The Death and Funeral of Captain Jonathan S. Slaymaker of the 2nd Iowa Infantry

• Col. Jacob Lauman to Louise Viele Lauman, February 17, 1862
• Private Letter from Adjutant Tyner of the 14th Iowa, February 17, 1862
• Col. Jacob Lauman to His Brother, February 19, 1862
• Death Of Captain Slaymaker, published February 20, 1862
• Additional from Fort Donelson, published February 20, 1862
• Killed and Wounded in Company C, published February 21, 1862
• The Dead Of Fort Donelson, published February 21, 1862
• Capt. R. M. Littler, published February 21, 1862
• The Second Regiment at Fort Donelson, published February 21, 1862
• Iowa Legislature, published February 22, 1862
• Further From Ft. Donelson, published February 22, 1862
• Arrival Of Capt. Slaymaker's Body, published February 27, 1862
• Soldiers Of The Iowa Second, published February 27, 1862
• The Steamer J. D. Perry . . . published February 27, 1862
• Funeral of Capt. Slaymaker, published February 28, 1862
• From The Iowa 2d Regiment, published February 28, 1862
• Capt. Slaymaker's death . . . published March 1, 1862
• Battle of Fort Donelson, published March 1, 1862
• List of Killed and Wounded of the 2nd Iowa Infantry in the battle of Fort Donelson on February 13th, 14th and 15th, 1862, published March 1, 1862
• Army Correspondence, published March 1, 1862
• Further Particulars of the Fight, published March 1, 1862
• Honor to the Brave, published March 1, 1862
• An adjourned meeting of the Finance Committee . . . published March 3, 1862
• A Brave Boy, published March 5, 1862
• Public Meeting, published March 5, 1862
• The numerous friends of . . . published March 7, 1862
• Capt. Slaymaker’s death, (Iowa Second) . . . published March 8, 1862
• The Sudden Death Of Henry Y. Slaymaker, published May 20, 1862
• Report Of The Finance Committee, published April 4, 1862
• Obituary of Capt. Jonathan S. Slaymaker, published April 1864

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 8, 1860

. . . News from the South comes only in brief, but is all one way. Wrath and fiery hatred and malice, privy conspiracy and rebellion, treason and secession, seem the popular doctrine and sentiment in all the Cotton States, and even in North Carolina and Virginia. Colonel Scott (the General's son-in-law), who is a quiet, thoughtful, judicious man, tells me he expects serious trouble in South Carolina and Alabama at once, but he is not sure it will involve the neighboring states.¹⁸ Per contra, men like old Stevens, John C. Green, Bidwell, and others, see not the slightest ground for apprehension.¹⁹

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¹⁸ Henry Lee Scott, who married Winfield Scott’s daughter Cornelia, was a North Carolinian. He had just been retired as Inspector-General in command of the forces in the city of New York.

¹⁹ John A. Stevens was president of the Bank of Commerce; John C. Green was also a banker, and a merchant in the China trade; he is best remembered as a benefactor of the New York Society Library and New York University, and as the philanthropist who endowed the John C. Green School of Science at Princeton.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 60-1

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 9, 1860

Much gasconading from the sunny South, condensed in telegraphic reports fortunately. “Palmetto Flag’’ raised, great speeches, fuss and fury, messages from governors, conventions called. Collector of Charleston resigning, “secession inevitable,’’ and so on. It’s a critical time, but things are not so bad as I expected they would be three days after Lincoln’s election.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 61

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 10, 1860

Trinity Church Committee on St. George’s chapel this afternoon. Gouvemeur Ogden tells me Betts wants his salary raised to $1,000 as clerk of Columbia College on the strength of our benefaction to the treasurer (Gouvemeur Ogden). They are equal in meanness and rapacity. Trustees of a religious or charitable organization should be prohibited from receiving pay for services in any capacity. They should be men who can and will give their time and labor for the public good without reward. If the College needs a financial agent who will make the management of its property his chief business, it should select him from among business men outside the board. If Betts is to have $ 1,000 for keeping our minutes, each of his colleagues is entitled to $500 per annum, at least, for attending meetings and serving on committees. . . .

