Chapter II: Part 2

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.

The papers in the confidence of Seward, such as the _Intelligencer_ (without intelligence,) the border-state friends of Lincoln, and all that is muddy and rotten, even the supposed to be well-informed diplomats unanimously assert that Mr. Lincoln has no confidence in his proclamation. As for Seward--this Lincoln's evil genius--no doubt exists concerning his contempt for the proclamation. Ask the diplomats. But these highest pilots in this administration are bound--as by a terrible oath--to violate all the laws of psychology, of human nature, of sense, of logic and of honor, to make the people bleed and suffer in its honor.

Well, pompous Chase; how do you feel for having sided with Seward?

Gen. Butler's farewell proclamation to New Orleans rings the purest and most patriotic harmony. Compare Butler's with Lincoln's writings. All the hearts in the country resounded with Butler; and because he acted as he did, Lincoln-Seward-Blair-Halleck's policy shelved Butler.

_Jan. 3._--By the united efforts of Lincoln-Seward-Blair, of the _Herald_, and of that cesspool of infamies, the _World_, of McClellan, and of his tail, by the stupifying influence of Halleck, the Potomac army, notwithstanding its matchless heroism, and equipped as well as any army in Europe; up to this day the Potomac army serves to--establish--the military superiority of the rebels, to morally strengthen, nay, even to nurse the rebellion. Lincoln-Halleck dare not entrust the army into the hands of a true soldier,--Stanton is outvoted. The next commander inherits all the faults generated by Lincoln, McClellan, Halleck, Burnside, and it would otherwise tax a Napoleon's brains to reorganize the army but for the patriotic spirit of the rank and file and most of the officers.

_Jan. 3._--What a pity that petty, quibbling constitutionalism alone is understood by Lincoln and by his followers. To emancipate in virtue of a war power is scarcely to perform half the work, and is a full logical incongruity. Like all kind of war power, that of the president has for its geographical limits the pickets of his army--has no executive authority beyond, besides being obligatory only as long as bayonets back it. Such a power cannot change social and municipal conditions, laws or relations (see Vol. I.)

The civil power of the president penetrates beyond the pickets, and in virtue of that civil power, and of the sacred duty to save the fatherland, the President of the United States, and not the Commander-in-Chief, can say to the slaves: "Arise, you are free, you have no servitude, no duties towards a rebel and traitor to the Union. I, the president, dissolve your bonds in the name of the American people."

_Jan. 4._--How the tempest of events changes or modifies principles. The South rebelled in the name of State rights, and now Jeff Davis absorbs all States and all parliamentary rights for the sake of _salus populi_ or rather of _salus_ of slavocracy. Jeff Davis nominates officers in the regiments whatever be the opposition of the respective Governors. In the North, the Governors, all of them, (Seymour?) true patriots, insist upon power and the right to organize new regiments, and resist the centralization by the United States Government. Perhaps--as the satraps and martinets assert--thereby the organisation of the army is thrown on a false track. Whether so or not, one thing is certain, but for the States and Governors, Lincoln, Scott, Seward, McClellan, Halleck, or the Union, would be nowhere.

_Jan. 4._--They fight battles in the West. Generals, to be victorious, must be in spiritual and in electric communion with the heroic soldiers. So it was at Murfreesborough. Rosecrans, at the head of his cavalry or body guard, dashes in the thickest, and turns the dame fortune, who smiles on heroes, but never smiled on McClellan nor on his tail. Rosecrans sticks not to regulations, and keeps not a few miles in the rear. Franklin, at Fredericksburgh mounted not even his horse but stood in front of his tent. Similar to Rosecrans here was Kearney, the bravest of the brave, more of a captain than any of the West-Point high-nosed nurslings; so is Heintzelman, Hooker, Reno, Sigel and many, many others, whom McClellanism, Halleckism, Lincolnism kept or keeps down.

I positively learned that in the last days of the summer of 1862, a list without heading circulated in the Potomac army, and all who signed it bound themselves to obey only McClellan. The McClellan clique originated this conspiracy, which extended throughout all the grades.

