Chapter IV: Part 4

[Footnote 2: I must here record that Mr. Carlisle, the
eminent lawyer in Washington, although in every respect
opposed to my political and social views, behaved, in this
affair, as a thorough man of honor. I am sorry that on a
similar former occasion, not in Washington, my political
friends showed themselves not Carlisles.]

_February 10._--... mens agitat molem ... oh, could I only believe that such is the case with Mr. Lincoln, how devoted I could become, and loyal to him, according to the new theory of the lickspittles and politicians!

_February 10._--Resolute Senator Grimes did what was the duty of Sumner to have done long ago. Grimes presented resolutions relative to the mission of Mercier to Richmond, a mission allowed, almost authorized by Mr. Seward. Mercier cannot be blamed, and his veracity is supported by the fact that Lord Lyons was at once informed of the whole transaction, and Lord Lyons is to be believed. Seward will play the innocent, and take his refuge in the god of--lies.

_February 12._--In his answer to the Senate, Mr. Seward gives to Mercier the lie direct. It will be rich if Mercier stands square.

_February 12._--Congress draws to its close. Lincoln accumulates powers, responsibilities, and hereafter perhaps curses, sufficient to break the turtle on which stands the elephant that sustains the Sanscrit world.

_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.

_February 25._--The Union-Slavery saviours, led on by the _Herald_, by Seward, by Weed, etc., all are busily at work.

_Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us._

I hear that great disorder prevails in the Quartermaster's Department. It is no wonder. In all armies, countries, government and wars, the Quartermaster's Department is always disorderly. Why shall it not be so here, when want of energy is the word? At times Napoleon hung or shot such infamous thieves, as by their thefts skinned and destroyed the soldiers and the army; at times in Russia, such curses are sent to Siberia. But as yet, I have not heard that any body was hurt here, with the exception of the treasury of the country, and of the soldiers. The chain-gang of those quartermaster's thieves, contractors, jobbers and lobbyists must be strong, very long, and composed of all kind of influential and not-influential vampyres. Somebody told me, perhaps in joke, that all of them constitute a kind of free-masonry, and have signs of recognition. After all, that may be true. Impudence, brazen brow, and blank conscience may be among such signs of recognition.

_February 26._--O, could I only win confidence in Mr. Lincoln, it would be one of the most cheerful days and events in my life. Perhaps, elephant-like, Mr. Lincoln slowly, cautiously but surely feels his way across a bridge leading over a precipice. Perhaps so; only his slowness is marked with blood and disasters. But the most discouraging and distressing is his _cortège_, his official and unofficial friends. Mars Stanton, Neptune Welles, are good and reliable, but have no decided preponderance. Astrea-Themis-Bates is mostly right when disinfected from border-State's policy, and from fear of direct, unconditional emancipation. But neither in Olympus nor in Tartarus, neither in heaven nor in hell, can I find names of prototypes for the official and unofficial body-guard which, commanded by Seward, surrounds and watches Mr. Lincoln, so that no ray of light, no breath of spirit and energy may reach him.

_February 26._--This civil war with its _cortège_ of losses and disasters, which after all fall most bloodily and crushingly on the laborious, and rather comparatively, poorer part of the whole people; perhaps all this will form the education of the rank and file of the political Democratic party. The like Democratic masses are intellectually by far inferior to the Republican masses. Experience will perhaps teach those unwashed Democrats how degrading was their submission to slavocracy, which reduced them to the condition of political helots. This rank and file may find out how they were blindfolded by slave breeders and their northern abettors. A part of the Democratic masses were, and still are kept in as brutal political ignorance and depravity as are the poor whites in the South, under whatever name one may record them. Now, or never, is the time for the _unwashed_ to find out that during their alliance with the Southern traitors, all genuine manhood, all that ennobles, elevates the man and warms his heart, was poisoned or violently torn from them--that brutality is not liberty, and finally, that the Northern leaders have been or are more abject than abjectness itself. If the rank and file finds out all this, the blood and disasters are, in part at least, atoned for.

_February 27._--O! could I from every word, from every page of this Diary, for eternities, make coruscate the nobleness, the simple faith with which the people sacrifices all to the cause. To be biblical, the sacrifice of the people is as pure as was that made by Abel; that made by the people's captains, leaders, pilots is Cain-like.

