Diary of Adam Gurowski: July 1861

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 * *

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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

Diary of Adam Gurowski: June 1861

THE emancipation of slaves is virtually inaugurated. Gen. Butler, once a hard pro-slavery Democrat, takes the lead. Tempora mutantur et nos, &c. Butler originated the name of contrabands of war for slaves faithful to the Union, who abandon their rebel masters. A logical Yankee mind operates as an accoucheur to bring that to daylight with which the events are pregnant.

The enemies of self-government at home and abroad are untiring in vaticinations that a dictatorship now, and after the war a strong centralized government, will be inaugurated. I do not believe it. Perhaps the riddle to be solved will be, to make a strong administration without modifying the principle of self-government.

The most glorious difference between Americans and Europeans is, that in cases of national emergencies, every European nation, the Swiss excepted, is called, stimulated to action, to sacrifices, either by a chief, or by certain families, or by some high-standing individual, or by the government; here the people forces upon the administration more of all kinds of sacrifices than the thus called rulers can grasp, and the people is in every way ahead of the administration.

Notwithstanding that a part of the army crossed the Potomac, very little genuine organization is done. They begin only to organize brigades, but slowly, very slowly. Gen. Scott unyielding in his opposition to organizing any artillery, of which the army has very, very little. This man is incomprehensible. He cannot be a clear-headed general or organizer, or he cannot be a patriot.

As for the past, single regiments are parading in honor of the President, of members of the Cabinet, of married and unmarried ladies, but no military preparatory exercise of men, regiments, or brigades. It sickens to witness such incurie.

Mr. Seward promenading the President from regiment to regiment, from camp to camp, or rather showing up the President and himself. Do they believe they can awake enthusiasm for their persons? The troops could be better occupied than to serve for the aim of a promenade for these two distinguished personalities.

Gen. Scott refuses the formation of volunteer artillery and of new cavalry regiments, and the active army, more than 20,000 men, has a very insufficient number of batteries, and between 600 and 800 cavalry. Lincoln blindly follows his boss. Seward, of course, sustains Scott, and confuses Lincoln. Lincoln, Scott, Seward and Cameron oppose offers pouring from the country. To a Mr. M from the State of New York, who demanded permission to form a regiment of cavalry, Mr. Lincoln angrily answered, that (patriotic) offers give more "trouble to him and the administration than do the rebels."

The debates of the English Parliament raise the ire of the people, nay, exasperate even old fogyish Anglo-manes.

Persons very familiar with the domestic relations of Gen. Scott assure me that the vacillations of the old man, and his dread of a serious warfare, result from the all-powerful influence on him of one of his daughters, a rabid secessionist. The old man ought to be among relics in the Patent office, or sent into a nursery.

The published correspondence between Lord Lyons and Lord Russell concerning the blockade furnishes curious revelations.

When the blockade was to be declared, Mr. Seward seems to have been a thorough novice in the whole matter, and in an official interview with Lord Lyons, Mr. Seward was assisted by his chief clerk, who was therefore the quintessence of the wisdom of the foreign affairs, a man not even mastering the red-tape traditions of the department, without any genuine instruction, without ideas. For this chief clerk, all that he knew of a blockade was that it was in use during the Mexican war, that it almost yearly occurred in South American waters, and every tyro knows there exists such a thing as a blockade. But that was all that this chief clerk knew. Lord Lyons asked for some special precedents or former acts of the American government. The chief, and his support, the chief clerk, ignored the existence of any. Lord Lyons went home and sent to the department American precedents and authorities. No Minister of Foreign Affairs in Europe, together with his chief clerk, could ever be caught in such a flagrante delicto of ignorance. This chief clerk made Mr. Seward make un pas de clerc, and this at the start. As Lord Lyons took a great interest in the solution of the question of blockade, and as the chief clerk was the oraculum in this question, these combined facts may give some clue to the anonymous advice sent to Lord Lyons, and mentioned in the month of April.

Suggested to Mr. Seward to at once elevate the American question to a higher region, to represent it to Europe in its true, holy character, as a question of right, freedom, and humanity. Then it will be impossible for England to quibble about technicalities of the international laws; then we can beat England with her own arms and words, as England in 1824, &c., recognized the Greeks as belligerents, on the plea of aiding freedom and humanity. The Southern insurrection is a movement similar to that of the Neapolitan brigands, similar to what partisans of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany or Modena may attempt, similar to any for argument's sake supposed insurrection of any Russian bojàrs against the emancipating Czar. Not in one from among the above enumerated cases would England concede to the insurgents the condition of belligerents. If the Deys of Tunis and Tripoli should attempt to throw off their allegiance to the Sultan on the plea that the Porte prohibits the slave traffic, would England hurry to recognize the Deys as belligerents?

Suggested to Mr. Seward, what two months ago I suggested to the President, to put the commercial interests in the Mediterranean, for a time, under the protection of Louis Napoleon.

I maintain the right of closing the ports, against the partisans of blockade.

Qui jure suo utitur neminem lædit, says the Roman jurisconsult.

The condition of Lincoln has some similarity with that of Pio IX. in 1847-48. Plenty of good-will, but the eagle is not yet breaking out of the egg. And as Pio IX. was surrounded by this or that cardinal, so is Mr. Lincoln by Seward and Scott.