News from the South continues to be menacing and uncomfortable. I think the storm will blow over and die away without uprooting anything, but it is a critical time. A trifle may fatally complicate the situation. . . .

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 61

Diary of George Templeton Strong, Sunday, November 11, 1860

Miss Puss at tea tonight; afterwards Charley, D’Oremieulx, Dr. Carroll, Jem Dwight, Hoffman, Jem Ruggles, and George Anthon. Political crisis thoroughly discussed. General disposition to concede the right of secession and to regard it with indifference and contempt. I hold secession unlawful and most calamitous, but the South is likely to do this wrong and folly and mischief if it find the North acquiescent and good-natured. I’m sorry, however, to find so many Northerners holding the Union so cheap.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 61-2

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 12, 1860

No material change in .the complexion of Southern news. Unless writers of telegraph items lie loudly, secession is inevitable. There is uneasiness here, but mainly as to the possibility of a tight money market from the financial crisis Southern folly is bringing upon the South, which must inevitably react on us more or less. People generally treat the political peril with what seems to me unaccountable indifference. This financial crisis is already beginning in Charleston and Mobile. Suspension of specie payments seems close at hand. They have overtraded, and their crops are short, and they would have been hard up had Lincoln been defeated, and obliged to do their uttermost to get the hogs and housing they need to carry them through the winter. But now that Lincoln is elected and their terrorists are roving about confiscating Northern property and repudiating Northern debts, their credit is paralyzed and they are in danger of a general smash. It would injure us, of course; it may bring them to their senses, or it may make them desperate and reckless.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 62

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 13, 1860

Stocks have fallen heavily today, and I think they will fall much lower before this game is played out.²⁰ One can buy in yet more profitably a fortnight hence. Southern securities are waste paper in Wall Street. Not a dollar can be raised on them. Who wants to buy paper that must be collected by suit in the courts of South Carolina and Georgia?

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²⁰ Many business men thought the panic worse than in 1857; and numerous firms failed as their Southern paper became worthless.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 62

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 15, 1860

Tonight I heard Lieber’s lecture at the Law School. Matter good and well arranged; manner bad—dreamy, dozy, and maundering. . . .

No material progress in the political crisis. Stocks have rallied a little here. Perhaps the febrile symptoms and cerebral disturbance of the South seem a shade easier. But the reign of terror in South Carolina continues unmitigated. Mrs. Sally Hampton, now in New York, wants to go home to Columbia, S. C., or thereabouts, and requires an escort, of course. Her husband can’t come North without exposing himself to a conviction of “incivisme,” and Mr. George Baxter, her papa, cannot go South without danger of being tarred and feathered as a Northerner and a possible Abolitionist. So Mrs. Sally Hampton and her three pretty babies still abide in Second Avenue. Willie Alston and Pringle meant to spend another month here, but their neighbors write them that they must come home. Their loyalty to the South will be suspected if they keep away. So they return, reluctantly. . . .

We are generally reconciling ourselves to the prospect of secession by South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, little Florida, and perhaps Mississippi, too. We shall be well rid of them. Perhaps the prevalence of this feeling— the cordial consent of the North—will keep them from seceding. I think these porcine communities incline to run out of the Union merely because they think we want to keep them in. One should never pull a pig in the direction one wants it to travel. They have long governed us and controlled our votes by the threat of secession. They naturally think secession will be a crushing calamity to the North and the severest punishment they can inflict on us for electing Lincoln.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 62-3

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 17, 1860

Things in general look bluish-gray. Prophesyings of panic and crisis, and of still worse calamity, are heard in our streets. But people try to amuse themselves; for example, Henry Fearing has just been giving a sumptuous dinner to a dozen men at the New York Club, and Giraud Foster is to give another at the Union. Charles E. Strong, Jem Strong, and H. H. Ward as umpires are to decide which dinner was the more brilliant success, and the giver of the second best pays for both. A very pleasant transaction, no doubt, but just at this time it impresses me disagreeably. It seems like some gorgeous Heliogabalic Convivium of the days when the Empire was in decadence. . . .

