Captain Harris and a
part of his company were detached from our battalion and started to Tennessee
with John Morgan's Squadron for the purpose of watching the movements of the
Federals there and reporting back.
SOURCE: Richard R.
Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee
Confederate Cavalry, p. 166
It was reported that
the Federals were at Sulphur Springs, some twelve or fifteen miles from
Burnsville.
The picket on that
road was reenforced about midnight.
SOURCE: Richard R.
Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee
Confederate Cavalry, p. 166-7
McNairy sent a scout
out in the direction of Sulphur Springs. On returning they reported no Federals
there.
SOURCE: Richard R.
Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee
Confederate Cavalry, p. 167
After dinner with
Ellie to No. 24, where I left her, and then seeing a glow in the southern sky
over the roof of the Union Place Hotel, I started in pursuit of the fire. I
dog-trotted to Grand Street before I found it. A great tenement house in Elm
Street near Grand burning fiercely. Scores of families had been turned out of
it into the icy streets and bitter weather. Celtic and Teutonic fathers and
mothers were rushing about through the dense crowd in quest of missing
children. A quiet, respectable German was looking for his two (the elder
"was eight years old and could take care of himself, but the younger had
only nine months and couldn’t well do so”). I thought of poor little Johnny
frightened and unprotected in a strange scene of uproar and dark night and the
glare of conflagration and piercing cold, and of Babbins, and tried to help the
man but without success. There were stories current in the crowd of lives lost
in the burning house; some said thirty, others two. The latter statement
probably nearer the truth. Steam fire engines are a new element in our
conflagrations and an effective one, contributing to the tout ensemble a column
of smoke and sparks, and a low shuddering, throbbing bass note, more impressive
than the clank of the old-fashioned machines. . . .
There is a Speaker
at last. Sherman withdrew, and the Republicans elected Pennington of New Jersey
(Bill Pennington’s father), who seems a very fit man for the place. Reading
Agassiz’s Essay on Classification. Rather hard reading for anyone not thoroughly
learned in a score of -ologies. But I can see and appreciate its general scope
and hold it to be a very profound and valuable book.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins
and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong,
Vol. 3, p. 6
Last night’s Elm
Street fire was a sad business. Some eighteen or twenty people perished. There
was another fire in Lexington Avenue (dwelling houses) due to these pestilent
furnaces. Two factories have just been blown to bits in Brooklyn by defective
or neglected steamboilers, with great destruction of life. We are still a
semi-barbarous race. But the civilizing element also revealed itself this
morning at the Tombs, when Mr. Stephens was hanged for poisoning his wife. If a
few owners or builders of factories and tenement houses could be hanged
tomorrow, life would become less insecure.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins
and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong,
Vol. 3, p. 6
Just from opera,
Puritani, with Ellie and Mrs. Georgey Peters and Dr. Carroll. Little Patti, the
new prima donna, made a brilliant success.3 Her voice is fresh, but
wants volume and expression as yet; vocalization perfect. . . .
Columbia College
meeting at two p.m. Resolved to appropriate the President’s house and Professor
Joy’s to College purposes, turn them into lecture rooms, and so forth. A good
move. It is contemplated to build a new house for the President on Forty-ninth
Street, which I think questionable.
3 Adelina Patti, now about to enter her
eighteenth year, had made her operatic debut in New York in 1859.
4 Fraternities were well planted at Columbia.
Alpha Delta Phi had been chartered there in 1836, and three other fraternity
chapters had been organized in the 1840’s. Francis Henry Weeks took his degree
at Williams College in 1864.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins
and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong,
Vol. 3, p. 6-7
Opera tonight with
Ellie and Mrs. Georgey Peters and her papa; Der Freischutz in an Italian
version. The Germanism of that opera is so intense that any translation of its
text is an injustice to Weber’s memory, but its noble music can afford to be
heard under disadvantages. Max was Stigelli, and very good. Agatha (Colson) was
respectable. She knew how her music ought to be sung and tried hard, but had
not the vigor it demands. Caspar (Junca) was pretty bad.