Perhaps it may turn out that Lincoln is honest, but of not transcendent powers. The war may last long, and the military spirit generated by the war may in its turn generate despotic aspirations. Under Lincoln in the White House, the final victory will be due to the people alone, and he, Lincoln, will preserve intact the principle which lifted him to such a height.

The people is in a state of the healthiest and most generous fermentation, but it may become soured and musty by the admixture of Scott-Seward vacillatory powders.

Scott is all in all—Minister or Secretary of War and Commander-in-chief. How absurd to unite those functions, as they are virtually united here, Scott deciding all the various military questions; he the incarnation of the dusty, obsolete, everywhere thrown overboard and rotten routine. They ought to have for Secretary of War, if not a Carnot, at least a man of great energy, honesty, of strong will, and of a thorough devotion to the cause. Senator Wade would be suitable for this duty. Cameron is devoted, but I doubt his other capacities for the emergency, and he has on his shoulders General Scott as a dead weight.

Charles Sumner, Mr. Motley, Dr. Howe, and many others, consider it as a triumph that the English Cabinet asked Mr. Gregory to postpone his motion for the recognition of the Southern Confederacy. Those gentlemen here are not deep, and are satisfied with a few small crumbs thrown them by the English aristocracy. Generally, the thus-called better Americans eagerly snap at such crumbs.

It is clear that the English Cabinet wished this postponement for its own sake. A postponement spares the necessity to Russells, Palmerstons, Gladstones, and hoc genus omne, to show their hands. Mr. Adams likewise is taken in.

Military organization and strategic points are the watchwords. Strategic points, strategy, are natural excrescences of brains which thus shamefully conceive and carry out what the abused people believe to be the military organization.

Strategy—strategy repeats now every imbecile, and military fuss covers its ignorance by that sacramental word. Scott cannot have in view the destruction of the rebels. Not even the Austrian Aulic Council imagined a strategy combined and stretching through several thousands of miles.

The people's strategy is best: to rush in masses on Richmond; to take it now, when the enemy is there in comparatively small numbers. Richmond taken, Norfolk and the lost guns at once will be recovered. So speaks the people, and they are right; here among the wiseacres not one understands the superiority of the people over his own little brains.

Warned Mr. Seward against making contracts for arms with all kinds of German agents from New York and from abroad. They will furnish and bring, at the best, what the German governments throw out as being of no use at the present moment. All the German governments are at work to renovate their fire-arms.

The diplomats more and more confused, some of them ludicrously so. Here, as always and everywhere, diplomacy, by its essence, is virtually statu quo; if not altogether retrograde, is conservative, and often ultra conservative. It is rare to witness diplomacy in toto, or even single diplomats, side with progressive efforts and ideas. English diplomacy and

diplomats do it at times; but then mostly for the sake of political intrigue.

Even the great events of Italy are not the child of diplomacy. It went to work clopin, clopan, after Solferino.

Not one of the diplomats here is intrinsically hostile to the Union. Not one really wishes its disruption. Some brag so, but that is for small effect. All of them are for peace, for statu quo, for the grandeur of the country (as the greatest consumer of European imports); but most of them would wish slavery to be preserved, and for this reason they would have been glad to greet Breckinridge or Jeff. Davis in the White House.

Some among the diplomats are not virtually enemies of freedom and of the North; but they know the North from the lies spread by the Southerners, and by this putrescent heap of refuse, the Washington society. I am the only Northerner on a footing of intimacy with the diplomats. They consider me an exalté.

It must be likewise taken into account, and they say so themselves, that Mr. Seward's oracular vaticinations about the end of the rebellion from sixty to ninety days confuse the judgment of diplomats. Mr. Seward's conversation and words have an official meaning for the diplomats, are the subject of their dispatches, and they continually find that when Mr. Seward says yes the events say no.

Some of the diplomats are Union men out of obedience to a lawful government, whatever it be;

others by principle. The few from Central and South American republics are thoroughly sound. The diplomats of the great powers, representing various complicated interests, are the more confused, they have so many things to consider. The diplomatic tail, the smallest, insignificant, fawn to all, and turn as whirlwinds around the great ones.

Scott continually refused the formation of new batteries, and now he roars for them, and hurries the governors to send them. Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, weeks ago offered one or two rifled batteries, was refused, and now Scott in all hurry asks for them.

The unhappy affair of Big Bethel gave a shock to the nation, and stirred up old Scott, or rather the President.

Aside of strategy, there is a new bugbear to frighten the soldiers; this bugbear is the masked batteries. The inexperience of commanders at Big Bethel makes already masked batteries a terror of the country. The stupid press resounds the absurdity. Now everybody begins to believe that the whole of Virginia is covered with masked batteries, constituting, so to speak, a subterranean artillery, which is to explode on every step, under the feet of our army. It seems that this error and humbug is rather welcome to Scott, otherwise he would explain to the nation and to the army that the existence of numerous masked batteries is an absolute material and military impossibility. The terror prevailing now may do great mischief.

Mr. Seward was obliged to explain, exonerate, expostulate, and neutralize before the French Cabinet his famous Dayton letter. I was sure it was to come to this; Mr. Thouvenel politely protested, and Mr. Seward confessed that it was written for the American market (alias, for bunkum). All this will make a very unfavorable impression upon European diplomats concerning Mr. Seward's diplomacy and statesmanship, as undoubtedly Mr. Thouvenel will semi-officially confidentially communicate Mr. Seward's faux pas to his colleagues.

