Diary of Adam Gurowski, January 1862

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diary of Edward Bates, July 27, 1859

A bright day, pleasantly cool — On going in to the office [I] found on my desk, the card of Wm. G Bates⁴⁸ of Massts. — He called to see me (with Capt: Bissell) telling Dick that he was a couzen [sic] of my old friend I. C. Bates⁴⁹ of Northampton, and that he wished to see me, partly on that account, and partly for my politics [.]

. . .

Colfax. Recd, a letter today, from Mr. Colfax⁵⁰ who expresses himself much pleased with my long letter, amended in its phraseology in some particulars, as suggested by him; and he asks leave to shew the letter to Mr. C. A Dana ⁵¹ of the Tribune. Of course, I have no objection; my letter, tho' not written for publication, is not secret.

He also encloses, for my inspection, a letter from Mr. Dana to him, by which I find that D.[ana] prefers Chase⁵² to Seward — (but does not want either) as a candidate for the Presidency — and enquires, with apparent interest, about the present condition of "the Bates movement." Dana says — "If B.[ates] can be put forward as a representative of the emancipation cause in Missouri he will be the strongest candidate we can have. With any other man we shall have the Fillmore split over again [.] "

<Note this letter from D.[ana] to C.[olfax] is dated July 10[.] > About the same time Colfax wrote to Gibson,⁵³ and sent him, among other things, a letter from Mr. Bowles,⁵⁴ editor of the Springfield Republican (Massts.) to him, C[olfax]. [          ] Bowles, I believe, is in full concert with the Tribune of N. York, and Colfax, Defrese ⁵⁵ and other party leaders in the North West, to bring me out as the candidate of the Republicans. They are all afraid of Seward — they have personal objections doubtless, but their main ground is their full conviction that with Mr. S.[eward] for their candidate defeat, is inevitable.⁵⁶ And they seem to think, that if S.[eward] is not nominated, his friends will take care that neither Bankes⁵⁷ nor Chase, nor any other Republican shall be. In that event, they think me the most available candidate — the only man in fact, who, getting the Republican vote, can also secure the general support of the Americans and Whigs. Some of them tell me that Mr. Weed⁵⁸ (who is understood to be Mr. Seward's " master of the horse " in N. Y.) goes for me, second.

Mr. Bowles says in his letter, that my N.[ew] Y.[ork] letter⁵⁹ "ought not to have been written." As a measure of policy, I differ from him widely.

1. It is satisfactory to the real economists every where[.]

2. It pleases the manufacturers, who need protection, especially in Pa.

3. It is agreeable to all the old whigs.

4. It is not offensive to the Americans at the South, very pleasing to those of the North.

5. It is rank poison to the proslavists of the South, and by resisting their propagandism — and hence, conciliatory to all their enemies.

6. The objection of Mr. Bowles, and other leading Republicans to my denunciation of slavery agitation, is, in my judgment, a positive advantage.

1. It keeps me separated from the Republican party, and yet not so far removed as to prevent their support: 2d. It allays the prejudices of Whigs and Americans farther south, who might not be willing to support any man who was fully identified with the Republican party. 3. It gives to the whole letter an air of courage and sincerity which may tend to beget a general feeling favorable to the writer, and especially among the multitude who are now disgusted with the frauds and mismanagement of all the parties [.]

["The Presidency in I860."⁶⁰

 

"In this week's issue we run up the name of Hon. Edward Bates, of Missouri, for President in 1860; subject to the decision of the Union Convention.

 

"It is useless for us to eulogise Edward Bates ; he is too well and favorably known to the whole nation, for us to attempt to add anything to the lustre of his character. He is the man to lead on to victory the columns of the mighty 'Union Party,' that is daily gathering strength all over the country. With him at our head, we can break up, and disband the two pernicious and sectional parties, the Democratic and the Republican, whose strife and wrangling over mere abstractions, have brought us several times upon the very verge of civil war.

 

"Edward Bates, is an eminently conservative man, and if elevated to the high position of Chief Magistrate of the Nation, will administer the government upon those truly national principles which actuated the earlier Presidents.

 

"Should Edward Bates be nominated, we feel assured that the Union men of Missouri will exert themselves to secure his election, as patriots should do when their country is in danger."]

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⁴⁸ A lawyer of Westfield, Massachusetts; Whig state senator, 1841; member of Governor Briggs's Council, 1844-1845.

⁴⁹ Isaac C. Bates: anti-Jackson Democratic congressman, 1827-1835 ; Whig U. S. senator from Massachusetts from 1841 until his death in 1845.

