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