Mr. Seward emphatically instructs Mr. Adams to exclude the question of slavery from all his sayings and doings as Minister to England. Just to England! That Mr. Adams, once the leader of the constitutional anti-slavery party, submits to this obeisance of a corporal, I am not astonished, as everything can be expected from the man who, in support of the compromise, made a speech de lana caprina; but Senator Sumner, Chairman of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, meekly swallowed it.

SOURCE: Adam Gurowski, Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862, p. 50-9

Diary of Adam Gurowski: May 1861

RUMORS that the President, the administration, or whoever has it in his hands, is to take the offensive, make a demonstration on Virginia and on Baltimore. But these ups and downs, these vacillations, are daily occurrences, and nothing points to a firm purpose, to a decided policy, or any policy whatever of the administration.

A great principle and a great cause cannot be served and cannot be saved by half measures, and still less by tricks and by paltry expedients. But the administration is tossed by expedients. Nothing is hitherto done, and this denotes a want of any firm decision.

Mr. Seward's letter to Dayton, a first manifesto to foreign nations, and the first document of the new Minister of Foreign Affairs. It is bold, high-toned, and American, but it has dark shadows; shows an inexperienced hand in diplomacy and in dealing with events. The passages about the frequent changes in Europe are unnecessary, and unprovoked by anything whatever. It is especially offensive to France, to the French people, and to Louis Napoleon. It is bosh, but in Europe they will consider it as une politique provocatrice.

For the present complications, diplomatic relations ought to be conducted with firmness, with dignity, but not with an arrogant, offensive assumption, not in the spirit of spread-eagleism; no brass, but reason and decision.

Americans will find out how absolute are the laws of history, as stern and as positive as all the other laws of nature. To me it is clear that one phasis of American political growth, development, &c., is gone, is finished. It is the phasis of the Union as created by the Constitution. This war—war it will be, and a terrible one, notwithstanding all the prophecies of Mr. Seward to the contrary—this war will generate new social and constitutional necessities and new formulas. New conceptions and new passions will spring up; in one word, it will bring forth new social, physical, and moral creations: so we are in the period of gestation.

Democracy, the true, the noble, that which constitutes the signification of America in the progress of our race—democracy will not be destroyed. All the inveterate enemies here and in Europe, all who already joyously sing the funeral songs of democracy, all of them will become disgraced. Democracy will emerge more pure, more powerful, more rational; destroyed will be the most infamous oligarchy ever known in history; oligarchy issued neither from the sword, nor the gown, nor the shop, but wombed, generated, cemented, and sustained by traffic in man.

The famous Russell, of the London Times, is what I always thought him to be—a graphic, imaginative writer, with power of description of all he sees, but not the slightest insight in events, in men, in institutions. Russell is not able to find out the epidermis under a shirt. And they make so much fuss about him; Seward brings him to the first cabinet dinner given by the President; Mrs. Lincoln sends him bouquets; and this man, Russell, will heap blunders upon blunders.

The pressure on the administration for decided, energetic action increases from all sides. Seldom, anywhere, an administration receives so many moral kicks as does this one; but it seems to stand them with serenity. Oh, for a clear, firm, well-defined purpose!

The country, the people demands an attack on Virginia, on Richmond, and Baltimore; the country, better than the military authorities, understands the political and military necessities; the people has the consciousness that if fighting is done instantly, it will be done cheaply and thoroughly by a move of its finger. The administration can double the number of men under arms, but hesitates.

What slow coaches, and what ignorance of human nature and of human events. The knowing ones, the wiseacres, will be the ruin of this country. They poison the sound reason of the people.

What the d---- is Seward with his politicians' policy? What can signify his close alliance with such outlaws as Wikoff and the Herald, and pushing that sheet to abuse England and Lord Lyons? Wikoff is, so to speak, an inmate of Seward's house and office, and Wikoff declared publicly that the telegram contained in the Herald, and so violent against England and Lord Lyons, was written under Seward's dictation. Wikoff, I am told, showed the MS. corrected in Seward's handwriting. Lord Lyons is menaced with passports. Is this man mad? Can Seward for a moment believe that Wikoff knows Europe, or has any influence? He may know the low resorts there. Can Seward be fool enough to irritate England, and entangle this country? Even my anglophobia cannot stand it. Wrote about it warning letters to New York, to Barney, to Opdyke, to Wadsworth, &c.

The whole District a great camp; the best population from the North in rank and file. More intelligence, industry, and all good national and intellectual qualities represented in those militia and volunteer regiments, than in any—not only army, but society in Europe. Artisans, mechanics of all industries, of trade, merchants, bankers, lawyers; all pursuits and professions. Glorious, heart-elevating sight! These regiments want only a small touch of military organization.

Weeks run, troops increase, and not the first step made to organize them into an army, to form brigades, not to say divisions; not yet two regiments manœuvring together. What a strange idea the military chief or chiefs, or department, or somebody, must have of what it is to organize an army. Not the first letter made. Can it be ignorance of this elementary knowledge with which is familiar every corporal in Europe? When will they start, when begin to mould an army?