⁵⁰ Supra, April 27, 1S59, note 28.

⁵¹ Charles A. Dana: assistant to Greeley on the New York Tribune, 1847-1862; special commissioner of the War Department, 1862-1863; assistant secretary of War, 1863-1865; later, editor of the New York Sun. He was an ardent war-time supporter of Lincoln, then a bitter enemy of Johnsonian restoration, but finally a Liberal Republican seeking reform of Grantisms. In 1859 he was still in complete sympathy with Greeley.

⁵² Infra, March 5, 1861, note 27. Chase, a perennial aspirant to the Presidency was really in 1859 a leading candidate for the Republican nomination, but lost it. partly because his own state was not united in his support and partly because he. like Seward, was too extreme on slavery to win moderate votes.

⁵³ Supra, April 27, 1859, note 27.

⁵⁴ Samuel Bowles — anti-slavery leader, strong supporter of Lincoln against the Radical Republicans, advocate of moderation toward the South — made his Springfield Republican one of the most powerful influences in the North.

⁵⁵ John D. Defrees of Indiana: lawyer and state legislator ; first chairman of the Indiana Republican State Committee, 1856-1860 ; editor of the Indianapolis State Journal. He must, in the end, have supported Lincoln's candidacy, for Lincoln appointed him government printer in 1861.

⁵⁶ See supra, April 27, 1859, note 30.

⁵⁷ Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts: Democratic congressman, 1853-1855; American Party congressman and speaker of the House, 1855-1857; Republican congressman, 1857, 1865-1873, 1875-1879, 1889-1891 ; governor of Massachusetts, 1858-1861 ; president of the Illinois Central Railroad, 1861; major-general of volunteers, who served in Maryland, in the Shenandoah, at Vicksburg, in Louisiana, and in Texas, 1861-1865. As a former Know-Nothing, he was more "available " in 1860 than Seward whom the Know-Nothings hated.

⁵⁸ Thurlow Weed: editor of the Albany Evening Journal; for years the most powerful political figure in New York politics; one of the early managers of the National Republican Party. At this time he was managing Seward's campaign for the Republican nomination.

⁵⁹ See supra, 1-9.

⁶⁰ A clipping from the Louisiana (Missouri) Journal of July 25, 1859.

SOURCE: Howard K. Beale, Editor, Annual Report of The American Historical Association For The Year 1930, Vol. 4, The Diary Of Edward Bates, pp. 36-8

Diary of 2nd Lieutenant John S. Morgan, Wednesday, April 12, 1865

Were waked up at daylight & most of the men had made coffee when the Regt. was ordered on board the Gulf Steamer. Genl Banks, Genl Granger & suit embark on the same boat, as we are about the last Regt to embark the fleet set sail immediately, the fleet consisted of 6 musketo gunboats & about as many transports, two men of war, these boats carried the 13th A. C. the gunboat Cincinatti took the lead across the Bay arond with a torpedo rake. I was surprised that the Land batteries in the Bay did not open on us as we were in good range of it, crossed over to cat fish landing. A man of war run up close & lifted a shell over which called no reply but caused a display of white rags at every house along the landing. A boat was sent ashore which brought back word that there was no enemy in Mobile & the Mayor would surrender the city at the approach of our army. Genl Grangers orders were to beach the boats & men to wade on shore, but these orders were not carried out where it was certain there was no enemy, the boats run up to an old pier hardly stout enough to hold itself up. & the men disembarked. slowly, our boat was not light enough draft to move up to the pier & we were transferred to another boat and landed at 11. o clock. Admiral Thatcher was on board our boat before we disembarked. I hear the navy feel very soar about the little work they have done to reduce Mobile. When the sand forts were fond to be evacuated Genl Granger determined to run the Genl Banks to the city although the Admiral was afraid to run his musketo boat with a torpedo rake to the city. Col. Mackey wanted to have the regt remain on the boat & go in with the Genl but he would not allow it saying "I dont want to loose the men but if they blow me up with a torpedo they may blow & be D----d" his boat went in without running on any torpedo although the pilot was unacquainted with the channel & run by guess we lay arond on the banks after disembarking until 1. P. M. when we started for Mobile but from some cause we moved slow moving about 200 yds & then rest an hour so it took until dusk to get us in camp between the 1st & 2d lines of fortification about the city & about 1 mile from the city, I take a look at some of the forts an the line of forts which are the best earth works I ever saw & cannot understand how Genl Maury got the consent of his mind to leave such works without firing a gun. The forts mounted large Siege guns of heavy calibre many of them marked "Selma Mch 1865." the guns were all well spiked & carriages mostly destroyed most of the magazines were open & much of the ammunition destroyed although there was a great amont left, the citizens close by tell me that not much of the cotton was burned for Genl Canby sent in word if the cotton was burned he would burn the city. The big fire we noticed last night was the burning of the navy yard. Say when the Rebs left the commissaries with 6 months rations for the men were thrown open & citizens helped themselves, in the rush several citizens were hurt. a Co of Reb cavalry did not leave until our army was disembarkng & a small squad remained in town until the straglers who run ahead of the command were entering the city they snatched up one of these straglers & made off with him. The 1st Brig marched into town & 8th Ill was put on provost duty.