What confusion prevails about the rights of existence of slavery. How they discuss it. How they pettifog. Why not establish the rights of existence of syphilis, of _plica_ in the human body. O, casuists. O, _Intelligencers_. O, _Worlds_!

Well, to me, slavery seems to legally (cursed legality) exist in virtue of the special State rights, and not in virtue of the Constitution. But for the State rights, the Africo-American is a man and citizen of the United States--and this under the Constitution which is paramount to State rights. The rebellion annihilates the State rights, and all special constitutions guaranteed by the Union, and at the same time annihilates the relation of the Africo-American to the specific States or constitutions. It restores to him the rights of man guaranteed to him as man by the Union and the Constitution of the United States. The Africo-American recovers his rights, lost and annihilated by specific State rights and municipal, local laws. The president had to issue his proclamation as guardian and executor of the Constitution, and then Africo-Americans recovered their citizenship on firmer and broader grounds than under, or by the war power. Calhoun, the father of the rebellion--as Milton's Satan--and all the rebels now curse or cursed the preamble of the Constitution as Satan cursed the light. I suppose Calhoun's and the rebels' reasons are similar to me. _Inde iræ._

The commanders in the West bear evidence of the devotion, the heroism and the endurance of the Africo-Americans, sacrificing their lives without hope; martyrs by the rebels as well as by Hallecks and the like.

I met a farmer from Maine. He was rather old and poor. Had two sons--lost them both--they were all his hope. He spoke simply of it, but to break one's heart. _He grudged not_, (his own words,) his hopes and blood for the cause, and considered it good luck to have recovered the body of one of his boys, and brought it back home to the "old woman," (wife, mother.) I shook hands with him. I ought to have kissed him. Unknown, unnamed hero-patriot! and similar are hundreds of thousands, and such is the true people. And so sacrilegiously dealt with by insane helplessness.

_Jan. 5._--The _Doctors Constitutionis_ break their formula brains concerning the constitutionality of the proclamation, and foretell endless complications. If so, if complications arise, the reasons thereof are moral, logical and practical. 1st.--The emancipation was neither conceived nor executed in love; but it was for Lincoln as Vulcan for Jupiter. The proclamation is generated neither by Lincoln's brains, heart or soul, and what is born in such a way is always monstrous. 2d.--Legally and logically, the proclamation has the smallest and the most narrow basis that could have been selected. When one has the free choice between two bases, it is more logical to select the broader one. The written Constitution had neither slavery nor emancipation in view, but it is in the preamble, and the emancipation ought to be deduced from the preamble. Many other reasons can be enumerated pregnant with complications and above all when Lincoln-Seward are the _accoucheurs_. My hope and confidence is in the logic of events always stronger than man's helplessness and imbecility.

_Jan. 5._--European rulers, wiseacres, meddlers, humbugs, traitors, demons, diplomats, assert that they must interfere here because European interests suffer by the war. Indeed! You have the whole old continent and Australia to boot, and about nine hundreds millions of population; can you not organise yourself so as not to depend from us? And if by your misrules, etc., our interests were to suffer, you would find very strange any complaint made on our part. Keep aloof with your good wishes, and with your advices, and with your interference. You may burn your noses, and even lose your little scalps. You robbers, murderers, hypocrites, surrounded by your liveried lackeys, you presumptuous, arrogant curses of the human race, stand off, and let these people whose worst criminal is a saint when compared to a Decembriseur--let this people work out its destinies, be it for good or for evil.

_Jan. 5._--Early in December, 1860, therefore soon after Mr. Lincoln's election, a shrewd and clear-sighted politician, Gen. Walsh, from New York, visited Springfield, and made his bow to the rising sun. On his return from the Illinois Medira, I asked the general what was his opinion concerning the new President. "Well, sir," was the general's answer, "in parting, I advised Mr. Lincoln to get a very eminent man for his private secretary."--_Sapienti sat._

_Jan. 6._--Oh for a voice of thousand storms to render justice to the patriots in Congress, to make the masses of the people know and appreciate them, and to show up the littleness and the ignorance of the pillars of the Republican press. Never and in no country has the so-called good press shown itself so below the great emergencies of the day as are the old hacks semperliving in the press.