_February 27._--All the Copperheads fused together have done less mischief, have less distorted and less thrown out of the track the holy cause, they have exercised a less fatal and sacrilegious influence, they are responsible for less blood and lives, than is Mr. Seward, with all his arguments and spread-eagleism. Even McClellan and McClellanism recede before Seward and Sewardism, the latter having generated the former. In times of political convulsions, perverse minds and intellects at the helm, more fatally influence the fate of a nation than do lost battles. Lost battles often harden the temper of a people; a perverse mind vitiates it.

_February 27._--Gold rises, and no panic, a phenomenon upsetting the old theories of political economy. This rise will not affect the public credit, will not even ruin the poor. I am sure it will be so, and political economy, as every thing else in this country, will receive new and more true solutions for its old, absolute problems. The genuine credit, the prosperity of this country, is wholly independent of this or that financial or governmental would-be capacity; is independent of European exchanges, and of the appreciation by the Rothschilds, the Barings, and whatever be the names of the European appraisers. The American credit is based on the consciousness of the people, and on the faith in its own vitality, in its inexhaustible intellectual and material resources. The people credits to itself, it asks not the foreigners to open for it any credit. The foreign capitalists will come and beg. The nation is not composed here as it is composed all over Europe, of a large body of oppressed, who are cheated, taxed by the upper-strata and by a Government. Thus credit and discredit in America have other causes and foundations, their fluctuations differ from all that decides such eventualities in Europe.

I am sure that subsequent events will justify these my assertions.

_February 28._--Inveterate West Pointers got hold of the dizzy brains of some Senators and of other Congressmen, and Congress wasted its precious time in regulating the military position of engineers. This action of Congress is a _pendant_ to the Academy of Sciences. The leaders in this discussion proved to _nausea_; 1st. Their utter ignorance of the whole military science, of its subdivisions, branches and classifications; 2d. Their ignorance of the nature of intellectual hierarchy in sciences; 3d. Those Congressional wiseacres proved how easily the West Point Engineers humbugged them. Congress consecrates the engineer as number one. Congress had better send a trustful man to Europe, to the continent, and find out what is considered as number one in the science of warfare. But every luminous body throws a shadow; the Academy of Sciences, and this number one, are the shadows thrown by that political body.

_February 28._--Seldom, if ever, in history was the vital principle of a society, of a nation, of a Government, so bitterly assailed, and its destruction attempted by combined elements and forces of the most hellish origin and nature, as the vital principle of American institutions is now assailed. The enemies, the sappers, the miners, are the Union-Slavery-Saviours of all kinds and hues. But darkness cannot destroy light, nor cold overpower heat:--so the united conspiracy will not prevail against light and right and justice.

_February 28._--The last batch of various generals sent for confirmation to the Senate, reflects and illustrates the manner in which promotion is managed, and military powers and capacity estimated at the White House.

Hooker and Heintzelman are made major generals because they brilliantly fought at Williamsburgh, and Sumner is likewise promoted for Williamsburgh, where, in pursuance of McClellan's orders, Sumner looked on when Heintzelman and Hooker were almost cut to pieces. The dignitaries of Halleck's pacific staff are promoted, and colonels who fight, and who, by their bravery and blood correct or neutralize the awful deadly blunders of Halleck and of his staff, such colonels are _not_ promoted!

_February 28._--Congress outlawed all foreign intervention, mediation! Catch it, foreign meddlers. Catch it, _Decembriseur_ and your lackeys.

_February 28._--Congress by its boldness, saved the immaculate Republican idea, saved the principle of self-government, and deserves the gratitude of all those from pole to pole, who have at heart the triumph of freedom, the triumph of light! To its last hours, this Congress had to overcome all the mean, petty appetites and cravings, which so often palsy, defile, or at the best, neutralize the noblest activity; Congress had to overcome prejudices, narrow-mindedness and bad faith. Many of the so called political friends--_vide_, the great Republican press--are as troublesome, as much nuisances, as are the Sewardites and the Copperheads. Others accuse the Congress for not having done enough. Copperheads and Sewardites accuse Congress of having done too much. And thus, the majority of Congress marches on across impediments and abuses thrown in its way both by friends and by enemies.

The _Tribune_ bitterly and boldly attacks Dahlgren, and trembling caves in before Seward. Of course! Dahlgren can only send 11 and 15 inch shells to crush the enemy; brother politician Seward can be useful for some scheme.

MARCH, 1863.