Query: if there ever
existed a Caspar who could sing “Hier in diesem Jammerthal” as it ought to be
sung, or an Agatha who could do justice to the glorious allegro that follows her
“leise, leise, fromme Weise”? I enjoyed the evening, also Wednesday evening,
when we had Charley Strong and wife in “our box’’ and heard The Barber,
delightfully rendered. Little Patti made a most brilliant Rosina and sang a
couple of English songs in the “Music Lesson’’ scene, one of them (“Coming
through the Rye’’) simply and with much archness and expression. This little
debutante is like to have a great career and to create a furor in Paris and St.
Petersburg within five years. . . .
Last night I
attended W. Curtis Noyes’s first lecture before the Law School of Columbia
College.5 It was carefully prepared, and (to my great relief) honored
by an amply sufficient audience. The lecture room was densely filled, and
Oscanyan told me sixty or seventy were turned away. We may have to resort to
the Historical Society lecture room (in Second Avenue).
There is much less
talking of politics now that a Speaker is elected.
I think a cohesive
feeling of nationality and Unionism gains strength silently both North and
South, and that the Republican party has lost and is daily losing many of the
moderate men who were forced into it four years ago by the Kansas outrages and
the assault on Sumner. If the South would spare us its brag and its bad
rhetoric, it would paralyze any Northern free-soil party in three weeks. But
while Toombs speechifies and Governor Wise writes letters, it’s hard for any
Northern man to keep himself from Abolitionism and refrain from buying a
photograph of John Brown.
Southern chivalry is
a most curious and instructive instance of the perversion of a word from its
original meaning; lucus a non lucendo
seems a plausible derivation when one hears that word applied to usages and
habits of thought and action so precisely contrary to all it expressed some
five hundred years ago. Chivalry in Virginia and Georgia means violence to one
man by a mob of fifty calling itself a Vigilance Committee, ordering a Yankee school
mistress out of the state because she is heterodox about slavery, shooting a
wounded prisoner, assailing a non-combatant like Sumner with a big bludgeon and
beating him nearly to death. Froissart would have recognized the Flemish boor
or the mechanic of Ghent in such doings. Sir Galahad and Sir Lancelot in the
Morte d’Arthur would have called them base, felon, dishonorable, shameful, and
foul.
5 William Curtis Noyes (1805—1864), one of the
foremost New York lawyers, and owner of a magnificent law library, had
distinguished himself in numerous cases; notably in the prosecution of the Wall
Street forger Huntington, and in protecting the New Haven Railroad stockholders
from the consequences of Schuyler’s embezzlement.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins
and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong,
Vol. 3, p. 7-9
6 Moses Y. Beach’s Wealthy Citizens of New
Cork (1845) had listed Whitney, a merchant, cotton speculator, and real estate
investor whom it described as "a very shrewd manager and close in his
dealings,” as worth ten millions and standing next John Jacob Astor in wealth.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins
and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong,
Vol. 3, p. 7-9
Spent this evening
diligently cutting the leaves of Darwin’s much discussed book on The Origin of Species and making acquaintance
with its general scope and aim. It’s a laborious, intelligent, and weighty
book. First obvious criticism on it seems this, that Darwin has got hold of a
truth which he wants to make out to be the
one generative law of organic life. Because he shews that the fauna and flora
of a group of islands lying near a certain continent are so like those of that
continent, though differing specifically therefrom, and so unlike those of
other regions more remote, as to make it probable that they are the offspring
of the continental species modified by the altered conditions of their new
habitat, he considers himself entitled to affirm that all beasts, birds, and
creeping things, from mammal to medusa, are developments from one stock, and
that man is the descendant of some ancestral archaic fish, with swimming
bladder improved into lungs, that flying fish have by successive minute steps of
progress through countless ages become albatrosses, and flying squirrels bats.
But I suspect that He who created and upholds this great marvelous system of
various harmonious life is not obliged to conformity with any one Law of
Creation and preservation that Darwin’s or any other finite intellect can
discover.
Darwin asks rather
large concessions. You must begin by giving him thousands of millions of
millions of years (that Johnny Strong would be puzzled to read were they
expressed in Arabic numerals) for the operation of his Law of Progress, and
admit that the silence of the stratified record of those ages as to its
operation and existence may be explained away; and then, the want of
affirmative evidence to sustain his theory being accounted for, he can make out
a plausible case for it by suggesting that “it may have been’’; “why should
not’’; “we may suppose that,” and the like.