SOURCE: “Diary of John S. Morgan, Company G, Thirty-Third Iowa Infantry,” Annals of Iowa, Vol. XIII, No. 8, Third Series, Des Moines, April 1923, pp. 589-90

Nathaniel P. Banks Jr. to Senator Charles Sumner, August 9, 1852

If the people of Massachusetts who now distrust you could have heard your voice in the Senate, and witnessed the attention you received, they would leave everything to you, knowing that your course would be for the best.

_______________

[BLOG EDITOR’S NOTE: Charles Sumner delivered his eulogy for former United States Senator Robert Rantoul Jr. on the floor of the United States Senate on August 9, 1852, two days after Rantoul’s death.]

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 287

Diary of George Templeton Strong, April 17, 1860

After an apology for a dinner, I went to [Arnold] Guyot’s lecture at the Law School. Well attended and very hot; lecture original and interesting. Thereafter discoursed with Guyot, whom I like, and General Scott, the most urbane of conquerors. Curious it is to observe the keen, sensitive interest with which he listens to every whisper about nominations for the coming presidential campaign.

The Charleston Convention will nominate Douglas, I think. Then comes the sanhedrim of the undeveloped Third Party. It is not at all unlikely Scott may be its nominee. In that case, it is possible the Republican Convention may adopt him. I wish things might take that course, but hardly hope it. Neither Douglas nor Hunter nor Banks suits me.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 22

Diary of Adam Gurowski, September 1861

WILL McClellan display unity in conception, and vigor in execution? That is the question. He seems very energetic and active in organizing the army; but he ought to take the field very soon. He ought to leave Washington, and have his headquarters in the camp among the soldiers. The life in the tent will inspire him. It alone inspired Frederick II and Napoleon. Too much organization may become as mischievous as the no organization under Scott. Time, time is everything. The levies will fight well; may only McClellan not be carried away by the notion and the attempt to create what is called a perfect army on European pattern. Such an attempt would be ruinous to the cause. It is altogether impossible to create such an army on the European model, and no necessity exists for it. The rebel army is no European one. Civil wars have altogether different military exigencies, and the great tactics for a civil war are wholly different from the tactics, etc., needed in a regular war. Napoleon differently fought the Vendeans, and differently the Austrians, and the other coalesced armies. May only McClellan not become intoxicated before he puts the cup to his lips.

Fremont disavowed by Lincoln and the administration. This looks bad. I have no considerable confidence in Fremont's high capacities, and believe that his head is turned a little; but in this question he was right in principle, and right in legality. A commander of an army operating separately has the exercise of full powers of war.

The Blairs are not to be accused; I read the letter from F. Blair to his brother. It is the letter of a patriot, but not of an intriguer. Fremont establishes an absurd rule concerning the breach of military discipline, and shows by it his ignorance and narrow-mindedness. So Fremont, and other bungling martinets, assert that nobody has the right to criticise the actions of his commander.

Fremont is ignorant of history, and those around him who put in his head such absurd notions are a pack of mean and servile spit-lickers. An officer ought to obey orders without hesitation, and if he does not he is to be court-martialed and shot. But it is perfectly allowable to criticise them; it is in human nature—it was, is, and will be done in all armies; see in Curtius and other historians of Alexander of Macedon. It was continually done under Napoleon. In Russia, in 1812, the criticism made by almost all the officers forced Alexander I. to leave the army, and to put Kutousoff over Barclay. In the last Italian campaign Austrian officers criticised loudly Giulay, their commander, etc., etc.

Conspiracy to destroy Fremont on account of his slave proclamation. The conspirators are the Missouri slave-holders: Senator Brodhead, old Bates, Scott, McClellan, and their staffs. Some jealousy against him in the Cabinet, but Seward rather on Fremont's side.

