Chapter 8

_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, nobody-hurting (no, not even the people's honour) trip to Richmond was concocted. The French Minister's name _appears not_ in the document sent to the Senate; so the lie direct is after all only a constructive lie; nobody 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 document, 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 bloody origin and his bloody appetites. 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 documents, 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 illustrations 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 noble 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, emancipation 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 hitherto 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 noble 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 noblest 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 illustration 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 nobleness 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 godlike 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 Cæsar, 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 asserted, 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.

_February 16._--Often, so to speak, the hand refuses to record what the head hears and sees, what the reason must judge. To witness how one of the greatest events in the development of mankind, how the deadly struggle between right and crime, between good and evil, how the blood and sweat of _such a people_ are dealt with by--counterfeits!

_February 17._--Poor Banks! He is ruined by having been last year pressed to Seward's bosom, and having been thus initiated into the Seward-Weed Union and slavery-restoring policy. Banks and Louis Napoleon in Mexico and in his mediation scheme; both Banks and Napoleon were ruined by yielding to bad advice--Banks to that of Seward, and Louis Napoleon to that of his diplomats. I hope that Banks will shake off the nightmare that is throttling him now; that he will no more write senseless proclamations, will give up the attempt to save slave-holders, and will march straight to the great task of crushing the rebellion and rebels. He will blot slavery, that Cain's mark on the brow of the Union; blot it and throw it into the marshes of the parishes of Louisiana. I rely upon Banks's sound common sense. He will come out from among the evil ones.

_February 18._--Under no other transcendent leadership than that of its patriotism and convictions, the majority of this expiring Congress boldly and squarely faced the emergencies and all the necessities daily, hourly evoked by the Rebellion, and unhesitatingly met them. If the majority was at times confused, the confusion was generated by many acts of the administration, and not by any shrinking before the mighty and crushing task, or by the attempt to evade the responsibility. The impartial historian will find in the Statutes an undisputable confirmation of my assertions. The majority met all the prejudices against taxation, indebtedness, paper currency, draft, and other similar cases.

And all the time the majority of Congress was stormed by traitors, by intriguers, by falsifiers and prisoners of public opinion; the minority in Congress taking the lead therein. Many who ought to have supported the majority either fainted or played false. The so-called good press, neither resolute nor clear-sighted, nor far-seeing, more than once confused, and as a whole seldom thoroughly supported the majority.

If the good press had the indomitable courage in behalf of good and truth, that the _Herald_ has in behalf of untruth and of mischief, how differently would the affairs look and stand!

_February 19._--Jackson first formed, attracted and led on the people's opinion. Has not Mr. Lincoln thrown confusion around?

_February 19._--The Supreme Court of the United States has before it the prize cases resulting from captures made by our navy. The counsel for the English and rebel blockade-runners and pilferers find the best point of legal defence in the unstatesmanlike and unlegal wording of the proclamation of the blockade, as concocted and issued by Mr. Seward, and in the repeated declarations contained in the voluminous diplomatic correspondence of our Secretary of State,--declarations asserting that _no war whatever is going on in the Federal Republic_. No war, therefore no lawful prizes on the ocean. So ignorance, and humbug mark every step of this foremost among the pilots of a noble, high-minded, but too confiding people.

The facts, the rules, and the principles in these prize cases are almost unprecedented and new; new in the international laws, and new in the history of governments of nations. Seldom, if ever, were so complicated the powers of government, its rights, and the duties of neutrals, the rights and the duties of the captors, and the condition of the captured. This rebellion is, so to speak, _sui generis_, almost unprecedented on land and sea. The difficulties and complications thus arising, became more complicated by the either reckless or unscientific (or both) turn given by the State Department in conceding to the rebels the condition of belligerents. Thus the great statutory power of the sovereign, (that is, of the Union through its president) for the suppression of the rebellion was palsied at the start. The insurrection of the Netherlands alone has some very small similarity with our civil war; however, that insurrection took place at a time when very few, if any, principles of international laws were generally laid down and generally recognized. Here the municipal laws, the right of the sovereign and his duty to save itself and the people, the rights and the laws of war, wrongly applied to such virtual outlaws as the rebels, the maritime code of prize laws and rules, play into and intertwine each other. When Mr. Seward penned his doleful proclamation of the blockade, etc., he never had before his mind what a mess he generated; what complications might arise therefrom. I am sure he never knew that such proclamation was _a priori_ pregnant with complications, and that at least its wording ought to have been very careful. Mr. Seward was not at all cognizant of the fact that the wording of a proclamation of a blockade, for the time being, lays down a rule for the judges in the prize courts. For him it was rather a declamation than a proclamation; he who believed the rebellion would end in July, 1861, and that no occasion would arise to apply the rules of the blockade.

