It seems to me that
the destinies of this admirable people are in strange hands. Mr. Lincoln,
honest man of nature, perhaps an empiric, doctoring with innocent juices from
herbs; but some others around him seem to be quacks of the first order. I wish
I may be mistaken.
The press, the thus
called good one, is vacillating. Best of all, and almost not vacillating, is
the New York Evening Post. I do not speak of principles; but the papers
vacillate, speaking of the measures and the slowness of the administration.
The President's
message; plenty of good, honest intentions; simple, unaffected wording, but a
confession that by the attack on Sumpter, and the uprising of Virginia, the
administration was, so to speak, caught napping. Further, up to that day the
administration did not take any, the slightest, measure of any kind for any
emergency; in a word, that it expected no attacks, no war, saw no fire, and did
not prepare to meet and quench one.
It were, perhaps,
better for Lincoln if he could muster courage and act by himself according to
his nature, rather than follow so many, or even any single adviser. Less and
less I understand Mr. Lincoln, but as his private secretary assures me that
Lincoln has great judgment and great energy, I suggested to the secretary to
say to Lincoln he should be more himself.
Being tete-a-tete
with McDowell, I saw him do things of details which in any, even half-way
organized army, belong to the speciality of a chief of the staff. I, of course,
wondered at it. McDowell, who commands what in Europe would be called a large
corps, told me that General Scott allowed him not to form a complete staff,
such a one as he, McDowell, wished.
And all this, so to
speak, on the eve of a battle, when the army faces the enemy. It seems that
genuine staff duties are something altogether unknown to the military senility
of the army. McDowell received this corps in the most chaotic state. Almost
with his own hands he organized, or rather put together, the artillery.
Brigades are scarcely formed; the commanders of brigades do not know their
commands, and the soldiers do not know their generals—and still they consider
Scott to be a great general!
The Congress,
well-intentioned, but entangled in formulas, slowly feels its way. The Congress
is composed of better elements than is the administration, and it is ludicrous to
see how the administration takes airs of hauteur with the Congress. This
Congress is in an abnormal condition for the task of directing a revolution; a
formula can be thrown in its face almost at every bold step. The administration
is virtually irresponsible, more so than the government of any constitutional
nation whatever. What great things this administration could carry out!
Congress will consecrate, legalize, sanction everything. Perhaps no harm would
have resulted if the Senate and the House had contained some new, fresher
elements directly from the boiling, popular cauldron. Such men would take a
position at once. Many of the leaders in both Houses were accustomed for many
years to make only opposition. But a long opposition influences and disorganizes
the judgment, forms not those genuine statesmen able to grasp great events. For
such emergencies as are now here, terrible energy is needed, and only a very
perfect mind resists the enervating influence of a protracted opposition.
Suggested to Mr. Seward
that the best diplomacy was to take possession of Virginia. Doing this, we will
find all the cabinets smooth and friendly.
I seldom saw a man
with greater facility of labor than Seward. When once he is at work, it runs
torrent-like from
his pen. His mind is elastic. His principal forte is argument on any given
case. But the question is how far he masters the variegated information so
necessary in a statesman, and the more now, when the country earnestly has such
dangerous questions with European cabinets. He is still cheerful, hopeful, and
prophesies a speedy end.
Seward has no
Know-Nothingism about him. He is easy, and may have many genuine generous
traits in his character, were they not compressed by the habits of the, not
lofty, politician. At present, Seward is a moral dictator; he has Lincoln in
his hand, and is all in all. Very likely he flatters him and imposes upon his
simple mind by his over-bold, dogmatic, but not over-correct and logical,
generalizations. Seward's finger is in all the other departments, but above all
in the army.
The opposition made
to Seward is not courageous, not open, not dignified. Such an opposition
betrays the weakness of the opposers, and does not inspire respect. It is
darkly surreptitious. These opponents call Seward hard names, but do this in a
corner, although most of them have their parliamentary chair wherefrom they can
speak. If he is bad and mischievous, then unite your forces and overthrow him;
if he is not bad, or if you are not strong enough against him, do not cover
yourself with ridicule, making a show of impotent malice. When the Senate
confirmed him, every one throughout the land knew his vacillating policy; knew
him to be for compromise, for concessions; knew that he disbelieved in the
terrible earnestness of the struggle, and always prophesied its very speedy
end. The Senate confirmed Seward with open eyes. Perhaps at the start his
imagination and his patriotism made him doubt and disbelieve in the enormity of
treason he could not realize that the traitors would go to the bitter end.