McClellan makes his father-in-law, a man of very secondary capacity, the chief of the staff of the army. It seems that McClellan ignores what a highly responsible position it is, and what a special and transcendent capacity must be that of a chief of the staff—the more so when of an army of several hundreds of thousands. I do not look for a Berthier, a Gneisenau, a Diebitsch, or Gortschakoff, but a Marcy will not do.

Colonel Lebedeef, from the staff of the Emperor Alexander II., and professor in the School of the Staff at St. Petersburg, saw here everything, spoke with our generals, and his conclusion is that in military capacity McDowell is by far superior to McClellan. Strange, if true, and foreboding no good.

Mr. Lincoln begins to call a demagogue any one who does not admire all the doings of his administration. Are we already so far?

McClellan under fatal influences of the rampant pro-slavery men, and of partisans of the South, as is a Barlow. All the former associations of McClellan have been of the worst kind—Breckinridgians. But perhaps he will throw them off. He is young, and the elevation of his position, his standing before the civilized world, will inspire and purify him, I hope. Nay, I ardently wish he may go to the camp, to the camp.

McClellan published a slave-catching order. Oh that he may discard those bad men around him! Struggles with evils, above all with domestic, internal evils, absorb a great part of every nation's life. Such struggles constitute its development, are the landmarks of its progress and decline.

The like struggles deserve more the attention of the observer, the philosopher, than all kinds of external wars. And, besides, most of such external wars result from the internal condition of a nation. At any rate, their success or unsuccess almost wholly depends upon its capacity to overcome internal evils. A nation even under a despotic rule may overcome and repel an invasion, as long as the struggle against the internal evils has not broken the harmony between the ruler and the nation. Here the internal evil has torn a part of the constitutional structure; may only the necessary harmony between this high-minded people and the representative of the transient constitutional formula not be destroyed. The people move onward, the formula vacillates, and seems to fear to make any bold step.

If the cause of the freemen of the North succumbs, then humanity is humiliated. This high-spirited exclamation belongs to Tassara, the Minister from Spain. Not the diplomat, but the nobly inspired man uttered it.

But for the authoritative influence of General Scott, and the absence of any foresight and energy on the part of the administration, the rebels would be almost wholly without military leaders, without naval officers. The Johnsons, Magruders, Tatnalls, Buchanans, ought to have been arrested for treason the moment they announced their intention to resign.

Mr. Seward has many excellent personal qualities, besides his unquestionable eminent capacity for business and argument; but why is he neutralizing so much good in him by the passion to be all in all, to meddle with everything, to play the knowing one in military affairs, he being in all such matters as innocent as a lamb? It is not a field on which Seward's hazarded generalizations can be of any earthly use; but they must confuse all.

Seward is free from that coarse, semi-barbarous know-nothingism which rules paramount, not the genuine people, but the would-be something, the half-civilized gentlemen. Above all, know-nothingism pervades all around Scott, who is himself its grand master, and it nestles there par excellence in more than one way. It is, however, to be seen how far this pure American—Scott military wisdom is something real, transcendent. Up to this day, the pure Americanism, West Point schoolboy's conceit, have not produced much. The defences of Washington, so much clarioned as being the product of a high conception and of engineering skill,—these defences are very questionable when appreciated by a genuine military eye. A Russian officer of the military engineers, one who was in the Crimea and at Sebastopol, after having surveyed these defences here, told me that the Russian soldiers who defended Sebastopol, and who learned what ought to be defences, would prefer to fight outside than inside of the Washington forts, bastions, defences, etc., etc., etc.

Doubtless many foreigners coming to this country are not much, but the greatest number are soldiers who saw service and fire, and could be of some use at the side of Scott's West Point greenness and presumption.

If we are worsted, then the fate of the men of faith in principles will be that of Sisyphus, and the coming generation for half a century will have uphill work.

If not McClellan himself, some intriguers around him already dream, nay, even attempt to form a pure military, that is, a reckless, unprincipled, unpatriotic party. These men foment the irritation between the arrogance of the thus-called regular army, and the pure abnegation of the volunteers. Oh, for battles! Oh, for battles!

Fremont wished at once to attack Fort Pillow and the city of Memphis. It was a bold move, but the concerted civil and military wisdom grouped around the President opposed this truly great military conception.

Mr. Lincoln is pulled in all directions. His intentions are excellent, and he would have made an excellent President for quiet times. But this civil war imperatively demands a man of foresight, of prompt decision, of Jacksonian will and energy. These qualities may be latent in Lincoln, but do not yet come to daylight. Mr. Lincoln has no experience of men and events, and no knowledge of the past. Seward's influence over Lincoln may be explained by the fact that Lincoln considers Seward as the alpha and omega of every kind of knowledge and information.