Press -- Ethics -- President's Powers -- Seward's Manifestoes --
Cavalry -- Letters of Marque -- Halleck -- Siegel -- Fighting --
McDowell -- Schalk -- Hooker -- Etat Major-General -- Gold --
Cloaca Maxima -- Alliance -- Burnside -- Halleckiana -- Had we
but Generals, how often Lee could have been destroyed, etc.

_March 1._--Unprecedented is the fact in the history of constitutionally-governed nations, that the patriots of a political party in power, that its most devoted and ardent men, as a question of life or death, are forced to support and defend an Administration which they placed at the helm, and whose many, many acts they disapprove.

The soldiers in the hospitals die the death of confessors to the great cause. And the hair turns not white on the heads of those whose policy, helplessness, and ignorance, crowd the hospitals with the people's best children.

_March 2._--The New-York _Times_--one among the great beacons and authorities in the country--the New York _Times_ belies its title as the "little villain." Gigantically, Atlas-like, that sheet upholds Seward and Weed. The _Times_ makes one admire the senile, compromising, mediating, arbitrating, and, at times, stumbling _Tribune_, and the cautious but often ardent _Evening Post_.

The _Times_ joins in the outcry against the radicals. It is Seward-Weed's watchword. It is the watchword of the _Herald_. It is the watchword of the most thickly coppered Copperheads. Genuine, pure convictions and principles are always radical. Christianity could not have been established were not the first Christians most absolute radicals. They compromised not with heathenism, compromised not with Judaism, which in every way was their father. Radicals--true ones--look to the great aim, forget their persons, and are not moved by mean interests and vanities.

The press in Europe, above all, on the Continent, is different. Its editors and contributors risk their liberty, their persons, their pockets, and sacrifice all to their convictions. They are not afraid to speak out their convictions, even if under the penalty to lose--subscribers; and that is all the risk run by an American newspaper. The _Herald_, the _World_, the _Express_, all organs of the evil spirit, through thick and thin, stand to their fetish, that McClellan; the Republican papers neither pitilessly attack the enemies, nor boldly and manfully support the friends, of the cause.

I nurse no personal likings or dislikings; the times are too mighty, too earnest for such pettiness. For me, men are agencies of principles: bad agencies of an intrinsically good principle are often more mischievous than are bad principles and their confessors. The eternal tendency of human elevation and purification is to eliminate, to dissolve, to uproot social evils, to neutralize or push aside bad men, in whatever skin they may go about. It is a slow and difficult, but nevertheless incessant work of our race. It is consecrated by all founders of religions, by legislators, by philosophers, by moralists; it is an article of human, social and political ethics. As far as I experienced, the European radical press more strictly observes that rule of political ethics than the American press is wont to do. And the press, bad or good, is the high pontifex of our times; more than any other social agency whatever, the press ought, at least, to be manly, elevated, indomitable, vigilant and straight-forward. I mean the respectable press.

_March 3._--Senator Wilson's kind of farewell speech to the Copperheads was ringing with fiery and elevated patriotism. It re-echoed the sentiments, the notions, the aspirations of the people. The cobbler of Natick rose above the rhetors, above the deliverers of prosy, classical, polished, elaborated orations, above young and above gray-haired Athenians, high as our fiery and stormy epoch towers over the epochs of quiet, self-satisfied, smooth, cold, elaborate and soulless civilities.

_March 4._--Mr. Lincoln hesitates--and, as many assert, is altogether opposed to use all the severity of the laws against the rebels. And shall not our butchered soldiers be avenged? It is sacrilegious to put in the same scales the Union soldier and the rebels; it is the same as to put on equal terms before justice the incendiary and the man who stops or kills the criminal in _flagrante delicto_.

_March 3._--After a tedious labor I waded through the State papers. O, what an accumulation of ignorance! Almost every historical and chronological fact misplaced, misunderstood, perverted, distorted, wrongly applied. And how many, many contradictions! Only when Mr. Seward can simply--(very, very seldom) point out to England that by _this_ and _that fact_ and _act_ England violates the international laws and rules of neutrality and of good comity between two _friendly_ governments and nations: then, _only_, Mr. Seward's papers acquire historical and political signification. But not his spread eagleism, not his argumentation; and, still less his broad and inexhaustible and variegated information. Diplomatic and statesmanlike character can not be conceded to his State papers. Few, very few, will read them, although foreign Courts, ministers, statesmen, princes, and the so-called celebrated women are complimented and deluged with them. The most pitiless critics of these productions would be the smaller clerks in the Departments of Foreign Affairs in London and Paris. Only they are not fools to waste their time on such specimens of literature.