_Jan. 7._--The great military qualities shown by Gen. Rosecrans, thrilled with joy all the best men in the Potomac Army. The war horse Hooker is the loudest to admire Rosecrans. Happy the Western heroes to be beyond the immediate influence of Washington--of the White House--and above all, of such as Halleck!

Rosecrans has revealed all the higher qualities of a captain; coolness, resolution, stubbornness and inspiration. His army began to break,--he ordered the attack on the whole line, and thus transformed defeat into victory. Not of McClellan's school, is Rosecrans.

_Jan. 7._--Senator Sumner who, during the ministerial crisis, ought to have exposed to the country the mischievous direction given by Mr. Seward to our foreign relations, and who ought to have done it nobly, boldly, authoritatively, patriotically, and from his Senatorial chair, Senator Sumner's preferred to keep stoically quiet, notwithstanding that his personal friends and the country expected it from him. Yet next to Chase, Senator Sumner, more than any body, attacks Seward in private conversation! I read in the papers that Senator Sumner's influence on Mr. Lincoln is considerable (nevertheless Seward remained as the greatest curse to the country,) and that he, Sumner, is a _power behind the throne_. Has Sumner insinuated this himself to some newspaper reporter in _extremis_ for news? _Power behind the throne_, what a tableau: Sumner and Lincoln! O, Hogarth, O, Callot! Oh, for your crayon! and now--of course--the country is safe, having such _Power behind the throne_.

_Mr. Lincoln's good intentions_ I hear talked about right and left. Oh, for one sensible, good, energetic action, and all his intentions may go where the French proverb puts them.

_Jan. 7._--The city crowded with Major Generals and Brigadier-Generals not in activity. When Mr. Lincoln is cornered, then he makes a Brigadier or a Major General, according to circumstances and in obedience to political or to backstairs influence. From the beginning of the war, no sound notions directed the nominations, either under Cameron, Scott, or McClellan, or now; at the beginning of the war they had Generals without troops, then troops without Generals, and now they have Generals who have not commanded, or cannot command, troops. If, during the war in Poland in 1831, Warsaw, the Capital, had been overrun in such a way by do-nothing Generals, the chambermaids in the city would have taken the affair into their fair hands, and armed with certain night effluvia made short work with the military drones.

_Jan. 8._--A poor negro woman with her child was refused entrance into the cars. It snowed and stormed, and she was allowed to shiver on the platform. A so-called abolitionist Congress and President gave the charter to the constructors of the city railroad and the members of Congress have free tickets, and the Africo-American is treated as a dog. Human honesty and justice!

_Jan. 8._--Horse contracts the word. Never in my life saw I the horse so maltreated and the cavalry so poorly, badly, brainlessly organised, drilled and used. Some few exceptions change not the truth of my assertions, and McClellan is considered a great organiser. They ruin more horses here in this war than did Napoleon I. in Russia, (I speak not of the cold which killed thousands at once.)

How ignorant and conceited! Halleck solicits Rarey, the horse-tamer, for instructions. O, Halleck, you are unique! Officers who have served in armies with large, good, well-organised and well-drilled cavalry--such officers will teach you more than Rarey. But such officers are from Europe, and it would be a shame for a West-Point incarnation of ignorance and conceit to learn anything from an officer of European experience. Bayard, however, thought not so. Justice to his name.

The rebels are not so conceited as the simon pure West-Pointers. Above all the rebels wish success, and have no objections to learn; they imported good European cavalry officers, and have now under Stuart (his chief of staff is a Prussian officer) a cavalry which has made a mark in this war.

_Jan. 8._--O rhetors! O, rhetors! malediction upon you and upon the politicians! You have no heart, no sensibilities. Not one, not one has yet uttered a single word for the fallen, for the suffering, the dying and nameless heroes of our armies. It seems, O rhetors and politicians! that the people ought to bleed that you may prosper. Corpses are needed for your stepping stones! The fallen are not mentioned now in Congress, as you never mentioned them in your poor stump speeches. O, you whitened sepulchres!