I still hope, perhaps against hope, that if Lincoln is what the masses believe him to be, a strong mind, then all may come out well. Strong minds, lifted by events into elevated regions, expand more and more; their "mind's eye" pierces through clouds, and even through rocks; they become inspired, and inspiration compensates the deficiency or want of information acquired by studies. Weak minds, when transported into higher regions, become confused and dizzy. Which of the two will be Mr. Lincoln's fate?

The administration hesitates to give to the struggle a character of emancipation; but the people hesitate not, and take Fremont to their heart.

As the concrete humanity, so single nations have epochs of gestation, and epochs of normal activity, of growth, of full life, of manhood. Americans are now in the stage of manhood.

Col. Romanoff, of the Russian military engineer corps, who was in the Crimean war, saw here the men and the army, saw and conversed with the generals. Col. R. is of opinion that McDowell is by far superior to McClellan, and would make a better commander.

It is said that McClellan refuses to move until he has an army of 300,000 men and 600 guns. Has he not studied Napoleon's wars? Napoleon scarcely ever had half such a number in hand; and when at Wagram, where he had about 180,000 men, himself in the centre, Davoust and Massena on the flanks, nevertheless the handling of such a mass was too heavy even for his, Napoleon's, genius.

The country is—to use an Americanism—in a pretty fix, if this McClellan turns out to be a mistake. I hope for the best. 600 guns! But 100 guns in a line cover a mile. What will he do with 600? Lose them in forests, marshes, and bad roads; whence it is unhappily a fact that McClellan read only a little of military history, misunderstood what he read, and now attempts to realize hallucinations, as a boy attempts to imitate the exploits of an Orlando. It is dreadful to think of it. I prefer to trust his assertion that, once organized, he soon, very soon, will deal heavy and quick blows to the rebels.

I saw some manœuvrings, and am astonished that no artillery is distributed among the regiments of infantry. When the rank and file see the guns on their side, the soldiers consider them as a part of themselves and of the regiment; they fight better in the company of guns; they stand by them and defend them as they defend their colors. Such a distribution of guns would strengthen the body of the volunteers. But it seems that McClellan has no confidence in the volunteers. Were this true, it would denote a small, very small mind. Let us hope it is not so. One of his generals—a martinet of the first class—told me that McClellan waits for the organization of the regulars, to have them for the defence of the guns. If so, it is sheer nonsense. These narrow-minded West Point martinets will become the ruin of McClellan.

McClellan could now take the field. Oh, why has he established his headquarters in the city, among flunkeys, wiseacres, and spit-lickers? Were he among the troops, he would be already in Manassas. The people are uneasy and fretting about this inaction, and the people see what is right and necessary.

Gen. Banks, a true and devoted patriot, is sacrificed by the stupidity of what they call here the staff of the great army, but which collectively, with its chief, is only a mass of conceit and ignorance few, as General Williams, excepted. Banks is in the face of the enemy, and has no cavalry and no artillery; and here are immense reviews to amuse women and fools.

Mr. Mercier, the French Minister, visited a considerable part of the free States, and his opinions are now more clear and firm; above all, he is very friendly to our side. He is sagacious and good.

Missouri is in great confusion—three parts of it lost. Fremont is not to be accused of all the mischief, but, from effect to cause, the accusation ascends to General Scott.

Gen. Scott insisted to have Gen. Harney appointed to the command of Missouri, and hated Lyon. If, even after Harney's recall, Lyon had been appointed, Lyon would be alive and Missouri safe. But hatred, anxiety of rank, and stupidity, united their efforts, and prevailed. Oh American people! to depend upon such inveterate blunderers!

Were McClellan in the camp, he would have no flatterers, no antechambers filled with flunkeys; but the rebels would not so easily get news of his plans as they did in the affair on Munson's Hill.

The Orleans are here. I warned the government against admitting the Count de Paris, saying that it would be a deliberate breach of good comity towards Louis Napoleon, and towards the Bonapartes, who prove to be our friends; I told that no European government would commit itself in such a manner, not even if connected by ties of blood with the Orleans. At the start, Mr. Seward heeded a little my advice, but finally he could not resist the vanity to display untimely spread-eagleism, and the Orleans are in our service. Brave boys! It is a noble, generous, high-minded, if not an altogether wise, action.

If a mind is not nobly inspired and strong, then the exercise of power makes it crotchety and dissimulative in contact with men.