Memoranda of the crisis. Stocks fell heavily today. The Trust Company declines receiving deposits payable on demand, or for less than six months. A Charleston savings bank has decided to act on a by-law or a provision of its charter authorizing it to insist on ninety days’ notice of every draft. Doubt and distrust reign in Wall Street. The best paper is negotiated with difficulty. William and Edmund Schermerhorn, Edward Bancker, and other croakers think we are drawing near to the worst period of crisis and depression this city has ever known. Mr. Samuel B. Buggies confidently expects another suspension of specie payment before next spring, perhaps before January. Per contra, John A. Stevens is sure this flurry will be over, and everything in its normal stride again within thirty days. Everyone admits that our financial condition was never sounder than at this time. But a vague apprehension of some undefined change and revolution has destroyed confidence in securities and property of every kind.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 63

Diary of George Templeton Strong, Sunday, November 19, 1860

A most gloomy day in Wall Street. Everything at a deadlock. First-class paper not negotiable; demand for money greater than in October, 1857. Stocks falling. It's said the banks resolved today to buy three millions of exchange on London. This may probably see the machine going again, for the time at least, and enable the West and South to begin moving their grain and cotton. . . .

Very few now deny the probability of secession by the Cotton States, and South Carolina is given up as hopeless. Our national mottoes must be changed to “e pluribus duo” (at least) and “United we stand, divided we stand easier.” It is generally conceded, moreover, that if federal coercion be applied to a single seceding state, the whole South will range itself against the government.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 63-4

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 20, 1860

Wall Street was a shade less disconsolate this morning. Stocks rallied at the First Board but began to waver and fall again at the Second. The banks cannot bring about a decisive reaction; the disease is too deep-seated.

The revolutionary movement in South Carolina and the Gulf States seems, on the whole, to be gaining strength and consistency. No signs yet of any “sober second thought.” Conservatism and common-sense (if any be left in the Cotton States), are still intimidated and silent. Probably the Border States, led by Virginia, will try to mediate and pacify. Dissolution of the Union and re-opening of the slave trade would be disastrous to them, so they naturally desire to make peace. But their mediation will probably be upon the basis of recognition by the North of the extremest Southern exactions (slave trade excepted). The North must consent that slavery be introduced into the territories; Massachusetts, Vermont, Wisconsin, and other states must repeal their “personal liberty” laws that interfere with the Fugitive Slave Law. That plan will not work. Those state laws ought to be repealed, but the South has no right to demand their repeal and make their enactment an excuse for treason, because they are utterly unconstitutional and mere nullities, and no one doubts the United States Supreme Court would so adjudge them.

If these traitors succeed in dismembering the country, they will have a front place in the Historical Gallery of Celebrated Criminals. No political crime was ever committed as disastrous to mankind and with so little to provoke or excuse the wrong as that which these infamous disunionists are conspiring to perpetrate. . . .

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 64

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 22, 1860

Wall Street has breathed more freely these two days. News this afternoon that all the banks from Charleston to Philadelphia have suspended. I don't know that we need suffer in consequence.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 64

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 23, 1860

Mrs. Carson of South Carolina (daughter of Petigru of Charleston) dined here; conversable, agreeable, and handsome in a mature style. Also Mr. and Mrs. D. C. Murray, Wickham Holfman, George F. Allen, and Mr. Ruggles. We had much pleasant talk, though the one engrossing subject of the time was excluded, for the sake of our South Carolinian convive. Mr. Ruggles and Allen remained after the rest had gone.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 64-5

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 24, 1860

Stocks all up today and Wall Street very jolly. But they will go lower yet, and Wall Street will look more blue than it has looked these thirty years before a.d. 1860 is ended.