O rhetors and politicians! O, powers on, before, and "behind the throne!" In your selfish, heartless conceit, you imagine that the Emancipation is and will be your work, and will be credited to you. Oh yes, but by old women.

The people's blood, the fallen heroes, tore the divine work of emancipation, from the hands of jealously watching demons. To the shadows of the fallen the glory, and not to your round, polished or unpolished phrases. Not the pen with which the proclamation was written is a trophy and a relic, but the blood steaming to heaven, the corpses of the fallen, corpses mouldering scattered on all the fields of the Union.

_Jan. 8._--As a rapid spring tide, so higher and higher, and with all parties--even, with the decided Copperheads--rises the haughty contempt toward the crowned, the official, the aristocratic, and the flatfooted (livery stable) part of Europe. Good and just! Marshy, rotten rulers and aristocrats who scarcely can keep your various shaky and undermined seats, you and your lackeys, you take on airs of advisors, of guardians, of initiators of civilization! Forsooth! I except Russia. In Russia the sovereign, his ministers and nine-tenths of the aristocracy are in _uni sono_ with the whole nation; and all are against slavery, against the rebels, against traitors. The Russian government and the Russian nation often are misrepresented by their official or diplomatic agents.

Any well organized American village in the free States contains more genuine, moral and intellectual civilization than prevails among European higher circles, those gilded pasteboards. This is all that you, you conceited advisors, represent in that splendid, all-embracing edifice of civilization! At the best you are ornaments, or--with Wilhelm von Humboldt--you are culture, but not the higher, man-inspiring civilization. A John S. Mill, a Godwin Smith, and those many outside of the _would-be-something_ strata in England, in France, almost the whole Germany, those are the representatives of the genuine civilized Europe.

The freemen of the North, on whom you European exquisites look superciliously down with your albino eyes, the freemen of the North, bleeding in this deadly struggle, are the confessors for the general civilization, and stand on the level with any martyrs, with any progressive people on record on history.

_Jan. 9._--Quo, quo scelesti ruitis.........

It is maddening to witness for so many months the reckless waste of men, of time, of money, and of material means, and all this squandered by governmental and administrative helplessness and conceit. In the military part, notwithstanding Stanton's devotion and efforts, that Halleck, _excrementum Scotti_, as by appointment, carries out everything contrary to common sense, to well established and experienced (Halleck and experience, ah!... military practice, and Mr. Lincoln is as perfectly) charmed by it, as is the innocent bird by the snake.

And thus the sacrifices and the blood of the people run out as does the mighty Rhine--they run out in sand. O, Lincoln-Seward's domestic policy. O, Lincoln-Halleck's war power! You make one shudder as with a death pang.

_January 9._--The worshippers of slavery, that is, the Democrats, of the Seymour's, Wood's, and the _World's_ church, call the war waged for the defence of human rights, for civilization and for maintaining the genuine rational self-government, they call it an unholy war. In some respects the Copperheads are right. The holy war loses its holiness in the hands of Lincoln, Seward, Halleck, and their disciples and followers, because those leaders violate all the laws of logic and of reason, this holy of holies. At times I would prefer peace than see devoted men so recklessly murdered by such....

A critique of the first volume of the "Diary" asserts that all my statements are made after the events occurred, _ex post_. To a very respectable General I showed a part of the original manuscript which squared with the printed book. Often I am ashamed to find that the bit of study and experience acquired by me goes so far when compared with many around me, and in action. I foresee, because I have no earthly personal views, no cares, nothing in the world to think of or to aim at, no charms, no ties--only my heart, my ideas, my convictions, and civilization is my worship. Nothing prevents me, day and night, from concentrating whatever powers and reading I can have in one single focus. This cause, this people, this war, its conduct, are the events amidst which I breathe. Uninterruptedly I turn and return all that is in my mind--that is all. And I am proud to have my heart in harmony with my head.