_March 4._--Congress adjourned. This Thirty-Seventh Congress marks a new era in the American and in the world's history. It inaugurated and directed a new evolution in the onward progress of mankind. The task of this Congress was by far more difficult and heavier than was the task of the revolutionary and of the constitutional Congresses. The revolutionary Congress had to fight an external enemy. The tories of that epoch were comparatively less dangerous than are now all kinds of Copperheads; it had to overcome material wants and impediments, and not moral, nor social ones. That Congress was omnipotent, governed the country, and was backed by its virgin enthusiasm, by unity of purpose, and was not hampered by any formulas and precedents. The Thirty-Seventh Congress had to fight a powerful enemy, spread almost over two-thirds of the territory of the Union; it had to fight and stand, so to speak, at home against inveterate prejudices, against such bitter and dangerous domestic enemies as are the Northern men with Southern principles. This Congress was manacled by constitutional formulas, and had to carry various other deadweights already pointed out. In the first part of the session, Pike, Member of Congress from Maine, laid down as the task for the Congress, _Fight, Tax, Emancipate_--and the Congress fulfilled the task. In a certain aspect the Thirty-Seventh Congress showed itself almost superior to the great immortal French Convention, which ruled, governed, administered, and legislated, while this Congress dragged a Lincoln, a Seward, etc. This Congress accomplished noble and great things without containing the so-called "great" or "representative" men, and thus Congress thoroughly vindicated the great social truth of genuine, democratic self-government.

_March 5._--The _good_ press reduces the activity of the Thirty Seventh Congress to its own rather pigmy-like proportions.

Congress was powerless to purify the corrosive air prevailing in Washington, above all in the various official strata. Congress ardently wished to purify, but the third side of the Congressional triangle, the executive and administrative power, preferred to nurse the foul elements. Such doubtful, and some worse than doubtful officials, undoubtedly will become more bold, expecting the near-at-hand advent of the Copperhead Democratic Millennium.

_March 6._--The Copperhead members of both the Houses have been very prolific and _scientific_ about the inferiority of race. Pretty specimens of superiority are they, with their sham, superficial, at hap-hazard gathered, unvaluable small information, with their inveterate prejudices, with their opaque, heavy, unlofty minds! Give to any Africo-American equal chances with these props of darkness, and he very speedily will assert over them an unquestionable superiority. Are not the humble, suffering, orderly contrabands infinitely superior to the rowdy, unruly, ignorant, savage and bloody whites?

Southern papers are filled with accounts of the savage persecutions to which the Union men are exposed in the rebel region. It is the result of what Mr. Seward likes to call his forbearing policy and of the McClellan and Halleck warfare of 1861-62.

_March 7._--For the first time in the world's history, for the first time in the history of nations governed and administered by positive, well established, well organised, well defined laws--powers, such as those conferred by Congress on Mr. Lincoln, have been so conferred. Never have such powers been in advance, coolly, legally deliberated, and in advance granted, to any sovereign, as are forced upon Mr. Lincoln by Congress, and forced upon him with the assent of a considerable majority of the people.

Never has a nation or an honest political body whatever, shown to any mortal a confidence similar to that shown to Mr. Lincoln. Never in antiquity, in the days of Athens' and Rome's purest patriotism and civic virtue, has the people invested its best men with a trust so boundless as did the last Congress give to Mr. Lincoln.

The powers granted to a Roman dictator were granted for a short time, and they were extra legal in their nature and character; in their action and execution the dictatorial powers were rather taken than granted in detail. The powers forced on Mr. Lincoln are most minutely specified; they have been most carefully framed and surrounded by all the sacred rites of law, according to justice and the written Constitution. These powers are sanctioned by all formulas constituting the legal cement of a social structure erected by the freest people that ever existed. These powers deliver into Mr. Lincoln's hand all that is dear and sacred to man--his liberty, his domestic hearth, his family, life and fortune. A well and deliberately discussed and matured statute puts all such earthly goods at Mr. Lincoln's disposal and free use.