The period required
for the production of the whole animal world from a single parent stock (and he
holds that both the animal and vegetable races have one common primeval parent,
a diatom, I suppose) by the working of his imaginary law of natural selection
is even beyond the all but inconceivable procession of ages which he concedes
that his theory calls for. Let us see. We have records of the condition of
animal life in certain of its departments that go back to the earliest picture
writing of Egypt and become more and more abundant and minute as they approach
our own days. Those of the last two hundred years are copious and elaborate.
During the last fifty, a mass of evidence has been collected that could hardly
be read through in one lifetime. The superficial area covered by investigations
thus recorded in our own day is immensely great; that is, 25,000 miles of
European coast line alone, studied almost inch by inch, every zoological
province of all the earth’s surface investigated (though, of course, not
exhaustively) by inquisitive travelers and men of science. Practical men,
stimulated by hope of profit in money, have been working hard and intelligently
to modify existing breeds or species by changing all their original or natural
relations to climate, food, and habit, and perpetuating as far as they could
every improvement in the breed artificially or accidentally produced. But no
symptom of the change of one species to another has been produced or has
occurred within the historic period. There is not even a legend of the ancient
identity of lion and eagle, no tradition of a period before horse and ass;
geese and ducks were distinct animals. No development of new organs or new
functions by any animal is anywhere recorded or traceable. Scientific breeders
after centuries of vigilant work have produced various types of horse, sheep,
pigeon, and so forth; but these several types lose their respective peculiarities,
unless their purity be carefully maintained. (Note Darwin’s statement about the
tendency of peculiarities of the rock pigeon, the original progenitor, to recur
in the fancy breeds, pouter and tumbler and so forth.) The area covered by
scientific research and by experiments in breeding for the last century is
equivalent (in considering Darwin’s theory) to scores of thousands of years of
recorded observation in a single district. But however this may be, man’s experience
for, we will say, only four thousand years furnishes no instance of the
development of new functions or new organs by any animal or vegetable organism.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins
and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong,
Vol. 3, p. 10-11
Efficient in Wall
Street. Pio Nono, “the Pope, that pagan full of pride,” is on bad terms with
the Eldest Son of the Church, that unprincipled Ghibelline, Louis Napoleon.
Unless the Ravaillacs and Jacques elements are extinct, Louis Napoleon may be
in danger.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins
and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong,
Vol. 3, p. 11
Went alone to
Philharmonic rehearsal at Academy of Music. Watched Hazeltine and pretty Helen
Lane billing and cooing just in front of me to the very appropriate
accompaniment of Beethoven’s lovely D Symphony. A sentimental gent would say
that the handsome young couple and the glowing joyous music of that brightest
of all Beethoven’s greater works were each a sort of commentary on the other.
Then I went to 24 Union Square and saw Mr. Buggies, who left Lockport Monday,
spent a day at Albany, and reached New York this morning. I paid him another
visit this evening. He has convalesced rapidly and looks better than I expected
to see him. I feared this perilous illness might have left him with energies
impaired and faculties blunted, but he is quite himself, full of life and
vigorous thought. He is not without his hobby, namely: there is, or seems to be,
a political reaction against sectionalism, John Brownism, Higher Lawism, and
the like. This is, therefore, a good opportunity to assert the claims of the
church as a conservative law-loving institution against Calvinism and the ultra
Protestant notions it has produced; to tell Union men throughout the country
that they belong in the church; to define the limits of authority and private
judgment in political ethics. A clear statement of all this might effect a
great deal just at this time and would come with a certain authority from the
committee appointed by the last general convention of which Mr. Ruggles is
chairman.
Monday, Jem and
George Anthon dined here, and we heard Martha, which is a very pretty opera.
Last night I attended Noyes’s second lecture before the Law School; crowded,
like the first. That people should go away from a law lecture in New York for want
of seats is without precedent. This school is the only one of our seeds of
post-graduate instruction that survives and grows, our only university nucleus.
If Betts and Ogden were less hopelessly inert, it might be developed into
usefulness on a large scale.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins
and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong,
Vol. 3, p. 11-12
THE truth about Bull Run will, perhaps, only reach the people when it becomes reduced to an historical use. I gather what I am sure is true.