Seemingly, Seward still hopes that one day or another they may return as
forlorn sheep. Under the like impressions, he always believed, and perhaps
still believes, he shall be able to patch up the quarrel, and be the savior of the
Union. Very probably his imagination, his ardent wishes, carry him away, and
confuse that clear insight into events which alone constitutes the statesman.
Suggested to Sumner
to demand the reduction of the tariff on certain merchandises, on the plea of fraternity
of the working American people with their brethren the operatives all over
Europe; by it principally I wished to alleviate the condition of French
industry, as I have full confidence in Louis Napoleon, and in the
unsophisticated judgment of the genuine French people. The suggestion did not
take with the Senate.
When the July
telegraph brought the news of the victory at Romney (Western Virginia), it was
about midnight. Mr. Seward warmly congratulated the President that "the
secession was over." What a far-reaching policy!
When the struggle
will be over, England, at least her Tories, aristocrats, and politicians, will
find themselves baffled in their ardent wishes for the breaking of the Union.
The free States will look tidy and nice, as in the past. But more than one
generation will pass before ceases to bleed the wound inflicted by the lies,
the taunts, the vituperations, poured in England upon this noble, generous, and
high-minded people; upon the sacred cause defended by the freemen.
These freemen of
America, up to the present time, incarnate the loftiest principle in the
successive, progressive, and historical development of man. Nations,
communities, societies, institutions, stand and fall with that principle,
whatever it be, whereof they are the incarnation; so teaches us history. Woe to
these freemen if they will recede from the principle; if they abandon human
rights; if they do not crush human bondage, this sum of all infamies. Certainly
the question paramount to all is, to save and preserve pure self-government in
principle and in its direct application. But although the question of slavery
seems to be incidental and subordinate to the former, virtually the question of
slavery is twin to the former. Slavery serves as a basis, as a nurse, for the
most infamous and abject aristocracy or oligarchy that was ever built up in
history, and any, even the best, the mildest, and the most honest oligarchy or
aristocracy kills and destroys man and self-government.
From the purely
administrative point of view, the principle whose incarnation is the American
people, the principle begins to be perverted. The embodiment of self-government
fills dungeons, suppresses personal liberty, opens letters, and in the reckless
saturnalias of despotism it rivals many from among the European despots.
Europe, which does not see well the causes, shudders at this delirium tremens
of despotism in America.
Certainly, treason
being in ebullition, the holders of power could not stand by and look. But
instead of an energetic action, instead of exercising in full the existing
laws, they hesitated, and treason, emboldened, grew over their heads.
The law inflicted
the severest capital punishment on the chiefs of the revolt in Baltimore, but
all went off unharmed. The administration one day willingly allows the law to
slide from its lap, and the next moment grasps at an unnecessary arbitrary
power. Had the traitors of Baltimore been tried by courtmartial, as the law
allowed, and punished, few, if any, traitors would then have raised their heads
in the North.
Englishmen forget
that even after a secession, the North, to-day twenty millions, as large as the
whole Union eight years ago, will in ten years be thirty millions; a population
rich, industrious, and hating England with fury.
Seward, having
complete hold of the President, weakens Lincoln's mind by using it up in
hunting after comparatively paltry expedients. Seward-Scott's influence
neutralizes the energetic cry of the country, of the congressmen, and in the
Cabinet that of Blair, who is still a trump.
The emancipation of
slaves is spoken of as an expedient, but not as a sacred duty, even for the
maintenance of the Union. To emancipate through the war power is an offence to
reason, logic, and humanity; but better even so than not at all. War power is
in its nature violent, transient, established for a day; emancipation is the
highest social and economical solution to be given by law and reason, and ought
to result from a thorough and mature deliberation. When the Constitution was
framed, slavery was ashamed of itself, stood in the corner, had no paws.