Almost every event has its undercurrent, and of ten the little undercurrents pre-eminently shape the events themselves. The truth of this axiom is illustrated principally in the recall of the resolute, indefatigable, far and clear-sighted patriot and statesman, General Butler. To jump to a conclusion without much ado, the recall of Butler from New Orleans is due principally, if not even exclusively, to the united efforts--or conspiracy--of Mr. Seward and Mr. Reverdy Johnson. Thirteen months ago Mr. Seward expected, as he still expects for the future, an uprising of a Union Party in the hottest hot-bed of Secessia. That such are the Secretary of State's expectations, I emphatically assert, and as proof, it may be stated that only yesterday, January 9th, Mr. Seward most authoritatively tried to impress upon foreign diplomats the speedy reunion and _restoration_ of the Union as it was, notwithstanding the Proclamation, _still considered by the Secretary of State_ as being _a waste of paper_. How far the foreign diplomats believe the like oracular decisions, is another question; certain it is that they shrug their shoulders.

But to return to Butler and New Orleans. The patriotic activity by which General Butler won, conquered and maintained the rebel city for the Union, was emphatically considered by Mr. Seward, as crushing out every spark of any latent Union feeling among the rebels. Thurlow Weed, then abroad, urged Mr. Seward to find out the said Union feeling, to blow it into almighty fire and to rely exclusively upon it. Here Reverdy Johnson was and is, the principal Union crony of the Secretary of State, and Seaton of the _Intelligencer_; but above all, since the murder of Massachusetts men at Baltimore in 1861, Reverdy Johnson was the devoted advocate of all rich traitors, as the Winans and others, who were called by him "misled Union men." When Gen. Butler dealt deserved justice to rich traitors in New Orleans, the Washington Unionists surrounding Mr. Chase and Mr. Seward--some of them from New Orleans--urged an investigation. The Secretary of State eagerly seized the occasion to dispatch to the Crescent City Mr. Reverdy Johnson with the principal secret mission to gather together the elements of the scattered Union feeling in Louisiana and in the South, and to make them blaze--in honor of the Secretary of State. It was a rich harvest in every way for Reverdy Johnson; he harvested it, and on his return fully convinced the Secretary of State, that the Union could not be saved if Gen. Butler remained in his command in the Department of the Gulf.

This surreptitious undermining of General Butler by the Secretary of State, is one more evidence of how truly patriotic was the effort of the Republican Senators and Congressmen to liberate the President and the country from the all-choking and all-poisoning influence of Mr. Seward, and how cursed must remain forever the conduct of Mr. Chase, who, after having during two years cried against Seward, accusing him almost of treason, when the hour struck, preferred to embarrass the patriots and the President rather that to let Mr. Seward retire and deprive the people of his _patriotic_ services. It was moreover expected that, thus warned by the patriots, the President would seize the first occasion to infuse energy into his Cabinet. But there is a Mr. Usher, a docile nonentity, made Secretary of the Interior; of course the Secretary of State will be strengthened thereby.

_January 10._--Senator Wright of Indiana, in an ardent and lofty--of course, not rhetorical, speech, hit the nail on the head, when, rendering due homage to Rosecrans, he called him "the first general who fights for the people and not for the White House." The greatest praise for the man, and the most saddening picture of our internal sores.

_January 10._--As the pure _populus Romanus_ had an inborn aversion to Kings and diadems, and could not patiently bear their neighborhood, so the genuine American Democrat, one by principles and not by a party name or by a party organization, such a Democrat feels it to be death for his institutions to have slavocracy in his country or in its neighborhood.

_Jan. 10._--O how is to be pitied the future historian of this bloody tragedy! Through what a loathsome cesspool of documentary evidence, preserved in the various State Archives, the unhappy historian will have to wade, and wade deep to his chin. Original works of Lincoln, Seward, etc.

It is easy to play a game at chess with a far superior player, then at least one learns something; but impossible to sit at a chess board with a child who throws all into confusion. The national chessboard is very confused in the White House. Cunning is good for, and only succeeds in dealing with, mean and petty facts.

_Jan. 10._--Halleck's congratulatory order to Rosecrans and to the Western heroes. How cold and pedantic. How differently, how enthusiastically and fiery rang Stanton's words on the capture of forts Henry and Donelson and to Lander's (now dead) troops. Why is Stanton silent? Is it the Constitution, the Statute, is it the incarnate four years formula which seals Stanton's heart and brains? or is Stanton eaten up by the rats in the Cabinet?