To my disgust, I witness this all around me.

The American people, its institutions, the Union—all have lost their virginity, their political innocence. A revolution in the institutions, in the mode of life, in notions begun—it is going on, will grow and mature, either for good or evil. Civil war, this most terrible but most maturing passion, has put an end to the boyhood and to the youth of the American people. Whatever may be the end, one thing is sure that the substance and the form will be modified; nay, perhaps, both wholly changed. A new generation of citizens will grow and come out from this smoke of the civil war.

The Potomac closed by the rebels! Mischief and shame! Natural fruits of the dilatory war policy—Scott's fault. Months ago the navy wished to prevent it, to shell out the rebels, to keep our troops in the principal positions. Scott opposed; and still he has almost paramount influence. McClellan complains against Scott, and Lincoln and Seward flatter McClellan, but look up to Scott as to a supernatural military wisdom. Oh, poor nation!

In Europe clouds gather over Mexico. Whatever it eventually may come to, I suggested to Mr. Seward to lay aside the Monroe doctrine, not to meddle for or against Mexico, but to earnestly protest against any eventual European interference in the internal condition of the political institutions of Mexico.

Continual secondary, international complications, naturally growing out from the maritime question; so with the Dutch cheesemongers, with Spain, with England - all easily to be settled; they generate fuss and trouble, but will make no fire.

Gen. Scott's partisans complain that McClellan is very disrespectful in his dealings with Gen. Scott. I wonder not.. McClellan is probably hampered by the narrow routine notions of Scott. McClellan feels that Scott prevents energetic and prompt action; that he, McClellan, in every step is obliged to fight Gen. Scott's inertia; and McClellan grows impatient, and shows it to Scott.

SOURCE: Adam Gurowski, Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862, pp. 92-103

Diary of Corporal Lawrence Van Alstyne: December 4, 1862

Judging from appearances we are to move again. The anchor is coming up and there is hustling and bustling about all over the boat. Anything by way of excitement is good and I am glad something is going to happen. I miss a great many boats that were lying about us yesterday and every now and then one goes past us towards the open sea.

Later. We're off, heading in the only direction where no land is in sight.

Later still. Have learned this much. The Baltic is the flag ship, with General Banks and staff on board. She has stopped and all the other vessels are forming in lines. Each vessel has orders which are only to be opened in case of separation from the flag-ship. It is too dark to see or to write and the ship pitches and dives terribly. Water dashes on deck sometimes, and this was almost thirty feet above water before we loaded up with coal.

SOURCE:  Lawrence Van Alstyne, Diary of an Enlisted Man, pp. 67-8

Diary of Corporal Lawrence Van Alstyne: December 15, 1862

Went on up the river until hard ground appeared. Passed two forts, Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip they call them, and say Butler's men had hard fighting to get past them when they came up. The secret is out. Banks is to relieve Butler in the Department of the Gulf. I wonder what harm it would have done had we been told this long ago. Chaplain Parker went ashore and brought off some oranges. A small limb had twenty-four nice oranges on it and this the Dominie said he would send home to show our friends what sumptuous fare we have. Some one suggested his putting in a few wormy hard-tack with the oranges.

We have anchored opposite a large brick building with a few small wood buildings near it.

SOURCE:  Lawrence Van Alstyne, Diary of an Enlisted Man, p. 72

Diary of Private Theodore Reichardt, Thursday, March 13, 1862

At Berryville. Marched by eight o'clock A. M. towards Winchester. When within two miles of the latter place, orders arrived for our division to return to Harper's Ferry. General Banks' troops were occupying Winchester already. Arrived at Berryville again by four o'clock in the afternoon.

SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, pp. 35-6

President Making.

To the Editors Press and Tribune:

These are President making days. I presume there are very few men in these United States, who have not for the last few months, been trying their hands at it. I am among the number, and I beg to give you my conclusions on the subject. I am afraid of extremes. My father was a Revolutionist, a red-hot Whig,—ardent and, I guess, oftentimes a little fast. He used to often caution me to look out; to be careful and avoid extremes. Now I think pretty well of Senator Seward, but I am afraid he is a little on the extremes. He is quite a young man yet. He is doing very good service where he is, and we may want to send him as our Minister to England. I guess we had better take someone else this time.

I think firstrate of our own Lincoln. Why he is a real Harry Clay of a fellow. I love him. He too, however, is quite young yet. He will if he lives, be much better known four our eight years hence. I hope to live and see him President; but I think it will be best to have him serve us four years as Attorney General, and then, or four years after that, try him for President.