The administration was not composed for this emergency, and is not up to it. The government hesitates, is inexperienced, and will unavoidably make heaps of mistakes, which may endanger the cause, and for which, at any rate, the people is terribly to pay. The loss in men and material will be very considerable before the administration will get on the right track. It is painful to think, nay, to be sure of it. Then the European anti-Union politicians and diplomats will credit the disasters to the inefficiency of self-government. The diplomats, accustomed to the rapid, energetic action of a supreme or of a centralized power, laugh at the trepidation of ours. But the fault is not in the principle of self-government, but in the accident which brought to the helm such an amount of inexperience. Monarchy with a feeble head is even in a worse predicament. Louis XV, the Spanish and Neapolitan Bourbons, Gustavus IV., &c., are thereof the historical evidences.

May the shock of events bring out new lights from the people! One day the administration is to take the initiative, that is, the offensive, then it recedes from it. No one understands the organization and handling of such large bodies. They are to make their apprenticeship, if only it may not to be too dearly paid. But they cannot escape the action of that so positive law in nature, in history, and, above all, absolute in war.

Wrote to Charles Sumner, suggesting that the ice magnates send here from Boston ice for hospitals.

The war now waged against the free States is one made by the most hideous sauvagerie against a most perfectioned and progressive civilization. History records not a similar event. It is a hideous phenomenon, disgracing our race, and it is so, look on it from whatever side you will.

A new man from the people, like Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, acts promptly, decisively; feels and speaks ardently, and not as the rhetors. Andrew is the incarnation of the Massachusetts, nay, of the genuine American people. I must become acquainted with Andrew. Thousands of others like Andrew exist in all the States. Can anybody be a more noble incarnation of the American people than J. S. Wadsworth? I become acquainted with numerous men whom I honor as the true American men. So Boutwell, of Massachusetts, Curtis Noyes, Senator Wade, Trumbull, Walcott, from Ohio, Senator King, Chandler, and many, many true patriots.

Senator Wilson, my old friend, is up to the mark; a man of the people, but too mercurial.

Captain or Major Lyon in St. Louis, the first initiator or revelator of what is the absolute law of necessity in questions of national death or life. Lyon jumped over formulas, over routine, over clumsy discipline and martinetism, and saved St. Louis and Missouri.

It is positively asserted that General Scott's first impression was to court-martial Lyon for this breach of discipline, for having acted on his own patriotic responsibility.

Can Scott be such a dried-up, narrow-minded disciplinarian, and he the Egeria of Lincoln! Oh! oh! Diplomats tell me that Seward uses the dictatorial I, speaking of the government. Three cheers for the new Louis XIV.!

Governor Banks would be excellent for the Intendant General de l'Armée: they call it here General Quartermaster. Awful disorder and slowness prevail in this cardinal branch of the army. Wrote to Sumner concerning Banks.

Gen. Butler took Baltimore; did what ought to have been done a long time ago. Butler did it on his own responsibility, without orders. Butler acted upon the same principle as Lyon, and, horrabile dictu, astonished, terrified the parleying administration. Scott wishes to put Butler under arrest; happily Lincoln resisted his boss (so Mr. Lincoln called Scott before a deputation from Baltimore). Scott, Patterson, and Mansfield made a beautiful strategical horror! They began to speak of strategy; plan to approach Baltimore on three different roads, and with about 35,000 men. Butler did it one morning with two regiments, and kicked over the senile strategians in council.

The administration speaks with pride of its forbearing, that is, parleying, policy. The people, the country, requires action. Congressus impar Achilli: Achilles, the people, and Congressus the forbearing administration.

Music, parades, serenades, receptions, &c., &c., only no genuine military organization. They do it differently on the other side of the Potomac. There the leaders are in earnest.

Met Gov. Sprague and asked him when he would have a brigade; his answer was, soon; but this soon comes very slow.

News from England. Lord John Russell declared in Parliament that the Queen, or the English government, will recognize the rebels in the condition of "belligerents." O England, England! The declaration is too hasty. Lord John cannot have had news of the proclamation of the blockade when he made that declaration. The blockade could have served him as an excuse for the haste. English aristocracy and government show thus their enmity to the North, and their partiality to slavers. What will the anglophiles of Boston say to this?

Neither England or France, or anybody in Europe, recognized the condition of "belligerents" to Poles, when we fought in Russia in 1831. Were the Magyars recognized as such in 1848-49? Lord Palmerston called the German flag hard names in the war with Denmark for Schleswig-Holstein; and now he bows to the flag of slavers and pirates. If the English statesmen have not some very particular reason for this hasty, uncalled-for condescension to the enemies of humanity, then curse upon the English government. I recollect that European powers recognized the Greeks "belligerents" (Austria opposed) in their glorious struggle against the slavers, the Turks. But then this stretching of positive, international comity,—this stretching was done in the interest of freedom, of right, and of humanity, against savages and slaughterers. On the present occasion England did the reverse. O England, England, thou Judas Iscariot of nations! Seward said to John Jacob Astor, and to a New York deputation, that this English declaration concerning "belligerents" is a mere formality, having no bearing at all. I told the contrary to Astor and to others, assuring them that Mr. Seward will soon find, to the cost of the people and to his own, how much complication and trouble this mere formality will occasion, and occasion it before long. Is Seward so ignorant of international laws, of general or special history, or was it only said to throw dust? Wrote about the "belligerents" a warning letter to the President.

Butler, in command of Fortress Monroe, proposes to land in Virginia and to take Norfolk; Scott, the highest military authority in the land, opposes. Has Scott used up his energy, his sense, and even his military judgment in defending Washington before the inauguration? He is too old; his brains, cerebellum, must be dried up.