About three weeks ago General McDowell took upon himself the responsibility to attack the enemy concentrated at Manassas. Deciding upon this step, McDowell showed the determination of a true soldier, and a cool, intelligent courage. According to rumors permeating the whole North; rumors originated by secessionists in and around Washington, and in various parts of the free States; rumors gulped by a part of the press, and never contradicted, but rather nursed, at headquarters, Manassas was a terrible, unknown, mysterious something; a bugbear, between a fortress made by art and a natural fastness, whose approaches were defended for miles by numberless masked batteries, and which was filled by countless thousands of the most ferocious warriors. Such was Manassas in public opinion when McDowell undertook to attack this formidable American Torres Vedras, and this with the scanty and almost unorganized means in men and artillery allotted to him by the senile wisdom of General Scott. General McDowell obtained the promise that Beauregard alone was to be before him. To fulfil this promise, General Scott was to order Patterson to keep Johnston, and a movement was to be made on the James River, so as to prevent troops coming from Richmond to Manassas. As it was already said, Patterson, a special favorite of General Scott, kindly allowed Johnston to save Beauregard, and Jeff. Davis with troops from Richmond likewise was on the spot. McDowell planned his plan very skilfully; no European general would have done better, and I am sure that such will be the verdict hereafter. Some second-rate mistakes in the execution did not virtually endanger its success; but, to say the truth, McDowell and his army were defeated by the imbecility of the supreme military authority. Imbecility stabbed them in the back.
One part of the press, stultified and stupefied, staggered under the blow; the other part showed its utter degradation by fawning on Scott and attacking the Congress, or its best part. The Evening Post staggered not; its editors are genuine, laborious students, and, above all, students of history. The editors of the other papers are politicians; some of them are little, others are big villains. All, intellectually, belong to the class called in America more or less well-read men; information acquired by reading, but which in itself is not much.
The brothers Blair, almost alone, receded not, and put the defeat where it belonged—at the feet of General Scott.
The rudis indigestaque moles, torn away from Scott's hands, already begins to acquire the shape of an army. Thanks to the youth, the vigor, and the activity of McClellan.
General Scott throws the whole disaster on politicians, and abuses them. How ungrateful. His too lofty pedestal is almost exclusively the work of politicians. I heard very, very few military men in America consider Scott a man of transcendent military capacity. Years ago, during the Crimean campaign, I spent some time at West Point in the society of Cols. Robert Lee, Walker, Hardee, then in the service of the United States, and now traitors; not one of them classed Scott much higher above what would be called a respectable capacity; and of which, as they said, there are many, many in every European army.
If one analyzes the Mexican campaign, it will be found that General Scott had, comparatively, more officers than soldiers; the officers young men, full of vigor, and in the first gush of youth, who therefore mightily facilitated the task of the commander. Their names resound to-day in both the camps.
Further, generals from the campaign in Mexico assert that three of the won battles were fought against orders, which signifies that in Mexico youth had the best of cautious senility. It was according to the law of nature, and for it was crowned with success.
Mr. Seward has a very active intellect, an excellent man for current business, easy and clear-headed for solving any second-rate complications; but as for his initiative, that is another question. Hitherto his initiative does not tell, but rather confuses. Then he sustains Scott, some say, for future political capital. If so it is bad; worse still if Mr. Seward sustains Scott on the ground of high military fitness, as it is impossible to admit that Mr. Seward knows anything about military affairs, or that he ever studied the description of any battle. At least, I so judge from his conversation.
Mr. Lincoln has already the fumes of greatness, and looks down on the press, reads no paper, that dirty traitor the New York Herald excepted. So, at least, it is generally stated.
The enemies of Seward maintain that he, Seward, drilled Lincoln into it, to make himself more necessary.
Early, even before the inauguration, McDowell suggested to General Scott to concentrate in Washington the small army, the depots scattered in Texas and New Mexico. Scott refused, and this is called a general! God preserve any cause, any people who have for a savior a Scott, together with his civil and military partisans.
If it is not direct, naked treason which prevails among the nurses, and the various advisers of the people, imbecility, narrow-mindedness, do the same work. Further, the way in which many leech, phlebotomize, cheat and steal the people's treasury, is even worse than rampant treason. I heard a Boston shipbuilder complain to Sumner that the ubiquitous lobbyist, Thurlow Weed, was in his, the builder's, way concerning some contracts to be made in the Navy Department, etc., etc. Will it turn out that the same men who are to-day at the head of affairs will be the men who shall bring to an end this revolt or revolution? It ought not to be, as it is contrary to logic, and to human events.