Now-a-days, slavery has become a traitor, is arrogant, blood-thirsty, worse
than a jackal and a hyena; deliberately slavery is a matricide. And they still
talk of slavery as sheltered by the Constitution; and many once anti-slavery
men like Seward, etc., are ready to preserve it, to compromise with the crime.
The existence of
nations oscillates between epochs when the substance and when the form
prevails. The formation of America was the epoch when substance prevailed.
Afterward, for more than half a century, the form was paramount; the term of
substance again begins. The Constitution is substance and form. The substance
in it is perennial; but every form is transient, and must be expanded, changed,
re-cast.
Few, if any,
Americans are aware of the identity of laws ruling the universe with laws
ruling and prevailing in the historical development of man. Rarely has an
American patience enough to ascend the long chain from effect to cause, until
he reaches the first cause, the womb wherein was first generated the subsequent
distant effect. So, likewise, they cannot realize that at the start the
imperceptible deviation from the aim by and by widens to a bottomless gap until
the aim is missed. Then the greatest and the most devoted sacrifices are
useless. The legal conductors of the nation, since March 6th, ignore this law.
The foreign
ministers here in Washington were astonished at the politeness, when some time
ago the Department sent to the foreign ministers a circular announcing to them
that armed vessels of the neutrals will be allowed to enter at pleasure the
rebel blockaded ports. This favor was not asked, not hoped for, and was not
necessary. It was too late when I called the attention of the Department to the
fact that such favors were very seldom granted; that they are dangerous, and
can occasion complications. I observed that during the war between Mexico and
France, in 1838, Count Mole, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Premier of
Louis Philippe, instructed the admiral commanding the French navy in the
Mexican waters, to oppose, even by force, any attempt made by a neutral
man-of-war to enter a blockaded port. And it was not so dangerous then as it
may be in this civil war. But the chief clerk adviser of the Department found
out that President Polk's administration during the Mexican war granted a
similar permission, and, glad to have a precedent, his powerful brains could
not find out the difference between then and now.
The internal routine
of the ministry, and the manner in which our ministers are treated abroad by
the Chief at home, is very strange, humiliating to our agents in the eyes of
foreign Cabinets. Cassius Clay was instructed to propose to Russia our
accession to the convention of Paris, but was not informed from Washington that
our ministers at Paris, London, etc., were to make the same propositions. When
Prince Gortschakoff asked Cassius Clay if similar propositions were made to the
other cosigners of the Paris convention, our minister was obliged to confess
his utter ignorance about the whole proceeding. Prince Gortschakoff
good-naturedly inquired about it from his ministers at Paris and London, and
enlightened Cassius Clay.
No ministry of
foreign affairs in Europe would treat its agents in such a trifling manner,
and, if done, a minister would resent it.
This mistake, or
recklessness, is to be credited principally to the internal chief, or director
of the department, and not to the minister himself. By and by, the chief
clerks, these routinists in the former coarse traditions of the Democratic
administrations, will learn and acquire better diplomatic and bureaucratic
habits.
If one calls the
attention of influential Americans to the mismanagement in the organization of
the army; to the extraordinary way in which everything, as organization of
brigades, and the inner service, the quartermaster's duty, is done, the general
and inevitable answer is, "We are not military; we are young people; we
have to learn." Granted; but instead of learning from the best, the
latest, and most correct authorities, why stick to an obsolete, senile, musty,
rotten, mean, and now-a-days impracticable routine, which is all-powerful in all
relating to the army and to the war? The Americans may pay dear for thus
reversing the rules of common sense.
General Scott
directs from his sleeping room the movements of the two armies on the Potomac
and in the Shenandoah valley. General Scott has given the order to advance. At
least a strange way, to have the command of battle at a distance of thirty and
one hundred miles, and stretched on his fauteuil. Marshal de Saxe, although
deadly sick, was on the field at Fontenoy. What will be the result of this
experimentalization, so contrary to sound reason?
Fighting at Bull
Run. One o'clock, P. M. Good news. Gen. Scott says that although we were 40-100
in disadvantage, nevertheless his plans are successful—all goes as he arranged
it-all as he foresaw it. Bravo! old man! If so, I make amende honorable of all that I said up to this minute. Two o'clock,
P. M. General Scott, satisfied with the justness and success of his strategy
and tactics-takes a nap.