Imbecility in a leader is often, nay always, more dangerous than treason; the people can find out easily, too—treason, but is disarmed against imbecility.

What a thoughtlessness to press on Russia the convention of Paris? Russia has already a treaty with America, but in case of a war with England, the Russian ports on the Pacific, and the only one accessible to Americans, will be closed to them by the convention of Paris.

The governors of the States of Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania assure the protection of their respective States to the Union men of the Border States. What a bitter criticism on the slow, forbearing policy of the administration. Mr. Lincoln seems to be a rather slow intellect, with slow powers of perception. However, patience; perhaps the shock of events will arouse and bring in action now latent, but good and energetic qualities. As it stands now, the administration, being the focus of activity, is tepid, if not cold and slow; the circumference, that is, the people, the States, are full of fire and of activity. This condition is altogether the reverse of the physiological and all other natural laws, and this may turn out badly, as nature's laws never can be with impunity reversed or violated.

The diplomats complain that Seward treats them with a certain rudeness; that he never gives them time to explain and speak, but interrupts by saying, "I know it all," etc. If he had knowledge of things, and of the diplomatic world, he would be aware that the more firmness he has to use, the more politeness, even fastidiousness, he is to display. Scott does not wish for any bold demonstration, for any offensive movement. The reason may be, that he is too old, too crippled, to be able to take the field in person, and too inflated by conceit to give the glory of the active command to any other man. Wrote to Charles Sumner in Boston to stir up some inventive Yankee to construct a wheelbarrow in which Scott could take the field in person.

In a conversation with Seward, I called his attention to the fact that the government is surrounded by the finest, most complicated, intense, and well-spread web of treason that ever was spun; that almost all that constitutes society and is in a daily, nay hourly, contact with the various branches of the Executive, all this, with soul, mind, and heart is devoted to the rebels. I observed to him that si licet exemplis in parvo grandibus uti. Napoleon suffered more from the bitter hostility of the faubourg St. Germain, than from the armies of the enemy; and here it is still worse, as this hostility runs out into actual, unrelenting treason. To this Mr. Seward answered with the utmost serenity, "that before long all this will change; that when he became governor of New York, a similar hostility prevailed between the two sections of that State, but soon he pacified "everything." What a Merlin! what a sorcerer!

Some simple-minded persons from the interior of the State of New York questioned Mr. Seward, in my presence, about Europe, and "what they will do there?" To this, with a voice of the Delphic oracle, he responded, "that after all France is not bigger than the State of New York." Is it possible to say such trash even as a joke?

Finally, the hesitations of General Scott are overcome. "Virginia's sacred soil is invaded;" Potomac crossed; looks like a beginning of activity; Scott consented to move on Arlington Heights, but during two or three days opposed the seizure of Alexandria. Is that all that he knows of that hateful watchword—strategy—nausea repeated by every ignoramus and imbecile ?

Alexandria being a port of entry, and having a railroad, is more a strategic point for the invasion of Virginia than are Arlington Heights.

The brave Ellsworth murdered in Alexandria, and Scott insisted that Alexandria be invaded and occupied by night. In all probability, Ellsworth would not have been murdered if this villanous nest had been entered by broad daylight. As if the troops were committing a crime, or a shameful act! O General Scott! but for you Ellsworth would not have been murdered.

General McDowell made a plan to seize upon Manassas as the centre of railroads, the true defence of Washington, and the firm foothold in Virginia.

Nobody, or only few enemies, were in Manassas. McDowell shows his genuine military insight. Scott, and, as I am told, the whole senile military council, opposed McDowell's plan as being too bold. Do these mummies intend to conduct a war without boldness?

Thick clouds of patriotic, well-intentioned harpies surround all the issues of the executive doors, windows, crevasses, all of them ready to turn an honest, or rather dishonest, penny out of the fatherland. Behind the harpies advance the busy-bodies, the would-be well-informed, and a promiscuous crowd of well-intentioned do-nothings.

SOURCE: Adam Gurowski, Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862, p. 37-49

Diary of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, April 24, 1851

A pleasant dinner, at the close of which we heard the news of Sumner's election. In the evening came Lowell and Gurowski and Palfrey, and Sumner himself to escape from the triumph and be quiet from all the noise in the streets of Boston. He is no more elated by his success than he has been depressed by the failure heretofore, and evidently does not desire the office. Не says he would resign now if any one of the same sentiments as himself could be put in his place.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 245

Diary of Adam Gurowski, April 1861

COMMISSIONERS from the rebels; Seward parleying with them through some Judge Campbell. Curious way of treating and dealing with rebellion, with rebels and traitors; why not arrest them?

Corcoran, a rich partisan of secession, invited to a dinner the rebel commissioners and the foreign diplomats. If such a thing were done anywhere else, such a pimp would be arrested. The serious diplomats, Lord Lyons, Mercier, and Stoeckl refused the invitation; some smaller accepted, at least so I hear.

The infamous traitors fire on the Union flag. They treat the garrison of Sumpter as enemies on sufferance, and here their commissioners go about free, and glory in treason. What is this administration about? Have they no blood; are they fishes?

The crime in full blast; consummatum est. Sumpter bombarded; Virginia, under the nose of the administration, secedes, and the leaders did not see or foresee anything: flirted with Virginia.