Gov. CHASE of Ohio, has ardent admirers, not only in that state, but through all the free States. He is an able man. I guess a very good man; but his record does not all of it suit me. He clung rather too long to Locofoco Democracy. He, too, is yet a quite a young man and can well afford a little longer probation. I am by no means sure he is not a little on extremes on the slavery question. I think he is a good man, but I am not in favor of giving him the first post yet.

My deliberate first choice for President is Thomas Corwin of Ohio. You can’t better it I believe. He will avoid extremes and is highly conservative. He has had a few lies told about him, in relation to his being a little fond of money. It is all nonsense. If we get no worse “Galphim” to take care of our strong box, I shall be glad. He cannot be beat. I propose Gov. Banks as Vice President with him. As my second choice, I propose Edward Bates of Missouri, and Gov. Banks as Vice President. The country will be safe under the administration of either of those gentlemen.

REPUBLICAN WHIG DEMOCRAT.

SOURCE: “President Making,” The Press and Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, Tuesday, May 15, 1860, p. 2, col. 7

Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, Wednesday, February 26, 1862

Cloudy morning and rain before noon again. The roads were getting quite passable yesterday. There was a stir among the Military. Genl Banks crossed the River (above) it is said, and some Reg^ts & Batteries were sent over from here. Julia was at Gen^l M^cClellans. Mrs M told her that the Gen^l had gone to parts unknown over the River. There is a good deal of excitement in the City in consequence of the reported Advance. There has been some skirmishing among the Pickets today. Mr David of N.H. with his son, Edward from Dubuque, called on me at the office today with a letter from the D^r, of introduction. He left this afternoon for home. I was at the National tonight to see E, he has a brother in the Army who is now here.

SOURCE: Horatio Nelson Taft, The Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, 1861-1865. Volume 1, January 1,1861-April 11, 1862, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington D. C.

Diary of Private Theodore Reichardt, Wednesday, February 26, 1862

Marched at seven o'clock A. M. Arrived at Adamstown by eleven o'clock A. M. General Banks was at Harper's Ferry already. Troops were passing by railroad, en route for Harper's Ferry, all the time. Our battery went in park, for the rest of the day, close to the railroad. General McClellan passed through in a special train. Rain all night.

SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 33

Diary of Dr. Alfred L. Castleman, October 11, 1861

Sent off ambulances to-day to commence bringing forward the sick of my regiment, and whilst they were gone, after having put my hospital in good order for their reception, I stepped over again to Commodore Jones' house to see how the guards stationed there had succeeded in carrying out their orders. Till I entered the house, I thought I had seen evidences of extreme vandalism, but the wanton destruction here beggars everything I have before witnessed. Furniture broken; feather beds opened, and their contents emptied over house and yard; even those beautiful family pictures were ground to atoms and thrown to the winds. But I need not describe here, for the impression is deeply stamped in memory, more durable and more accurate than words and letters can ever make. Everything destructable was destroyed.*

In handling over the papers I picked up the Commodore's "Journal of a cruise in the U. S. ship Relief-bearing the broad pennant of Commodore Jones-Thos. A. Downer, Esq., Commander," which I have preserved, and also a letter from a son of Commodore Tatnall (late of the rebel Merrimac) to Commodore Jones, written from the Meditterranean, asking to be relieved from duty there, and to be permitted to return to America.†

As it will be a matter of interest to me, in future, to study my predictions as to the course and conduct of this war-to rejoice and be vain over those which prove correct, and to laugh at or be ashamed of those which prove false, I shall continue to record them as I have begun; and here I enter one in which I hope to take interest a long time hence. As I have constantly predicted, we have had no fight here nor shall we have; and I now very much doubt whether we shall have a fight even at Manassas, and for this reason: "After all the feints of the enemy here to draw Gen. Banks from Harper's Ferry had failed, they, seeing that we have got foot-hold in North Carolina, will fall back on their fortifications at Centerville and Manassas, and then presenting a bold front with a small body, will cover the withdrawal of the larger part of their force, which they will distribute in Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and Western Virginia, and I very much doubt whether they will retain enough at Manassas to make a respectable fight. Kentucky and Tennessee are to become the theatre of war; and if I am not greatly mistaken, Kentucky will have trying times between this and the first of January. I hope that Gen. McClellan is taking the same view of things, and is preparing to meet it." What I have here marked as a quotation is a copied from a letter this day written to a friend on the prospects of the war.