Evening. Battle
lost; rout, panic. The army almost disbanded, in full run. So say the
forerunners of the accursed news. Malediction! Malediction!
What a horrible
night and day! rain and cold; stragglers and disbanded soldiers in every
direction, and no order, nobody to gather the soldiers, or to take care of
them.
As if there existed
not any military or administrative authority in Washington! Under the eyes of
the two commanders-in-chief! Oh, senility, imbecility, ignominy! In Europe, a
commander of a city, or any other military authority whatever, who should
behave in such a way, would be dismissed, nay, expelled, from military service.
What I can gather is, that the enemy was in full retreat in the centre and on
one flank, when he was reinforced by fresh troops, who outflanked and turned
ours. If so, the panic can be explained. Even old veteran troops generally run
when they are outflanked.
Johnston, whom
Patterson permitted to slip, came to the rescue of Beauregard. So they say. It
is en petit Waterloo, with
Blucher-Johnston, and Grouchy-Patterson. But had Napoleon's power survived
after Waterloo, Grouchy, his chief of the staff, and even Ney,1 for
the fault at Quatre-bras, would have been court-martialed and shot. Here these
blind Americans will thank Scott and Patterson.
Others say that a
bold charge of cavalry arrived on our rear, and threw in disorder the wagons
and the baggage gang. That is nothing new; at the battle of Borodino some
Cossacks, pouncing upon the French baggage, created a panic, which for a moment
staggered Napoleon, and prevented him in time from reinforcing Ney and Davoust.
But McDowell committed a fault in putting his baggage train, the ambulances
excepted, on a road between the army and its reserves, which, in such a manner,
came not in action. By and by I shall learn more about it.
The Congress has
made a worse Bull Run than the soldiers. Not a single manly, heroic word to the
nation and the army. As if unsuccess always was dishonor. This body groped its
way, and was morally stunned by the blow; the would-be leaders more than the
mass.
Suggested to Sumner
to make, as the Romans did, a few stirring words on account of the defeat. Some
mean fellows in Congress, who never smelt powder, abused the soldiers. Those
fellows would have been the first to run. Others, still worse, to show their
abject flunkeyism to Scott, and to humbug the public at large about their
intimacy with this fetish, make speeches in his defence. Scott broadly prepared
the defeat, and now, through the mouths of flunkeys and spit-lickers,2
he attempts to throw the fault on the thus called politicians.
The President
telegraphed for McClellan, who in the West, showed rapidity of movement, the
first and most necessary capacity for a commander. Young blood will be infused,
and perhaps senility will be thrown overboard, or sent to the Museum of the
Smithsonian Institute.
At Bull Run the
foreign regiments ran not, but covered the retreat. And Scott, and worse than
he, Thomas, this black spot in the War Department, both are averse to, and when
they can they humiliate, the foreigners. A member of Congress, in search of a
friend, went for several miles up the stream of the fugitive army; great was
his astonishment to hear spoken by the fugitives only the unmixed, pure
Anglo-Saxon.
My friend, J.
Wadsworth, behaved cool, brave, on the field, and was devoted to the wounded.
Now, as always, he is the splendid type of a true man of the people.
During the days
Poor, unhappy
McDowell! when he prepared the army, he was well aware that an eventual success
would be altogether attributed to Scott; but that he, McDowell, would be the
scapegoat for the defeat. Already, when on Sunday morning the news of the first
successes was known, Scott swallowed incense, and took the whole credit of it
to himself. Now he accuses the politicians.
Once more. Scott
himself prepared the defeat. Subsequent elucidation will justify this
assertion. One thing is already certain: one of the reasons of the lost battle
is the exhaustion of troops which fought and the number here in Washington is more
than 50,000 men. Only an imbecile would divide the forces in such a way as to
throw half of it to attack a superior and entrenched enemy. But Scott wished to
shape the great events of the country in accordance with his narrow, ossified
brains, and with his peculiar patriotism; and he did the same in the conduct of
the war.