Lincoln alone must forcibly remain, he being one of the incarnated formulas of the Constitution, endowed with a specific, four years' lasting existence.
The Americans are nervous about foreign intervention. It is difficult to make them understand that no intervention is to be, and none can be made. Therein the press is as silly as the public at large. Certainly France does not intend any meddling or intervention; of this I am sure. Neither does England seriously.
Next, if these two powers should even thirst for such an injustice, they have no means to do it. If they break our blockades, we make war, and exclude them from the Northern ports, whose commerce is more valuable to them than that of the South. I do not believe the foreign powers to be forgetful of their interest; they know better their interests than the Americans.
The Congress adjourned, abandoning, with a confidence unparalleled in history, the affairs of the country in the hands of the not over far-sighted administration. The majority of the Congress are good, and fully and nobly represent the pure, clear and sure aspirations, instincts, nay, the clear-sightedness of the people. In the Senate, as in the House, are many, very many true men, and men of pure devotion, and of clear insight into the events; men superior to the administration; such are, above all, those senators and representatives who do not attempt or aim to sit on a pedestal before the public, before the people, but wish the thing to be done for the thing itself. But for the formula which chains their hands, feet, and intellect, the Congress contained several men who, if they could act, would finish the secession in a double-quick time. But the whole people move in the treadmill of formulas. It is a pity that they are not inspired by the axiom of the Roman legist, scire leges non est hoc verba earum tenere, sed vim ac potestatem. Congress had positive notions of what ought to be done; the administration, Micawber—like, looks for that something which may turn up, and by expedients patches all from day to day.
What may turn up nobody can foresee; matter alone without mind cannot carry the day. The people have the mind, but the official legal leaders a very small portion of it. Come what will, I shall not break down; I shall not give up the holy principle. If crime, rebellion, sauvagerie, triumph, it will be, not because the people failed, but it will be because mediocrities were at the helm. Concessions, compromises, any patched-up peace, will for a century degrade the name of America. Of course, I cannot prevent it; but events have often broken but not bent me. I may be burned, but I cannot be melted; so if secesh succeeds, I throw in a cesspool my document of naturalization, and shall return to Europe, even if working my passage.
It is maddening to read all this ignoble clap-trap, written by European wiseacres concerning this country. Not one knows the people, not one knows the accidental agencies which neutralize what is grand and devoted in the people.
Some are praised here as statesmen and leaders. A statesman, a leader of such a people as are the Americans, and in such emergencies, must be a man in the fullest and loftiest comprehension. All the noblest criteria of moral and intellectual manhood ought to be vigorously and harmoniously developed in him. He ought to have a deep and lively moral sense, and the moral perception of events and of men around him. He ought to have large brains and a big heart,—an almost all-embracing comprehension of the inside and outside of events,—and when he has those qualities, then only the genius of foresight will dwell on his brow. He ought to forget himself wholly and unconditionally; his reason, his heart, his soul ought to merge in the principles which lifted him to the elevated station. Who around me approaches this ideal? So far as I know, perhaps Senator Wade.
I wait and wait for the eagle which may break out from the White House. Even the burning fire of the national disaster at Bull Run left the egg unhatched. Utinam sim falsus, but it looks as if the slowest brains were to deal with the greatest events of our epoch. Mr. Lincoln is a pure-souled, well-intentioned patriot, and this nobody doubts or contests. But is that all which is needed in these terrible emergencies?
Lyon is killed,—the only man of initiative hitherto generated by events. We have bad luck. I shall put on mourning for at least six weeks. They ought to weep all over the land for the loss of such a man; and he would not have been lost if the administration had put him long ago in command of the West. O General Scott! Lyon's death can be credited to you. Lyon was obnoxious to General Scott, but the General's influence maintains in the service all the doubtful capacities and characters. The War Department, as says Potter, bristles with secessionists, and with them the old, rotten, respectable relics, preserved by General Scott, depress and nip in the bud all the young, patriotic, and genuine capacities.
As the sea corrodes the rocks against which it impinges, so egotism, narrow-mindedness, and immorality corrode the best human institutions. For humanity's sake, Americans, beware!
Always the clouds of harpies around the White House and the Departments,—such a generous ferment in the people, and such impurities coming to the surface!