The sublime axiom, _salus populi suprema lex esto_ again becomes blood and life, and becomes so by the free, deliberate will and decision of the foremost standard-bearer of light and civilization, the first born in the spirit of Christian ethics and of the rights of man.--

The Cromwells, the Napoleons, the absolute kings, the autocrats, and all those whose rule was unlimited and not defined--all such grasped at such powers. They seized them under the pressure of the direst necessity, or to satisfy their personal ambition and exaltation. The French Convention itself exercised unlimited dictatorial powers. But the Convention allowed not these powers to be carried out of the legislative sanctuary. The Committee of Robespierre was a board belonging to and emanating from the Convention; the Commissaries sent to the provinces and to the armies were members of the Convention and represented its unlimited powers. When the Committee of Public Safety wanted a new power to meet a new emergency, the Convention, so to speak, daily adjusted the law and its might to such emergencies.

Will Mr. Lincoln realize the grandeur of this unparallelled trust? Has he a clear comprehension of the sacrifice thus perpetrated by the people? I shudder to think about it and to doubt.

The men of the people's heart--a Fremont, a Butler, are still shelved, and the Sewards, the Hallecks, are in positions wherein no true patriot wishes them to be. The Republican press had better learn tenacity from the Copperhead press, which never has given up that fetish, McClellan, and never misses the slightest occasion to bring his name in a wreath of lies before the public.

_March 8._--A great Union meeting in New York. War Democrats, Republicans, etc., etc., etc. War to the knife with the rebels is the watchword. Of course, Mr. Seward writes a letter to the meeting. The letter bristles with stereotyped generalities and Unionism. The substance of the Seward manifesto is: "Look at me; I, Seward, I am the man to lead the Union party. I am not a Republican nor a Democrat, but Union, Union, Union."

The _I_, the No. 1, looks out from every word of that manifesto. With a certain skill, Mr. Seward packs together high-sounding words, but these his phrases, are cold and hollow. Mr. Seward begins by saying that the people are to confer upon him the highest honors. Mr. Seward enlightens, and, so to speak, _pedagogues_ the people concerning what everybody ought to sacrifice. The twenty-two millions of people have already sacrificed every thing, and sacrificed it without being doctrined by you, O, great patriot! and you, great patriot, you have hitherto sacrificed NOTHING!

Let Mr. Seward show his patriotic record! To his ambition, selfishness, ignorance and innate insincerity he has sacrificed as much of the people's honor, of the people's interests, and of the people's blood as was feasible. History cannot be cheated. History will compare Mr. Seward's manifestoes and phrases with his actions!

_March 8._--The cavalry horses look as if they came from Egypt during the seven years' famine. I inquired the reason from different soldiers and officers of various regiments. Nine-tenths of them agreed that the horses scarcely receive half the ration of oats and hay allotted to them by the government. Somebody steals the other half, but every body is satisfied. All this could very easily be ferreted out, but it seems that no will exists any where to bring the thieves to punishment.

_March 8._--During weeks and weeks I watched McDowell's inquiry. What an honest and straight-forward man is Sigel. McDowell would make an excellent criminal lawyer. McDowell is the most cunning to cross-examine; he would shine among all criminal catchers. The Know-Nothing West Point hatred is stirred up against Sigel. I was most positively assured that at Pea Ridge a West Point drunkard and general expressly fired his batteries in Sigel's rear, to throw Sigel's troops into disorder and disgrace. But in the fire Sigel cannot be disgraced nor confused; so say his soldiers and companions. Sigel would do a great deal of good, but the Know-Nothing-West Point-Halleck envy, ignorance and selfishness are combined and bitter against Sigel.

In this inquiry Sigel proved that he always fought his whole corps himself. So do all good commanders; so did Reno, Kearney, so do Hooker, Heintzelman, Rosecrans, and very likely all generals in the West.

The McClellan-Franklin school, and very probably the Simon-pure West Pointers, fight differently. In their opinion, the commander of a corps relies on his generals of divisions; these on the generals of brigades, who, in their turn rely on colonels, and thus any kind of _ensemble_ disappears. Of course exceptions exist, but in general our battles seem to be fought by regiments and by colonels. O West Point! At the last Bull Run two days' battles, McDowell fought his corps in the West Point-McClellan fashion. His own statements show that his corps was scattered, that he had it not in hand, that he even knew not where the divisions of his corps were located; and during the night of 29-30, he, McDowell, after wandering about the field in search of his corps, spent that night bivouacking amidst Sigel's corps!

