staffs, of active pontoon providers, and of really and highly qualified quartermasters general. To the White House! They will congratulate Mr. Lincoln. Upon what? Upon Fredericksburgh and other massacres; but especially they will congratulate Mr. Lincoln upon the fact of his being surrounded by such a bright galaxy of know-nothings and do-nothings!

Death-knell to slavery and to the slaveocracy. The foulest relic of the past will at length be destroyed. The new era has a glorious dawn; it rises in the glories of sacrifices made by a generous and inspired people. Yes! The new era rises above darkness, selfishness, and imbecility. The shades of the slaughtered are now at length propitiated; their slaughter is at least in part atoned for; and outraged humanity is, at least in part, avenged! Let rebels and conservatives remain hardened in crime; a just and condign vengeance shall overtake them.

_Nunc pede libero Pulsanda tellus._

_Jan. 2._--Shallow and brainless diplomats sneer at the proclamation. So did the Herodians sneer at the star of Bethlehem; and where now are the Herodians? Oh! shallow and heartless diplomats, your days are numbered, too!

_Jan. 2._--A man inspired by conviction and glowing with a fervent faith, thoroughly knows what he is about. Strong in his faith, and by his faith, he clearly sees his way, and steadily walks in it, while others grope hither and thither amidst shadows and darkness and bewildering doubts! Such a man boldly takes the initiative, marches onward, and is as a beacon-light to a nation, to a people; often, sometimes, even for all humanity. A man who has a profound faith in his convictions has coruscations, fierce flashes of that second-sight for the signs of the times. The mere trimming and selfish politician is ever ready to swim with the stream which he had neither strength nor skill to breast; he never ventures to take the initiative. In issuing the proclamation, Mr. Lincoln gives legal sanction, form, and record to what the storm of events and the loud cry of the best of the people have long demanded and now inexorably dictate.

History will pitilessly tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and small credit will history give to Lincoln beyond that of being the legal recorder of a righteous deed, and not even that credit will be given to the countersigner, Seward.

Mr. Seward countersigned both proclamations of freedom. Europe is filled with his despatches, written at first plainly for, then lukewarmly tolerating, and, at length, flatly against, slavery. European statesmen have thus the exact measure of Mr. Seward's political character. They know that to the very last he defended slavery, and then countersigned the decree of its destruction! In Europe, self-respecting statesmen resign rather than countersign a measure which they disapprove or have strongly opposed.

_Jan. 3._--Emancipation under war powers. A mistake by a contradiction. Spoke of it before. And nevertheless: under war powers alone, emancipation is palatable to a great many, nay, almost to millions of small, narrow intellects, dried up by the formulas, and who in the Constitution see only the latter, and not the expanding, all-embracing principle and spirit. O, Rabbis! O, Talmudists!

Lincoln is very unhappy in his phraseology. He invites the sympathies of humanity on a measure decided by him to favor the war. It is a contradiction; humanity and war are antipodic.