Now, they, the leaders or the administration, are terribly startled; so is the brave noble North; the people are taken unawares; but no wonder; the people saw the Cabinet, the President, and the military in complacent security. These watchmen did nothing to give an early sign of alarm, so the people, confiding in them, went about its daily occupation. But it will rise as one man and in terrible wrath. Vous le verrez mess les Diplomates.

The President calls on the country for 75,000 men; telegram has spoken, and they rise, they arm, they come. I am not deceived in my faith in the North; the excitement, the wrath, is terrible. Party lines burn, dissolved by the excitement. Now the people is in fusion as bronze; if Lincoln and the leaders have mettle in themselves, then they can cast such arms, moral, material, and legislative, as will destroy at once this rebellion. But will they have the energy? They do not look like Demiourgi.

Massachusetts takes the lead; always so, this first people in the world; first for peace by its civilization and intellectual development, and first to run to the rescue.

The most infamous treachery and murder, by Baltimoreans, of the Massachusetts men. Will the cowardly murderers be exemplarily punished?

The President, under the advice of Scott, seems to take coolly the treasonable murders of Baltimore; instead of action, again parleying with these Baltimorean traitors. The rumor says that Seward is for leniency, and goes hand in hand with Scott. Now, if they will handle such murderers in silk gloves as they do, the fire must spread.

The secessionists in Washington—and they are a legion, of all hues and positions are defiant, arrogant, sure that Washington will be taken. One risks to be murdered here.

I entered the thus called Cassius Clay Company, organized for the defence of Washington until troops came. For several days patrolled, drilled, and lay several nights on the hard floor. Had compensation, that the drill often reproduced that of Falstaff's heroes. But my campaigners would have fought well in case of emergency. Most of them office-seekers. When the alarm was over, the company dissolved, but each got a kind of certificate beautifully written and signed by Lincoln and Cameron. I refused to take such a certificate, we having had no occasion to fight.

The President issued a proclamation for the blockade of the Southern revolted ports. Do they not know better?

How can the Minister of Foreign Affairs advise the President to resort to such a measure? Is the Minister of Foreign Affairs so willing to call in foreign nations by this blockade, thus transforming a purely domestic and municipal question into an international, public one?

The President is to quench the rebellion, a domestic fire, and to do it he takes a weapon, an engine the most difficult to handle, and in using of which he depends on foreign nations. Do they not know better here in the ministry and in the councils? Russia dealt differently with the revolted Circassians and with England in the so celebrated case of the Vixen.

The administration ought to know its rights of sovereignty and to close the ports of entry. Then no chance would be left to England to meddle.

Yesterday N—— dined with Lord Lyons, and during the dinner an anonymous note announced to the Lord that the proclamation of the blockade is to be issued on to-morrow. N——, who has a romantic turn, or rather who seeks for midi a' 14¾ heures, speculated what lady would have thus violated a secret d'Etat.

I rather think it comes from the Ministry, or, as they call it here, from the Department. About two years ago, when the Central Americans were so teased and maltreated by the fillibusters and Democratic administration, a Minister of one of these Central American States told me in New York that in a Chief of the Departments, or something the like, the Central Americans have a valuable friend, who, every time that trouble is brewing against them in the Department, gives them a secret and anonymous notice of it. This friend may have transferred his kindness to England.

How will foreign nations behave? I wish I may be misguided by my political anglophobia, but England, envious, rapacious, and the Palmerstons and others, filled with hatred towards the genuine democracy and the American people, will play some bad tricks. They will seize the occasion to avenge many humiliations. Charles Sumner, Howe, and a great many others, rely on England, on her antislavery feeling. I do not. I know English policy. We shall see.

France, Frenchmen, and Louis Napoleon are by far more reliable. The principles and the interest of France, broadly conceived, make the existence of a powerful Union a statesmanlike European and world necessity. The cold, taciturn Louis Napoleon is full of broad and clear conceptions. I am for relying, almost explicitly, on France and on him.

The administration calls in all the men-of-war scattered in all waters. As the commercial interests of the Union will remain unprotected, the administration ought to put them under the protection of France. It is often done so between friendly powers. Louis Napoleon could not refuse; and accepting, would become pledged to our side.

Germany, great and small, governments and people, will be for the Union. Germans are honest; they love the Union, hate slavery, and understand, to be sure, the question. Russia, safe, very safe, few blackguards excepted; so Italy. Spain may play double. I do not expect that the Spaniards, goaded to the quick by the former fillibustering administrations, will have judgment enough to find out that the Republicans have been and will be anti-fillibusters, and do not crave Cuba.

Wrote a respectful warning to the President concerning the unvoidable results of his proclamation in regard to the blockade; explained to him that this, his international demonstration, will, and forcibly must evoke a counter proclamation from foreign powers in the interest of their own respective subjects and of their commercial relations. Warned, foretelling that the foreign powers will recognize the rebels as belligerents, he, the President, having done it already in some way, thus applying an international mode of coercion. Warned, that the condition of belligerents, once recognized, the rebel piratical crafts will be recognized as privateers by foreign powers, and as such will be admitted to all ports under the secesh flag, which will thus enjoy a partial recognition.