_______________

* It is worthy of remark here, that thus whilst this wanton destruction was going on, a half a mile away, everything on the place of Mr. Johnson, (a loyalist, whose house and garden were in the very midst of the encampments,) though unguarded was unmolested; every article he had to dispose of was bought and paid for, at high prices, by the soldiers. Even thus early could we read the soldier's aversion to guarding, or having guarded the property of rebels.

† This letter I handed to a lady connection of the Tatnall family, who was with me at the time, and she found means of restoring it to them.

SOURCE: Alfred L. Castleman, The Army of the Potomac. Behind the Scenes. A Diary of Unwritten History; From the Organization of the Army, by General George B. McClellan, to the close of the Campaign in Virginia about the First Day January, 1863, p. 42-3

Diary of Private Theodore Reichardt, Sunday, December 1, 1861 to Monday, December 9, 1861

Nothing of any consequence happened. Camp wore a wintry aspect. The time was mostly occupied in building stables for the horses. Colonel Tompkins, now on General Stone's staff, arrived at Poolesville; we did no longer belong to General Banks' division, but to General Stone's.

SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 27

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 Private Theodore Reichardt, Monday, October 21, 1861

Battle of Ball's Bluff. Gen. Stone crossed the Potomac near Conrad's Ferry, across Harrison's Island, with Col. Baker's brigade, this morning. (Forty-second New York, Fifteenth and Twentieth Massachusetts Regiments, and a piece of artillery, of Capt. Vaughan's battery. The rest of the battery stayed on Harrison Island.) By seven o'clock in the evening, the whole division of Gen. Banks left Darnestown, going to Edwards Ferry. Our battery started about nine o'clock. Arriving at Poolesville, we heard of the disastrous result. Our troops had withdrawn from Ball's Bluff. Col. Baker's corpse was brought into town.

SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 24-5

Diary of Private Theodore Reichardt, Wednesday, October 16, 1861

Battery drill, and speech by our First Lieutenant. Gen. Banks visited our camp this evening. Nothing important up to [Saturday, October 19.]

SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 24

Diary of Private Theodore Reichardt, Saturday, October 19, 1861

Gen. Banks and staff honored our battery drill with their presence. Col. Geary of the Twenty-eighth Pennsylvania, and Capt. Tompkins, with the right section, had a fight with the rebels at Harper's Ferry and Bolivar Heights. Our right section, occupying Maryland Heights, fired into Bolivar and on a rebel battery on Loudon Heights. Even the drivers served an old iron gun. Col. Geary's troops, crossing the river in scows, carried the fight to Bolivar Heights. No loss of men in the right section.

SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 24

Diary of Private W. J. Davidson, March 14, 1863

We have had no fight here yet, but from the indications it can't be deferred much longer. We have drawn one hundred rounds of ammunition, the batteries are training their horses, and many other unmistakable signs of an early engagement are to be seen at all hours of the day. A considerable force was sent out last night to watch the movements of the enemy, and reported this morning that they were landing troops, guns, etc., below. Their men are deserting They assign as a cause and coming over at the rate of five a day, that they are placed on a level with the negro regiments in Bank's Army.

Evening.—Eight of the enemy's vessels appeared around the bend at noon to-day, and commenced throwing shells into our fortifications, but the range was too long to justify our guns replying. We were ordered to our position, which is on the right wing, and near the river batteries, decidedly the most dangerous one that could be assigned us. Here we spent the evening very pleasantly dodging shells, quite a number of which fell within our line.

SOURCE: Edwin L. Drake, Editor, The Annals of the Army of Tennessee and Early Western History, Vol. 1, p. 125

Senator John Sherman to General William T. Sherman, August 4, 1872

MANSFIELD, OHIO, Aug. 4, 1872.

Dear Brother: . . . Just now all interest is centred upon the Presidential election. As you say, the Republicans are running a Democrat, and the Democrats a Republican. And there is not an essential difference in the platform of principle. The chief interest I feel in the canvass is the preservation of the Republican party, which I think essential to secure the fair enforcement of the results of the war. General Grant has so managed matters as to gain the very bitter and active hostility of many of the leading Republicans, and the personal indifference of most of the residue. He will, however, be fairly supported by the great mass of the Republicans, and I still hope and believe will be elected. The defections among Republicans will be made up by Democrats, who will not vote for Greeley.

The whole canvass is so extraordinary, that no result can be anticipated. You will notice that Sumner, Thurman, Banks, and others are for Greeley, who is probably the most unfit man for President, except Train, that has ever been mentioned. I intend to support Grant fairly and fully, as best for the country and Republican party.

Affectionately yours,

JOHN SHERMAN.

SOURCE: Rachel Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 338-9