_January 10._--The messages of the loyal Governors, not copperheads, (as is Seymour of N. Y.) above all, the message of Andrew of Massachusetts, throw a ray of hope and promise over this dark, cold, unpatriotic confusion so eminent here in Washington. This confusion, this groping, double-dealing and helplessness can be only cured by a wonder, or else all will be lost. The wonder is daily perpetrated by the all enduring, all-sacrificing people.

Those criminals who ought to have been shot, or, at the mildest, cashiered for the slaughter at Fredericksburgh, the engineers, mock-Jominis, the sham soldiers: all these Washington engineers of that recent butchery, assert now, that, after all, the possession of Fredericksburgh was immaterial; that Lee would have then selected a better position. All this is thrown to the public to palliate the crime of the Washington military conclave, and to weaken and invalidate Hooker's evidence before the War Committee. It must be admitted that if Hooker--having fifty thousand in hand, and one hundred thousand in his rear, had seized the Fredericksburgh heights, he would not have allowed Lee to so easily select a position and to fortify it. Nay, I suppose, that not only Hooker, but even a Halleck, a Cullum or a Meigs would have prevented Lee from settling in any comfortable position. However, I might be mistaken. Corinth, Corinth, for Halleck. Those great nightcaps here have so original and so new military conceptions, their general comprehension of warfare so widely differs from science, experience, and from common sense, that, holding Fredericksburgh they might have invited Lee to select whatever he wanted as a strong position.

I learn that Halleck is at work to translate some French military book. What an inimitable narrow-minded pedant. If Halleck had brains, he could not have an hour leisure for translation. But in such way he humbugs Mr. Lincoln, who looks on Halleck as the quintessence of military knowledge and genius. A man who can translate a French book must be a genius. Is it not so, Lincoln? And thus Halleck translates a book instead of taking care that the pontoons be sent in time; and Halleck prepared sheets for the press, and our soldiers to be massacred.

Burnside prepares a movement; Franklin, to undermine Burnside, to appear great, or to get hold of the army, denounces Burnside secretly to the President: the President forbids the movement. What a confusion! Mr. Lincoln, either accept Burnside's resignation, which he has repeatedly offered, or kick down the denouncers. Accident made me discover almost next day, the names of the two generals sent by Franklin on this denunciatory errand--John Cochran and Newton. I instantly told all to Stanton, who was almost ignorant of Franklin's surreptitiousness. I also told it to several Senators.

The Army of the Potomac is altogether demoralized--above all, in the higher grades. It could not be otherwise if they were angels. McClellanism was and is propitious to general disorder, and how Mr. Lincoln improves is exemplified above. Independent men, independent Senators and Representatives who approach Mr. Lincoln, find him peevish, irritable, intractable to all patriots. _All these are criteria of a lofty mind and character._ Weed, Seward, Harris, Blair, and such ones alone, are agreeable in the White House.

So much is spoken of the war powers of the President; I study, and study, and cannot find them as absolute as the Lincolnites construe them. All that I read in the Constitution are the real _war powers_ in the Congress, and the President is only the executor of those powers. The President must have permission for every thing, almost at every step--and has no right to issue decrees. He has no war powers over those of Congress, and can act very little on his own hook. It seems to me that Congress, misled, confused by casuists, expounders, and by small intellects worshipping routine, that Congress rather abdicated their powers, and that the bunglers around Lincoln, in his name greedily seized the above powers.

Poor Lincoln! As the devil dreads holy water, so Mr. Lincoln dreads to be surrounded with stern, earnest, ardent, patriotic advisers. Such men would not listen to stories!

_January 11._--The thus-called metropolitan press is in the hands of old politicians, old hacks--and no new forces or intellects pierce through. It is a phenomenon. In any whatever country in Europe, at every convulsion the press bristles with new, fresh intellects. Here, the old nightcaps have the monopoly. Farther: those respectable fossils reside at a distance from the focus of affairs, are not directly in contact with events and men, and are in no communion with them. The Grand Lamas of the press depend for information upon the correspondents, who catch news and ideas at random, and nourish with them their employers and the public.