Foreign powers may grumble, or oppose the closing of the ports of entry as a domestic, administrative decision, because they may not wish to commit themselves to submit to a paper blockade. But if the President will declare that he will enforce the closing of the ports with the whole navy, so as to strictly guard and close the maritime league, then the foreign powers will see that the administration does not intend to humbug them, but that he, the President, will only preserve intact the fullest exercise of sovereignty, and, as said the Roman legist, he, the President, "nil sibi postulat quod non aliis tribuit." And so he, the President, will only execute the laws of his country, and not any arbitrary measure, to say with the Roman Emperor, "Leges etiam in ipsa arma imperium habere volumus." Warned the President that in all matters relating to this country Louis Napoleon has abandoned the initiative to England; and to throw a small wedge in this alliance, I finally respectfully suggested to the President what is said above about putting the American interests in the Mediterranean under the protection of Louis Napoleon.

Few days thereafter learned that Mr. Seward does not believe that France will follow England. Before long Seward will find it out.

All the coquetting with Virginia, all the presumed influence of General Scott, ended in Virginia's secession, and in the seizure of Norfolk.

Has ever any administration, cabinet, ministry—call it what name you will—given positive, indubitable signs of want and absence of foresight, as did ours in these Virginia, Norfolk, and Harper's Ferry affairs? Not this or that minister or secretary, but all of them ought to go to the constitutional guillotine. Blindness—no mere short-sightedness-permeates the whole administration, Blair excepted. And Scott, the politico-military adviser of the President! What is the matter with Scott, or were the halo and incense surrounding him based on bosh? Will it be one more illusion to be dispelled?

The administration understood not how to save or defend Norfolk, nor how to destroy it. No name to be found for such concrete incapacity.

The rebels are masters, taking our leaders by the nose. Norfolk gives to them thousands of guns, &c., and nobody cries for shame. They ought to go in sackcloth, those narrow-sighted, blind rulers. How will the people stand this masterly administrative demonstration? In England the people and the Parliament would impeach the whole Cabinet.

Charles Sumner told me that the President and his Minister of Foreign Affairs are to propose to the foreign powers the accession of the Union to the celebrated convention of Paris of 1856. All three considered it a master stroke of policy. They will not catch a fly by it.

Again wrote respectfully to Mr. Lincoln, warning him against a too hasty accession to the Paris convention. Based my warning,

1st. Not to give up the great principles contained in Marcy's amendment.

2d. Not to believe or suppose for a minute that the accession to the Paris convention at this time can act in a retroactive sense; explained that it will not and cannot prevent the rebel pirates from being recognized by foreign powers as legal privateers, or being treated as such.

3d. For all these reasons the Union will not win anything by such a step, but it will give up principles and chain its own hands in case of any war with England. Supplicated the President not to risk a step which logically must turn wrong.

Baltimore still unpunished, and the President parleying with various deputations, all this under the guidance of Scott. I begin to be confused; cannot find out what is the character of Lincoln, and above all of Scott.

Governors from whole or half-rebel States refuse the President's call for troops. The original call of 75,000, too small in itself, will be reduced by that refusal. Why does not the administration call for more on the North, and on the free States? In the temper of this noble people it will be as easy to have 250,000 as 75,000, and then rush on them; submerge Virginia, North Carolina, etc.; it can be now so easily done. The Virginians are neither armed nor organized. Courage and youth seemingly would do good in the councils.

The free States undoubtedly will vindicate self-government. Whatever may be said by foreign and domestic croakers, I do not doubt it for a single minute. The free people will show to the world that the apparently loose governmental ribbons are the strongest when everybody carries them in him, and holds them. The people will show that the intellectual magnetism of convictions permeating the million is by far stronger than the commonly called governmental action from above, and it is at the same time elastic and expansive, even if the official leaders may turn out to be altogether mediocrities. The self-governing free North will show more vitality and activity than any among the governed European countries would be able to show in similar emergencies. This is my creed, and I have faith in the people.

The infamous slavers of the South would even be honored if named Barbary States of North America. Before the inauguration, Seward was telling the diplomats that no disruption will take place; now he tells them that it will blow over in from sixty to ninety days. Does Seward believe it? Or does his imagination or his patriotism carry him away or astray? Or, perhaps, he prefers not to look the danger in the face, and tries to avert the bitter cup. At any rate, he is incomprehensible, and the more so when seen at a distance.

Something, nay, even considerable efforts ought to be made to enlighten the public opinion in Europe, as on the outside, insurrections, nationalities, etc., are favored in Europe. How far the diplomats sent by the administration are prepared for this task?

Adams has shown in the last Congress his scholarly, classical narrow-mindedness. Sanford cannot favorably impress anybody in Europe, neither in cabinets, nor in saloons, nor the public at large. He looks and acts as a commis voyageur, will be considered as such at first sight by everybody, and his features and manners may not impress others as being distinguished and high-toned.

Every historical, that is, human event, has its moral and material character and sides. To ignore, and still worse to blot out, to reject the moral incentives and the moral verdict, is a crime to the public at large, is a crime towards human reason.

Such action blunts sound feelings and comprehension, increases the arrogance of the evil-doers.

The moral criterion is absolute and unconditional, and ought as such unconditionally to be applied to the events here. Things and actions must be called by their true names. What is true, noble, pure, and lofty, is on the side of the North, and permeates the unnamed millions of the free people; it ought to be separated from what is sham, egotism, lie or assumption. Truth must be told, never mind the outcry. History has not to produce pieces for the stage, or to amuse a tea-party.

Regiments pour in; the Massachusetts men, of course, leading the van, as in the times of the tea-party. My admiration for the Yankees is justified on every step, as is my scorn, my contempt, etc., etc., of the Southern chivalrous slaver.