I am sure some day
or other it will come out that this immense fortification of Manassas is a
similar humbug to the masked batteries; and Scott was the first to aggrandize
these terrible national nightmares. Already many soldiers say that they did not
see any fortifications. Very likely only small earthworks; if so, Scott ought
to have known what was the position and the works of an enemy encamped about
thirty miles from him. If he, Scott, was ignorant, then it shows his utter
imbecility; if he knew that the fortifications were insignificant, and did not
tell it to the troops, then he is worse than an incapable chief. Up to the
present day, all the military leaders of ancient and modern times told their
troops before a battle that the enemy is not much after all, and that the
difficulties to overcome are rather insignificant. After the battle was won,
everything became aggrandized. Here everybody, beginning with Scott, ardently
rivalled how to scare and frighten the volunteers, by stories of the masked
batteries of Manassas, with its several tiers of fortifications, the terrible
superiority of the Southerners, etc., etc. In Europe such behavior would be
called treason.
The administration
and the influential men cannot realize that they must give up their old,
stupid, musty routine. McClellan ought to be altogether independent of Scott;
be untrammelled in his activity; have large powers; have direct action; and not
refer to Scott. What is this wheel within a wheel? Instead of it, Scott, as by
concession, cuts for McClellan a military department of six square miles. Oh,
human stupidity, how difficult thou art to lift!
Scott will paralyze
McClellan as he did Lyon and Butler. Scott always pushed on his spit-lickers,
or favorites, rotten by old age. But Scott has pushed aside such men as Wool
and Col. Smith; refused the services of many brave as Hooker and others,
because they never belonged to his flunkeys. Send to McClellan a plan for the
reorganization of the army.
1st. True mastership
consists in creating an army with extant elements, and not in clamoring for
what is altogether impossible to obtain.
2d. The idea is
preposterous to try to have a large thus-called regular army. A small number,
fifteen to twenty thousand men, divided among several hundreds of thousands of
volunteers, would be as a drop of water in a lake. Besides, this war is to be
decided by the great masses of the volunteers, and it is uncivic and
unpatriotic to in any way nourish the wickedly-assumed discrimination between
regulars and volunteers.
3d. Good
non-commissioned officers and corporals constitute the sole, sound, and easy
articulations of a regiment. Any one who ever was in action is aware of this
truth. With good non-commissioned officers, even ignorant lieutenants do very
little harm. The volunteer regiments ought to have as many good sergeants and
corporals as possible.
4th. To provide for
this want, and for reasons mentioned above, the relics of the regular army
ought to be dissolved. Let us have one army, as the enemy has.
5th. All the rank
and file of the army ought to be made at once corporals and sergeants, and be
distributed as much as possible among the volunteers.
6th. The
non-commissioned regulars ought to be made commissioned officers, and with
officers of all grades be distributed and merged in the one great army.
For the first time
since the armaments, I enjoyed a genuine military view. McClellan, surrounded
as a general ought to be, went to see the army. It looks martial. The city,
likewise, has a more martial look than it had all the time under Scott. It
seems that a young, strong hand holds the ribbons. God grant that McClellan may
preserve his western vigor and activity, and may not become softened and
dissolved by these Washington evaporations. If he does, if he follows the
routine, he will become as impotent as others before him. Young man, beware of
Washington's corrupt but flattering influences. To the camp to the camp! A tent
is better for you than a handsome house. The tent, the fumes of bivouacs,
inspired the Fredericks, the Napoleons, and Washingtons.
Up to this day they
make more history in Secessia than here. Jeff. Davis overshadows Lincoln. Jeff.
Davis and his gang of malefactors are pushed into the whirlpool of action by
the nature of their crime; here, our leaders dread action, and grope. The
rebels have a clear, decisive, almost palpable aim; but here * *
_______________
1 That such would have been the presumed fate
of Ney at the hands of Napoleon, I was afterwards assured by the old Duke of
Bassano, and by the Duchess Abrantes.
2 Foremost among them was the editor of the
New York Times, publishing a long article wherein he proved that he had been
admitted to General Scott's table, and that the General unfolded to him, the
editor, the great anaconda strategy. Exactly the thing to be admired and gulped
by a man of such variegated information as that individual.
That little
villianish "article" had a second object: it was to filch subscribers
from the Tribune, which broke down, not over courageously.
SOURCE: Adam
Gurowski, Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862, p. 60-77