Patronage is the stumbling stone here to true political action. By patronage the Cabinet keeps in check Congressmen, Senators, etc.
I learn from very good authority that when Russell, with his shadow, Sam. Ward, went South, Mr. Seward told Ward that he, Seward, intends not to force the Union on the Southern people, if it should be positively ascertained that that people does not wish to live in the Union! I am sorry for Seward. Such is not the feeling of the Northern people, and such notions must necessarily confuse and make vacillating Mr. Seward's—that is, Mr. Lincoln's policy. Seward's patriotism and patriotic wishes and expectations prevent him from seeing things as they are.
The money men of Boston decided the conclusion of the first national loan. Bravo, my beloved Yankees! In finances as in war, as in all, not the financiering capacity of this or that individual, not any special masterly measures, etc., but the stern will of the people to succeed, provides funds and means, prevents bankruptcy, etc. The men who give money send an agent here to ascertain how many traitors are still kept in offices, and what are the prospects of energetic action by the administration.
McClellan is organizing, working hard. It is a pleasure to see him, so devoted and so young. After all, youth is promise. But already adulation begins, and may spoil him. It would be very, very saddening.
Prince Napoleon's visit stirs up all the stupidity of politicians in Europe and here. What a mass of absurdities are written on it in Europe, and even by Americans residing there. All this is more than equalled by the solemn and wise speculations of the Americans at home. Bar-room and coffee-house politicians are the same all over the world, the same, I am sure, in China and Japan. To suppose Prince Napoleon has any appetite whatever for any kind of American crown! Bah! He is brilliant and intelligent, and to suppose him to have such absurd plans is to offend him. But human and American gullibility are bottomless.
The Prince is a noble friend of the American cause, and freely speaks out his predilection. His sentiments are those of a true Frenchman, and not the sickly free-trade pro-slaveryism of Baroche with which he poisoned here the diplomatic atmosphere. Prince Napoleon's example will purify it.
As I was sure of it, the great Manassas fortifications are a humbug. It is scarcely a half-way fortified camp. So say the companions of the Prince, who, with him, visited Beauregard's army.
So much for the great Gen. Scott, whom the companions of the Prince call a magnificent ruin.
The Prince spoke with Beauregard, and the Prince's and his companions' opinion is, that McDowell planned well his attack, but failed in the execution; and Beauregard thought the same. The Prince saw McClellan, and does not prize him so high as we do. These foreign officers say that most probably, on both sides, the officers will make most correct plans, as do pupils in military schools, but the execution will depend upon accident.
Mr. Seward shows every day more and more capacity in dispatching the regular, current, diplomatical business affairs. In all such matters he is now at home, as if he had done it for years and years. He is no more spread-eagle in his diplomatic relations; is easy and prompt in all secondary questions relating to secondary interests, and daily emerging from international complications.
Hitherto the war policy of the administration, as inspired and directed by Scott, was rather to receive blows, and then to try to ward them off. I expect young McClellan to deal blows, and thus to upturn the Micawber policy. Perhaps Gen. Scott believed that his name and example would awe the rebels, and that they would come back after having made a little fuss and done some little mischief. But Scott's greatness was principally built up by the Whigs, and his hold on Democrats was not very great. Witness the events of Polk's and Pierce's administrations. His Mississippi-Atlantic strategy is a delirium of a softening brain. Seward's enemies say that he puts up and sustains Scott, because in the case of success Scott will not be in Seward's way for the future Presidency. Mr. Lincoln, an old Whig, has the Whig-worship for Scott; and as Mr. Lincoln, in 1851, stumped for Scott, the candidate for the Presidency, the many eulogies showered by Lincoln upon Scott still more strengthened the worship which, of course, Seward lively entertains in Lincoln's bosom. Thus the relics of Whigism direct now the destinies of the North. Mr. Lincoln, Gen. Scott, Mr. Seward, form a triad, with satellites like Bates and Smith in the Cabinet. But the Whigs have not the reputation of governmental vigor, decision, and promptitude.
The vitiated impulse and direction given by Gen. Scott at the start, still prevails, and it will be very difficult to bring it on the right track—to change the general as well as the war policy from the defensive, as it is now, to the offensive, as it ought to have been from the beginning. The North is five to one in men, and one hundred to one in material resources. Any one with brains and energy could suppress the rebellion in eight weeks from to-day.