Wrote to Charles Sumner expressing my wonder at the undecided conduct of the administration; at its want of foresight; its eternal parleying with Baltimoreans, Virginians, Missourians, etc., and no step to tread down the head of the young snake. No one among them seems to have the seer's eye. The people alone, who arm, who pour in every day and in large numbers, who transform Washington into a camp, and who crave for fighting, the people alone have the prophetic inspiration, and are the genuine statesmen for the emergency.

How will the Congress act? The Congress will come here emerging from the innermost of the popular volcano; but the Congress will be manacled by formulas; it will move not in the spirit of the Constitution, but in the dry constitutionalism, and the Congress will move with difficulty. Still I have faith, although the Congress never will seize upon parliamentary omnipotence. Up to to-day, the administration, instead of boldly crushing, or, at least, attempting to do it; instead of striking at the traitors, the administration is continually on the lookout where the blows come from, scarcely having courage to ward them off. The deputations pouring from the North urge prompt, decided, crushing action. This thunder-voice of the twenty millions of freemen ought to nerve this senile administration. The Southern leaders do not lose one minute's time; they spread the fire, arm, and attack with all the fury of traitors and criminals.

The Northern merchants roar for the offensive; the administration is undecided.

Some individuals, politicians, already speak out that the slaveocratic privileges are only to be curtailed, and slavery preserved as a domestic institution. Not a bit of it. The current and the development of events will run over the heads of the pusillanimous and contemptible conservatives. Slavery must perish, even if the whole North, Lincoln and Seward at its head, should attempt to save it.

Already they speak of the great results of Fabian policy; Seward, I am told, prides in it. Do those Fabiuses know what they talk about? Fabius's tactics—not policy—had in view not to expose young, disheartened levies against Hannibal's unconquered veterans, but further to give time to Rome to restore her exhausted means, to recover political influences with other Italian independent communities, to reconclude broken alliances with the cities, etc. But is this the condition of the Union? Your Fabian policy will cost lives, time, and money; the people feels it, and roars for action. Events are great, the people is great, but the official leaders may turn out inadequate to both.

What a magnificent chance-scarcely equal in history to become a great historical personality, to tower over future generations. But I do not see any one pointing out the way. Better so; the principle of self-government as the self-acting, self-preserving force will be asserted by the total eclipse of great or even eminent men.

The administration, under the influence of drill men, tries to form twenty regiments of regulars, and calls for 45,000 three years' volunteers. What a curious appreciation of necessity and of numbers must prevail in the brains of the administration. Twenty regiments of regulars will be a drop in water; will not help anything, but will be sufficient to poison the public spirit. Citizens and people, but not regulars, not hirelings, are to fight the battle of principle. Regulars and their spirit, with few exceptions, is worse here than were the Yanitschars.

When the principle will be saved and victorious, it will be by the devotion, the spontaneity of the people, and not by Lincoln, Scott, Seward, or any of the like. It is said that Seward rules both Lincoln and Scott. The people, the masses, do not doubt their ability to crush by one blow the traitors, but the administration does.

What I hear concerning the Blairs confirms my high opinion of both. Blair alone in the Cabinet represents the spirit of the people.

Something seems not right with Scott. Is he too old, or too much of a Virginian, or a hero on a small scale?

If, as they say, the President is guided by Scott's advice, such advice, to judge from facts, is not politic, not heroic, not thorough, not comprehensive, and not at all military, that is, not broad and deep, in the military sense. It will be a pity to be disappointed in this national idol.

Scott is against entering Virginia, against taking Baltimore, against punishing traitors. Strange, strange!

Diplomats altogether out of their senses; they are bewildered by the uprising, by the unanimity, by the warlike, earnest, unflinching attitude of the masses of the freemen, of my dear Yankees. The diplomats have lost the compass. They, duty bound, were diplomatically obsequious to the power held so long by the pro-slavery party. They got accustomed to the arrogant assumption and impertinence of the slavers, and, forgetting their European origin, the diplomats tacitly — but for their common sense and honor I hope reluctantly admitted the assumptions of the Southern banditti to be in America the nearest assimilation to the chivalry and nobility of old Europe. Without taking the cudgel in defence of European nobility, chivalry, and aristocracy, it is sacrilegious to compare those infamous slavers with the old or even with the modern European higher classes. In the midst of this slave-driving, slave-worshipping, and slave-breeding society of Washington, the diplomats swallowed, gulped all the Southern lies about the Constitution, state-rights, the necessity of slavery, and other like infamies. The question is, how far the diplomats in their respective official reports transferred these pro-slavery common-places to their governments. But, after all, the governments of Europe will not be thoroughly influenced by the chat of their diplomats.

Among all diplomats the English (Lord Lyons) is the most sphinx; he is taciturn, reserved, listens more than he speaks; the others are more communicative.

What an idea have those Americans of sending a secret agent to Canada, and what for? England will find it out, and must be offended. I would not have committed such an absurdity, even in my palmy days, when I conspired with Louis Napoleon, sat in the councils with Godefroi Cavaignac, or wrote instructions for Mazzini, then only a beginner with his Giovina Italia, and his miscarried Romarino attempt in Savoy.

Of what earthly use can be such politique provocatrice towards England? Or is it only to give some money to a hungry, noisy, and not over-principled office-seeker?

SOURCE: Adam Gurowski, Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862, p. 22-36