 Dr. Peters, and George Anthon, and Charley Peters dined here. After dinner with Ellie and George Anthon to Academy of Music on Robert Cutting’s invitation to the rehearsal of La Juive Stigelli, Fabbri, Anna Bishop, Formes, and others. A pleasant and sunny evening. Opera in dishabille, and a splendid revelation of Bohemia.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 65

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 25, 1860

The Supreme Court in this district has at last reluctantly concluded that it won’t do to nullify the decision of the Court of Appeals, reversing their order in the Law School case; so Mr. H. W. Cooper will be sworn in whenever he pleases.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 65

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 26, 1860

Today’s newspapers indicate no new symptom in our sore national sickness. The tide is still rising, I think, in all the Cotton States. Reaction and ebb are sure to follow, but they may come too late. This growing excitement may do irreparable mischief before it dies out and reaction sets in. The country may be overwhelmed by a flood of disaster and disgrace before the tide begins to fall.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 65 

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 27, 1860

Nothing new in Wall Street, except that stocks are all down again. Secession certainly gains favor at the South, and grows more threatening every day. But there are symptoms of backing down at the North. There are demonstrations toward repeal of the obnoxious "personal liberty bills’’ of certain Northern states. It seems likely that Republican leaders and wire-pullers have concluded on a policy of concession and conciliation. I hope it may be in time to prevent terrible mischief.

These "personal liberty laws’’ are unconstitutional and void. They are mere nullities, and do no harm to the South. What one nigger has South Carolina lost by the legislation of Vermont or Wisconsin? The clamor about them is a palpable humbug. Still they ought to be repealed, being wrong in spirit and interest.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 65

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 28, 1860

No political news of importance. The progress of events has startled and staggered some of our notables, who were laughing secession to scorn a fortnight ago. John C. Green, for one, "never dreamed these Southerners would go so far." I think, from all indications, that the Republican leaders are frightened and ready to concede everything, to restore the Missouri Compromise line and satisfy the fugitive slave remedies of the South. A movement that way has certainly begun. But it may be too soon for the North and too late for the South. Suppose it prevail. How will it be received in Massachusetts and Western New York.? Will Republicans feel that they have been sold by their leaders, and recalcitrate into more intense anti-Southem feeling? I think they will and that many Republicans will enroll themselves as Abolitionists. But if this crisis pass over without disruption and ruin, if our national life endure another year, I think a strong Union party will come into being and control extremists. South and North both.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 65-6

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 29, 1860

Thanksgiving Day. No political news today. Congress meets Monday. Mr. Ruggles’s friend. Senator Dixon,²¹ is in town on his way to Washington. Horribly frightened. Connecticut expects him to do something in the Senate, and he is anxiously enquiring, "What shall I do to be saved from the humiliation of admitting that I’m unequal to my high place?"

Tom Corwin was in town Tuesday night with the draft of some "Bill of Rights” which he means to propose, affirming the rights which the South pretends to believe endangered.

There’s a bad prospect for both sections of the country. Southern ruffianism and brutality are very bad, but the selfishness, baseness, and corruption of the North are not good at all. Universal suffrage has been acquiesced in for many years. It is no longer debated. But it’s at the root of our troubles. What we want is a strong government, instead of a "government of opinion.” If there be disunion, a strong government will be demanded and will come into being somehow, both North and South. Democracy and equality and various other phantasms will be dispersed and dissipated and will disappear forever when two hostile families of states stand side by side, and a great civil war becomes inevitable. To which party will God give a great general, when that crisis is upon us?