_January 11._--Senator Sumner has made a motion to give homesteads to the liberated Africo-Americans. That is a better and a nobler action than all his declamations put together.

_January 12._--Sentinels in double line surrounding the White House. Odious, ridiculous, unnecessary, and an aspect unwonted in this country--giving the aspect to the White House of an abode of a tyrant, when it is only that of a shifting politician. It is Halleck, who, with the like futilities and absurdities, amuses Lincoln and gets the better of him.

Mr. Lincoln is very depressed at the condition of the Army of the Potomac, and decides--nothing for its reorganization. But for Halleck, Stanton would reorganize and give a new and healthy life to the army. I mean the upper grades, and not the rank and file, who are patriotic and healthy.

After Corinth, Halleck-Buell disorganized the Western, now Halleck is at work to do the same with the Potomac Army. I know that in the presence of a diplomat, Halleck complained that he is paid only five thousand dollars, and earned by far more in California. He had better return to California and to his pettifogging.

Since the beginning of this Administration, Mr. Seward wrote, I am sure, more dispatches than France, England, Prussia, Russia, Austria, Spain, and Italy put together during the Crimean war, and up to this day. Great is ink, and paper is patient!

_January 13._--It is more than probable that Mr. Mercier stirred up, or at least heartily supported the mediation scheme. The Frenchmen in New York maintain that Mr. Mercier derives his knowledge of America and his political inspirations from that foul sheet, the _Courrier des États Unis_. There is some truth in this assertion, as the reasons enumerated to justify mediation can be found in various numbers of that sheet. I am sorry that Mr. Mercier has fallen so low; as for his master, he is a fit associate for the _Courrier_.

_January 13._--Ralph Waldo Emerson, inspired and not silenced by the storm. He alone stands up from among the Athenian school. He alone is undaunted. So would be Longfellow, but for the terrible domestic calamity whose crushing blow no man's heart could resist. I never was a great admirer of Emerson, but now I bow, and burn to him my humble incense.

_January 15._--The patriotic, and at times inspired orator--not rhetor--Kelly, from Pennsylvania, told me that all is at sixes and sevens in the Administration, and in the army. I believe it. How could it be otherwise, with Lincoln, Seward and Halleck at the head?

Mr. Seward did his utmost to defeat the re-election of Judge Potter from Wisconsin, one among the best and noblest patriots in the country. For this object Mr. Seward used the influence of the pro-Catholic Bonzes. Then Mr. Seward wrote a letter denying all this--a letter which not in the least convinced the brave Judge, as I have it from himself.

If all the lies could only be ferreted out with which Seward bamboozles Lincoln, even the God of Lies himself would shudder.

_January 15._--The noble and lofty voice of the genuine English people, the voice of the working classes, begins to be heard. The people re-echo the key-note struck by a J. S. Mills, by a Bright, a Cobden, and others of like pure mind and noble heart. The voice of the genuine English people resounds altogether differently from the shrill _falsetto_ with which turf hunters, rent-roll devourers, lords, lordlings, and all the like shams and whelps try to intimidate the patriotic North, and comfort the traitors, the rebels.

_January 16._--But for the truly enlightened and patriotic efforts of the Senators Wade, Lane, (of Kansas) and Trumbull, the debate of yesterday, Thursday, on the appropriation for the West Point Military Academy would have gone to the country, absolutely misleading and stultifying the noble and enlightened people. It was most sorrowful, nay, wholly disgusting to witness how Senators who, until then, had stood firmly against small influences and narrow prejudices, blended together in an unholy alliance to sustain the accursed clique of West Point engineers. Much allowance is to be made for the allied Senators' ignorance of the matter, and for the natural wish to appear wise. The country, the people, ought to treasure the names of the ten patriotic Senators whose voices protested against further sustaining that cursed nursery of arrogance, of pro-slavery, or of something worse.

