Going into Nicolay’s
room this morning, Carl Schurz and Jim Lane were sitting. Jim was at the
window, filling his soul with gall by steady telescopic contemplation of a
secession flag impudently flaunting over a roof in Alexandria. “Let me tell
you,” said he to the elegant Teuton, “we have got to whip these scoundrels like
hell, Cairl Schurz. They did a good
thing stoning our men at Baltimore and shooting away the flag at Sumter. It has
set the great North a howling for blood, and they'll have it.”
“I heard,"
said Schurz, "you preached a sermon to your men yesterday."
“No, sir! this is
no time for preaching. When I went to Mexico there were four preachers in my
regiment. In less than a week I issued orders for them all to stop preaching
and go to playing cards. In a month or so, they were the biggest devils and
best fighters I had.”
An hour afterward Carl
Schurz told me he was going home to arm his clansmen for the wars. He has
obtained three months’ leave of absence from his diplomatic duties, and
permission to raise a cavalry regiment. I doubt the propriety of the movement.
He will make a wonderful land pirate; bold, quick, brilliant and reckless. He
will be hard to control and difficult to direct. Still, we shall see. He is a
wonderful man.
SOURCES: Clara B.
Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 26-7;
Tyler Dennett, Editor, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and
Letters of John Hay, p. 13-4; Michael Burlingame & John R. Turner
Ettlinger, Editors; Inside Lincoln's White House: The Complete Civil
War Diary of John Hay, p. 13-4
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