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²¹ James Dixon (18l4-1873). Republican Senator from Connecticut.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 66

Diary of Adam Gurowski, January 1862

An ugly year ended in backing before England, having, at least, relative right on our side. Further, the ending year has revealed a certain incapacity in the Republican party's leaders, at least its official leaders, to administer the country and to grasp the events. If the new year shall be only the continuation of the faults, the mistakes, and the incapacities prevailing during 1861, then the worst is to be expected.

The lowest in moral degradation is an European defending slavery here or in Europe. Such Europeans are far below the condemned criminals. Still lower are such Europeans who become defenders of slavery after having visited plantations, where, in the shape of wines and delicacies, they tasted human blood, and then, hyenas-like, smacked their lips and thirsted for more.

Always the same stories, lies, and humbugs concerning the hundreds of thousands of rebels in Manassas. These lies are spread here in Washington by the numerous secessionists — at large, by such ignoble sheets as the New York Herald and Times; and McClellan seems to willingly swallow these lies, as they justify his inaction and c——.

The city is more and more crowded with Jeremy Diddlers, with lecturers, with sensation-seekers, all of them in advance discounting their hero, and showing in broad light their gigantic stupidity. One of this motley finds in McClellan a Norman chin, the other muscle, the third a brow for laurels (of thistle I hope), another a square, military, heroic frame, another firmness in lips, another an unfathomed depth in the eye, etc., etc. Never I heard in Europe such balderdash. And the ladies—not the women and gentlewomen—are worse than the men in thus stupefying themselves and those around them.

The thus called arbitrary acts of the government prove how easily, on the plea of patriotic necessity, a people, nay, the public opinion, submits to arbitrary rule. All this, servility included, explains the facility with which, in former times, concentrated and concrete despotisms have been established. Here every such arbitrary action is submitted to, because it is so new, and because the people has the childish, naïve, but, to it, honorable confidence, that the power entrusted by the people is used in the interest and for the welfare of the people. But all the despots of all times and of all nations said the same. However, in justice to Mr. Lincoln, he is pure, and has no despotical longings, but he has around him some atomistic Torquemadas.

It will be very difficult to the coming generations to believe that a people, a generation, who for half a century was outrunning the time, who applied the steam and the electro-magnetic telegraph, that the same people, when overrun by a terrible crisis, moved slowly, waited patiently, and suffered from the mismanagement of its leaders. This is to be exclusively explained by the youthful self-consciousness of an internal, inexhaustible vital force, and by the child-like inexperience.

The Congress, that is, the majority, shows that it is aware of the urgency of the case, and of the dangerous position of the country. But still the best in Congress are chained, hampered by the formulas.

The good men in both the houses seem to be firmly decided not to quietly stand by and assist in the murder of the nation by the administrative and military incapacity. This was to be expected from such men as Wade, Grimes, Chandler, Hale, Wilson, Sumner (too classical), and other Republicans in the Senate, and from the numerous pure, radical Republicans in the House.

Burnside's expedition is a sign of life. But all these expeditions on the circumference, even if successful, will be fruitless if no bold, decided movement is at once made at the centre, at the heart of the rebellion. But McClellan, as his supporters say, matures his strategical plans. O God! General Scott lost by strategy three-fourths of the country's cause, and very probably by strategy McClellan will jeopardize what remains of it.

Will this McClellan ever advance? If he lingers, he may find only rats in Manassas. McClellan is ignorant of the great, unique rule for all affairs and undertakings,—it is to throw the whole man in one thing at one time. It is the same in the camp as in the study, for a captain as for a lawyer, the savant, and the scholar.

It is to be regretted that some of the men truly and thoroughly devoted to the cause of freedom and of humanity, mix with it such an enormous quantity of personal, almost childish vanity, as to puzzle many minds concerning the genuine nobleness of their devotion. It is to be regretted that those otherwise so self-sacrificing patriots discount even their martyrdom and persecutions, and credit them to their frivolous self-satisfaction.