Whatever might have been the efforts of the Senatorial patrons and the allies of the engineers, the following facts remained for ever unalterable: 1st. That the spirit of close educational corporation which have exclusive monopoly and patronage, is perfectly similar to the spirit which prevailed and still prevails in monasteries, and permeates the pupils during their whole after life; 2d. That the prevailing spirit in West Point was and is rather monarchical and altogether Pro-Slavery; 3d, that of course some noble exceptions are to be found and made,--but they are exceptions; 4th, that such educational monasteries nurse conceit and arrogance; and this the mass of West Pointers have prominently shown during this war in their relations with the noble and devoted volunteers, and that this arrogant spirit of clique and of caste works mischievously in the army; 5th, that exceptions, noble and patriotic, as a Reno, a Lyons, a Bayard, a Stevens, and other such heroes and patriots, do not disprove the general rule; 6th, that Lyons, Grant, Rosecrans, Hooker, Heintzelman, etc., have shown glorious qualities not on account of what they learnt in West Point, but by what they did not learn there; 7th, that these heroes rose above the dry and narrow school wisdom, and are what they are, not because educated in West Point, but notwithstanding their education there. And here I interrupt the further enumeration to give an extract from a private letter directed to me by one of the most eminent pupils from West Point, and the ablest _true_, not _mock_, engineer in our army:

"In regard to your views of West Point's influence I am at a loss
to make any answer," (the writer is a great defender of West
Point,) "but would suggest that it may be after all not West
Point, but the want of _a supreme hand_ to our military affairs
to _combine_ and _use_ the materials West Point furnishes, that
is in fault. * * * _West Point cannot make a general_--no
military school can--but it can and does furnish good soldiers.
All the distinguished Confederate generals are West Pointers, and
yet we know the men, and know that neither Lee, nor Johnson nor
Jackson, nor Beauregard, nor the Hills are men of any very
extraordinary ability," etc., etc., etc.

To this I answer: the rebels are with their heart and soul in their cause, and thus their capacities are expanded, they are inspired on the field of battle. (Similar answer I gave to General McDowell about six months ago.) So was our Lyon, so are Rosecrans, Hooker, Grant, and a few others; and for such generals, Senators Trumbull, Wade and Lane ardently called in the above debate.

I continue the enumeration: 8th. The military direction of the war is exclusively in the hands of a West Point clique, and of West Point engineers,--not _very much_ with their hearts in the people's cause; 9th, that that clique of West Point engineers from McClellan down to Halleck prevents any truly higher military capacity getting a free untrammelled scope, (General Halleck with all his might opposes giving the command of the army to Hooker,) and this Halleck, an engineer from West Point, who never saw a cartridge burnt or a file of soldiers fighting, to-day decides the military fate of our country on the authority of a book said to be on military science, but if such a book had been written by any officer in the armies of France, Prussia or Russia, the ignorant author would have had the friendly advice from his superiors to resign and select some pursuit in life more congenial to his intellectual capacities; further, this Halleck complains in following words: "that they (the Administration) made him leave a profitable business in San Francisco, and pay him only 5,000 dollars to fight THEIR (not his) battles." So much for a Halleck. 10th. That the West Point clique of engineers, the McClellans, the Hallecks, the Franklins, etc., have brought the country to the verge of the grave, as stated by Senator Lane.

Such were the facts established by the patriotic and not would-be-wise Senators; and there is an illustration recorded in history as proof that the above not engineering Senators were right in their assertions. Frederick II. was in no military school; the captains second to Napoleon in the French wars were Hoche, Moreau, and Massena, all of them from private life.

--The clique of engineers has the Potomac Army altogether in its grasp, and has reduced and perverted the spirit of the noble children of the people. Oh, the sooner this army shall be torn from the hands of the clique the nearer and surer will be the salvation of the country.

The clique accuses the volunteers; but the clique, the engineers in power have disorganized, morally and materially, and disgraced the Army of the Potomac. They did this from the day of the encampments around Washington, in the fall of 1861, down to the day of Fredericksburgh. Fredericksburgh was altogether prepared by engineers; at Fredericksburgh the engineer Franklin did not even mount his horse when his soldiers were misled and miscommanded--by himself.