_March 9._--New York politicians behaved as meanly towards Wadsworth as if they were all from Seward's school.

_March 9._--Hooker is at the Herculean work of reorganizing the army. Those who visited it assert that Hooker is very active, very just; and that he has already accomplished the magician's work in introducing order and changing the spirit of the army. Only some few inveterate McClellanites and envious, genuine West Pointers are slandering Hooker.

_March 12._--Since the adjournment of Congress, everything looks sluggish and in suspense. The Administration, that is, Mr. Lincoln, is at work preparing measures, etc., to carry out the laws of Congress; Mr. Seward is at work to baffle them; Blair is going over to border-State policy; Stanton, firm, as of old; so is Welles; Bates recognises good principles, but is afraid to see such principles at once brought to light; Chase makes bonds and notes. We shall see what will come from all these preparations. But for Congress, Lincoln or the executive, would have been disabled from executing the laws. Congress, by its laws or statutes, aided the Executive branch in its _sworn duty_.

_March 13._--The various Chambers of Commerce petition and ask that the president may issue letters of marque. It is to be supposed, or rather to be admitted, that the Chambers of Commerce know what is the best for them, how our commerce is to be protected, how the rebel pirates swept from the oceans, and how England, treacherous England, perfidious Albion, be punished. But Sumner--of course--knows better than our Chambers of Commerce, and our commercial marine; with all his little might, Sumner opposes what the country's interests demand, and demand urgently. I am sure that already this general demonstration of the national wish and will, the demonstrations made by our Chambers of Commerce, etc., will impress England, or at least the English supporters of piracy.

Sumner will believe that his letters to English old women will change the minds of the English semi-pirates. Sumner is a little afraid of losing ground with the English guardians of civilization. Sumner is full of good wishes, of generous conceptions, and is the man for the millennium. Sumner lacks the keen, sharp, piercing appreciation of common events. And thus Sumner cannot detect that England makes war on our commerce, under the piratic flag of the rebels.

_March 14._--The primitive Christians scarcely had more terrible enemies, scarcely had to overcome greater impediments, than are opposed to the principle of human rights, and of emancipation. All that is the meanest, the most degraded, the most dastardly and the most treacherous, is combined against us. Many of the former confessors, many of our friends, many, unconscious of it--_Sewardise_ and _Blairise_.

Mud is stirred up, flows, rises and penetrates in all directions. The _Cloaca Maxima_ in Rome, during thirty centuries scarcely carried more filth than is here besieging, storming the departments, all the administrative issues, and all the so-called political issues.

I am sure that the enemies of emancipation, that Seward, Weed, etc., wait for some great victory, for the fall of Vicksburgh or of Charleston, to renew their efforts to pacify, to unite, to kiss the hands of traitors, and to save slavery. I see positive indications of it. Seward expects in 1864 to ride into the White House on such reconciliation. What a good time then for the Weeds, and for all the Sewardites!

_March 15._--Persons who seemed well informed, assured me that Weed got hold of Stanton, and secretly presides over the contracts in the War Department. If so, it is very secretly done; as I investigated, traced it, and found out nothing. At any rate, Weed would never get at a Watson, a man altogether independent of any political influences. Watson is the incarnation of honest and intelligent duty.

Wilkes' _Spirit of the Times_ is unrelenting in its haughty independence. It is the only public organ in this country of like character; at least I know not another.

_March 15._--It is so saddening to witness how all kinds of incapacities, stupidities, how meanness, hollowness, heartlessness, all incarnated in politicians, in trimmers, in narrow brained; how all of them ride on the shoulders of the masses, and use them for their sordid, mean, selfish and ambitious ends. And the masses are superior to those riders in everything constituting manhood, honesty and intellect!

_March 16._--Halleck wrote a letter to Rosecrans, explaining how to deal with all kinds of treason, and with all kinds of traitors. It looks as if Halleck improved, and tried to become energetic. What is in the wind? Is Mr. Lincoln becoming seriously serious?

_March 16._--Genuine, social and practical freedom, is generated by individual rational freedom. If a man cannot, or even worse, if a man understands not to act as a free rational being in every daily circumstance of life during the week, then he cannot understand to behave on Sunday as a free man; and act as a free man in all his political and social relations and duties. The North upholds that law of freedom against the slavocracy, and fights to carry and establish a genuine social organism where at present barbarity, oppression, lawlessness and recklessness, prevail and preside.