Most of the thus-called well-informed Americans rather skim over than thoroughly study history. Above all, it applies to the general history of the Christian era, and of our great epoch (from the second half of the 18th century). Most of the Americans are only very superficially familiar with the history of continental Europe, or know it only by its contact with the history of England. Many of them are more familiar with the classical wars of Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, etc., than with those of Gustavus, Frederick II., and even of Napoleon. Were it otherwise, strategy would not to such an extent have taken hold of their brains.

Mr. Adams was terribly unhorsed during the Trent excitement in England; he literally began to pack up his trunks, and asked a personal advice from Lord John Russell.

What a devoted patriot this Sandford in Belgium is; he has continual itchings in his hand to pay a higher price for bad blankets that they may not fall into the hands of secesh agents; so with cloth, so perhaps with arms. Oh, disinterested patriot!

Austria and Prussia whipped in by England and France, and at the same time glad to have an occasion to take the airs of maritime powers. Austria and Prussia sent their advice concerning the Trent affair. The kick of asses at what they suppose to be the dying lion.

Austria and Prussia! Great heavens! Ask the prisons of both those champions of violated rights how many better men than Slidell and Mason groaned in them; and the conduct of those powers against the Poles in 1831! Was it neutral or honest?

I am sure that Russia will behave well, and abstain from coming forward with uncalled-for and humiliating advice. Russia is a true great power, — a true friend, — and such noble behavior will be in harmony with the character of Alexander II., and with the friendliness and clear perception of events held by the Russian minister here. I hope that when the war is over the West Point nursery will be reformed, and a general military organization introduced, such a one as exists in Switzerland.

McClellan is a greater mistake than was even Scott. McClellan knows not the ABC of military history of any nation or war, or he would not keep this army so in camp. He would know that after recruits have been roughly instructed in the rudiments of a drill, the next best instructor is fighting. So it was in the thirty years' war; so in the American Revolution; so in the first French revolutionary wars. Strategians, martinets, lost the battles, or rather the campaigns, of Austerlitz, of Jena, etc. In 1813 German rough levies fought almost before they were drilled, and at Bautzen French recruits were victorious over Prussians, Russians, and Austrians. The secesh fight with fresh levies, etc.

Numerous political intriguers surrounding McClellan are busily laying tracks for him to the White House. What will Seward and Chase say to it, and even old Abe, who himself dreams of re-election, or at least his friends do it for him? All these candidates forget that the surest manner to reach the White House is not to think of it—to forget oneself and to act.

It is amusing to find in European papers all the various stories about Mr. Lincoln. There he is represented as a violent, blood-thirsty revolutionaire, dragging the people after him. In this manner, those European imbeciles are acquainted with American events, character, etc. They cannot find out that in decision, in clear-sightedness and soundness of judgment, the people are far ahead of Mr. Lincoln and of his spiritual or constitutional conscience-keepers.

And the same imbeciles, if not canailes, speak of a mob-rule over the President, etc. Some one ought to enlighten those French and English supercilious ignorami that something like a mob only prevails in such cities as New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore; and nine-tenths of such a mob are mostly yet unwashed, unrepublicanized Europeans. The ninety-nine one-hundredths of the freemen of the North are more orderly, more enlightened, more lawabiding, and more moral than are the English lordlings, somebodies, nobodies, and would-be somebodies. In the West, lynch-law, to be sure, is at times used against brothels, bar-rooms, gambling-houses, and thieves. It would be well to do the same in London, were it not that most of the lynch-lawed may not belong to the people. If the European scribblers were not past any honest impulse, they would know that the South is the generator and the congenial region for the mob, the fillibusters, the revolver and the bowie-knife rule. In the South the proportion of mobs to decency is the reverse of that prevailing in the free States. The slavery gentleman is a scarcely varnished savage, for whom the highest law is his reckless passion and will.

If Jeff. Davis succeeds, he will be the founder of a new and great slaveholding empire. His name will resound in after times; but history will record his name as that of a curse to humanity.