Thus Mr. Seward, with his thorough knowledge of international law rendered difficult the position of the captors; he equally increased the difficulty for the judge to administer justice. By this proclamation and the commentaries put on it, Mr. Seward curtailed the rights of the government of which he is a part, conceded undue conditions to the rebels, and facilitated to the neutrals the means of violating his blockade. So much is clear and palpable to-day, and I am sure more complications and imbecilities are in store. If Mr. Seward had had good advisors for these nice and difficult questions, he would not have blundered in this way. Thus Charles Eames, who in the pleadings before the Superior United States Court has shown a consummate mastery in prize questions--Eames could teach Mr. Seward a great deal about the constitutional powers of the president to suppress the rebellion, and about the meaning and the bearing of international maritime laws, rights, duties and rules.

_February 20._--A Mr. Funk, a member of the Illinois Senate, a farmer, and a man of sixty-five years, on February 13, made a speech in that body which sounds better than all the rhetories and oratories. It was the sound and genuine utterance of a man from the people, and I hope some future historian will record the speech and the name of the old, indomitable patriot.

_February 20._--Stimulated by a pure Athenian breeze, the Congress passed a law organizing an Academy of Sciences. What a gigantic folly; the only one committed by this Congress. The pressure was very great, and exercised by the bottomless vanity of certain scientific, self-styled magnates, and by the Athenians. Up to this day, the American scientific development and progress consisted in its freedom and independence. No legal corporation impeded and trammeled the limitless scope of the intellectual and scientific development. That was the soul and secret of our rapid and luminous onward march. Now fifty patented, incorporated respectabilities will put the curb on, will hamper the expansion. Academies turn to fossils. My hope is that the true American spirit will soar above the vanity and pettiness of corporated wisdom, and that this scientific Academy bubble will end in inanity and in ridicule. I am sorry that Congress was taken in, and committed such a blunder. It was caught napping.

Mr. Chase's bank bill, prospective of money, and as many say, prospective of presidency, passed the house. What fools are they already begin to direct their steps and their ardent wishes toward the White House.

_February 22._--The, at any price, supporters of the Administration, point with satisfaction to the various successes, and to the space of land already redeemed from rebellion. I protest against such explanation given to events, and call to it the attention of every future historian. Never had the _suum cuique_ required a more stringent, philosophical application. With the various inexhaustible means at its disposal, with the unextinguishable enthusiasm of the people, far different and more conclusive results, _could_ and ought to have been obtained. The ship makes headway if even, by the negligence of the officers and of the crew, she drags a cable or an anchor. The ship is the people dragging its administrators.

A western Democrat, but patriot, said to me that Lincoln compares to Jeff Davis, as a wheel-barrow does to a steam engine!

The Democrats claim to be the genuine fighting element, and to be possessed of the civic courage, and of governmental capacity. How, then, can the Democrats rave for McClellan, the most unfighting soldier ever known?

The future historian must be warned not to look to the newspapers for information concerning facts and concerning the spirit of the people. The _Tribune's_ senile clamor for peace, for arbitration, for meditation, its Jewitt, Mercier, Napoleon, and Switzerland combinations, fell dead and in ridicule before the sound judgment of ninety-nine hundredths of the people.

_February 24._--In Europe I had experience of political prisons and of their horror. But I would prefer to rot, to be eaten up by rats, rather than be defended by such arch-copperheads as are the Coxes, the Biddles, the Powells, etc., etc.

In the discussion concerning the issue of the letters of marque, Sumner was dwelling in sentimentalities and generalities, altogether losing sight of the means of defense of the country, and the genuine national resources. With all respect for high and sentimental principles and patriotism, with due reverence of the opinion, the applause or the condemnatory verdict to be issued by philanthropists, by doctors, and other Tommities, my heart and my brains prefer the resolute, patriotic, manly Grimes, Wades, etc., the various _skippers_ and masters, all of whom look not over the ocean for applause, but above all have in view to save or to defend the country, whatever be the rules or expectations of the self-constituted Doctors of International laws.