A cold, bright
winter day. Sent a dispatch home to Lucy. Paymaster here getting ready to pay
our men. The James D. (Devereux) Bulloch* was a good friend of mine at
Middletown, Connecticut, (Webb's school) in 1837-8 from Savannah, Georgia — a
whole-hearted, generous fellow. A model sailor I would conjecture him to be.
Rebel though he is, I guess him to be a fine fellow, a brave man, honorable and
all that.
It is rumored that
Great Britain will declare war on account of the seizure of Slidell and Mason.
I think not. It will blow over. First bluster and high words, then
correspondence and diplomacy, finally peace. But if not, if war, what then?
First, it is to be a trying, a severe and dreadful trial of our stuff. We shall
suffer, but we will stand it. All the Democratic element, now grumbling and
discontented, must then rouse up to fight their ancient enemies the British.
The South, too, will not thousands then be turned towards us by seeing their
strange allies? If not, shall we not with one voice arm and emancipate the
slaves? A civil, sectional, foreign, and servile war — shall we not have
horrors enough? Well, I am ready for my share of it. We are in the right and
must prevail.
Six companies paid
today. Three months' pay due not paid. A “perfectly splendid” day — the
seventeenth!!
_______________
* Pasted in the
Diary is the following clipping from the Richmond News of November 30: —
“Captain James D. Bulloch, who lately successfully ran the blockade while in
command of the steamship Fingal, has arrived in Richmond. He thinks
there is a likelihood of Lord Palmerston's proving indifferent to the question
involved in the seizure, by Captain Wilkes, on the high seas, from a British
vessel, of Messrs. Mason and Slidell.”
Captain James D.
Bulloch was the “Naval Representative of the Confederate States in Europe”
during the Civil War. It was under his direction and through his energy that
the Alabama and other cruisers were built and equipped to prey on
American commerce. In 1883 Captain Bulloch published in two volumes a most interesting
narrative, entitled “The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe, or
How the Confederate Cruisers Were Equipped.” It may also be recalled that
Captain Bulloch was a brother of President Roosevelt's mother.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and
Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 164-5
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