And so Davis is making history and Lincoln is telling stories. Beauregard gets inspired by the fumes of bivouacs; McClellan by the fumes of flatterers. Beauregard frightens us, McClellan rocks his baby. Beauregard shares the camp-fires of his soldiers; he sees them daily, knows them, as it is said, one by one; McClellan lives comfortably in the city, and appears only to the soldiers as the great Lama on special occasions. Camp-fellowship inspired all the great captains and established the magnetic current between the leader and the soldier.

McClellan organized a board of generals, arriving daily from the camps, to discuss some new fancy army equipment. And Lincoln, Seward, Blair, and all the tail of intriguers and imbeciles, still admire him. In no other country would such a futile man be kept in command of troops opposed to a deadly and skilful enemy.

For several weeks, McClellan and his chief of the staff (such as he is) are sick in bed, and no one is ad interim appointed to attend to the current affairs of our army of 600,000, having the enemy before their nose. Oh human imbecility! No satirist could invent such things; and if told, it would not be believed in Europe.

The McClellan-worship by the people at large is to be explained by the firm, ardent will of the people to crush the rebels, and by the general feeling of the necessity of a man for that purpose. Such is the case with the true, confiding people in the country; but here, contractors, martinets, and intriguers are the blowers of that worship. Lincoln is as is the people at large; but a Seward, a Blair, a Herald, a Times, and their respective and numerous tails, as for their motives, they are the reverse of Lincoln and of the people.

Victories in Kentucky, beyond the circumference or the direct action from here; they are obtained without strategy and by rough levies. But this voice of events is not understood by the McClellan tross.

Change in the Cabinet: Stanton, a new man, not from the parlor, and not from the hacks. His bulletin on the victory in Kentucky inaugurated a new era. It is a voice that nobody hitherto uttered in America. It is the awakening voice of the good genius of the people, almost as that which awoke Lazarus. This Stanton is the people; I never saw him, but I hope he is the man for the events; perhaps he may turn out to be my statesman.

I wish I could get convinced of the real superiority of Fremont. It is true that he was treated badly and had natural and artificial difficulties to over come; it is true that to him belongs the credit of having started the construction of the mortar fleet; but likewise it is true that he was, at the mildest, unsurpassingly reckless in contracts and expenditures, and I shall never believe him a general. With all this, Fremont started a great initiative at a time when McClellan and three-fourths of the generals of his creation considered it a greater crime to strike at a gentleman slaveholder than to strike at the Union.

The courtesies and hospitalities paid to Thurlow Weed by English society are clamored here in various ways. These courtesies prove the high breeding and the good-will of a part, at least, of the English aristocracy and of English statesmen. I do not suppose that Thurlow Weed could ever have been admitted in such society if he were travelling on his own merits as the great lobbyist and politician. At the utmost, he would have been shown up as a rara avis. But introduced to English society as the master spirit of Mr. Seward, and as Seward's semi-official confidential agent, Thurlow Weed was admitted, and even petted. But it is another question if this palming of a Thurlow Weed upon the English high-toned statesmen increased their consideration for Mr. Seward. Duke of Newcastle and others are not yet softened, and refuse to be humbugged.

Whoever has the slightest knowledge of how affairs are transacted, is well aware that the times of a personal diplomacy are almost gone. The exceptions are very rare, very few, and the persons must be of other might and intellectual mettle than a Sandford, Weed, or Hughes. Great affairs are not conducted or decided by conversations, but by great interests. Diplomatic agents, at the utmost, serve to keep their respective governments informed about the run of events. Mr. Mercier does it for Louis Napoleon; but Mr. Mercier's reports, however friendly they may be, cannot much influence a man of such depth as Louis Napoleon, and to imagine that a Hughes will be able to do it! I am ashamed of Mr. Seward; he proves by this would-be-crotchety policy how little he knows of events and of men, and how he undervalues Louis Napoleon. Such humbug missions are good to throw dirt in the eyes of a Lincoln, a Chase, etc., but in Europe such things are sent to Coventry. And Hughes to influence Spain! Oh! oh!

Dayton frets on account of the mission of Hughes. Dayton is right. Generally Dayton shows a great deal of good sense, of good comprehension, and a noble and independent character. He is not a flatterer, not servile, and subservient to Mr. Seward, as are others Mr. Adams, Mr. Sandford, and some few other diplomatic agents.

The active and acting abolitionists ought to concentrate all their efforts to organize thoroughly and efficiently the district of Beaufort. The success of a productive colony there would serve as a womb for the emancipation at large.

Mr. Seward declares that he has given up meddling with military affairs. For his own sake, and for the sake of the country, I ardently wish it were so; but I shall never believe it.

The Investigating Committee has made the most thorough disclosures of the thorough incapacity of McClellan; but the McClellan men, Seward, Blair, etc., neutralize, stifle all the good which could accrue to the country from these disclosures. And Lincoln is in their clutches. The administration by its influence prevents the publication of the results of this investigation, prevents the truth from coming to the people. Any hard name will be too soft for such a moral prevarication.

McClellan is either as feeble as a reed, or a bad man.

The disorder around here is nameless. Banks compares it to the time of the French Directory. Banks has no guns, no cavalry, and is in the vanguard. He begs almost on his knees, and cannot get anything. And the country pays a chief of the staff, and head of the staffers.

The time must come, although it be now seemingly distant, that the people will awake from this lethargy; that it will perceive how much of the noblest blood of the people, how much time and money, have been worse than recklessly squandered. The people will find it out, and then they will ask those Cains at the wheel an account of the innocent blood of Abel, the country's son, the country's cause.

The defenders of, and the thus called moderate men on the question of slavery, utter about it the old rubbish composed of the most thorough ignorance and of disgusting fallacies, in relation to this pseudo science, or rather lie, about races. More of it will come out in the course of the Congressional discussions. Not one of them is aware that independent science, that comparative anatomy, physiology, psychology, anthropology, that philosophy of history altogether and thoroughly repudiate all these superficially asserted, or tried-to-be-established, intrinsic diversities and peculiarities of races. All these would-be axioms, theories, are based on sand. In true science the question of race as represented by the Southern school partisans of slavery, with Agassiz, the so-called professor of Charleston by European savans, at their head, — that question is at the best an illusive element, and endangers the accuracy of induction. As it presents itself to the unprejudiced investigator, race is nothing more than the single manifestation of anterior stages of existence, the aggregate expression of the pre-historic vicissitudes of a people.

If those would-be knowing arguers on slavery, race, etc., were only aware of the fact that such people as the primitive Greeks, or the ancestors of classical Greeks, that the ancestors of the Latins, that even the roving, robbing ancestors of the Anglo Saxons, in some way or other, have been anthropophagi, and worshipped fetishes; and even as thus called already civilized, they sacrificed men to gods, could our great pro-slavers know all this, they would be more decent in their ignorant assertions, and not, so self-satisfied, strut about in their dark ignorance.

Those who are afraid that the freed negroes of the South will run to the Northern free States, display an ignorance still greater than the former. When the enslaved colored Americans in the South shall be all thoroughly emancipated in that now cursed region, then they will remain in the, to them, congenial climate, and in the favorable economical conditions of labor and of existence: Not only those emancipated will not run North, but the colored population from the free States, incited and stirred up by natural attractions, will leave the North for the South, as small streamlets and rivulets run into a large current or river.

The rebels extend on an immense bow, nearly one hundred miles, from the lower to the upper Potomac. Our army, two to one, is on the span of the arc, and we do nothing. A French sergeant would be better inspired than is McClellan.

SOURCE: Adam Gurowski, Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862, pp. 137-50