Mr. Lincoln in some way has a slender historical resemblance to Louis XVI.—similar goodness, honesty, good intentions; but the size of events seems to be too much for him.
And so now Mr. Lincoln is wholly overshadowed by Seward. If by miracle the revolt may end in a short time, Mr. Seward will have most of the credit for it. In the long run the blame for eventual disasters will be put at Mr. Lincoln's door.
Thank heaven! the area for action and the powers of McClellan are extended and increased. The administration seems to understand the exigencies of the day.
I am told that the patriotic and brave Senator Wade, disgusted with the slowness and inanity of the administration, exclaimed, "I do not wonder that people desert to Jeff. Davis, as he shows brains; I may desert myself." And truly, Jeff. Davis and his gang make history.
Young McClellan seems to falter before the Medusa—ruin Scott, who is again at his tricks, and refuses officers to volunteers. To carry through in Washington any sensible scheme, more boldness is needed than on the bloodiest battle-field.
If Gen. Scott could have disappeared from the stage of events on the sixth of March, his name would have remained surrounded with that halo to which the people was accustomed; but now, when the smoke will blow over, it may turn differently. I am afraid that at some future time will be applied to Scott * * * quia turpe ducunt parere minoribus, et quæ imberbi didicere, sense perdenda fateri.
Not self-government is on trial, and not the genuine principle of democracy. It is not the genuine, virtual democracy which conspired against the republic, and which rebels, but an unprincipled, infamous oligarchy, risen in arms to destroy democracy. From Athens down to to-day, true democracies never betrayed any country, never leagued themselves with enemies. From the time of Hellas down to to-day, all over the world, and in all epochs, royalties, oligarchies, aristocracies, conspired against, betrayed, and sold their respective father-lands. (I said this years ago in America and Europe.)
Fremont as initiator; he emancipates the slaves of the disloyal Missourians. Takes the advance, but is justified in it by the slowness, nay, by the stagnancy of the administration.
Gen. Scott opposed to the expedition to Hatteras!
If it be true that Seward and Chase already lay the tracks for the Presidential succession, then I can only admire their short-sightedness, nay, utter and darkest blindness. The terrible events will be a schooling for the people; the future President will not be a schemer already shuffling the cards; most probably it will be a man who serves the country, forgetting himself.
Only two members in the Cabinet drive together, Blair and Welles, and both on the right side, both true men, impatient for action, action. Every day shows on what false principle this Cabinet was constructed, not for the emergency, not in view to suppress the rebellion, but to satisfy various party wranglings. Now the people's cause sticks in the mud.
SOURCE: Adam Gurowski, Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862, p. 78-91
Secretary Seward is
much better to-day, we are gratified to state, having rested well last night.
He was able to sit up for a few hours this morning, for the first time since
the day he received his injuries.
SOURCE: “The
Secretary of State,” Evening Star,
Washington, D. C., Friday, April 14, 1865, p. 2, col. 4
The Friends of
Secretary SEWARD will be glad to learn that he is able to sit up to-day; that
he is able to eat substantial food, besides liquids; sleeps well at night; and,
his physicians think, will be able to attend to his official duties in a few
weeks.
SOURCE: “The
Condition of Secretary Seward,” Daily National Republican, Washington, D. C.,
Friday Evening, April 14, 1865, p. 2, col. 4
Secretary Seward is
improving as rapidly as could be expected under the circumstances. He rested
well last night, and there is every indication of his speedy recovery.
SOURCE: “The
Secretary of State,” Evening Star,
Washington, D. C., Wednesday, April 12, 1865, p. 2, col. 4
We are pleased to
learn that Secretary SEWARD is improving quite rapidly. He has no fever, his
appetite is good, and all his symptoms indicate a speedy recovery as the nature
of his injuries will admit.
SOURCE: “Secretary
Seward’s Condition,” Daily National Republican,
Washington, D. C., Wednesday Evening, April 12, 1865, p. 2, col. 1
We are glad to learn
that Secretary SEWARD, is convalescing. He has no symptoms of fever or
inflammation to-day, and is altogether more comfortable to-day than yesterday.
SOURCE: “Secretary
Seward,” Daily National Republican,
Washington, D. C., Saturday Evening, April 8, 1865, p. 2, col. 4
Secretary Seward is
much better to-day, having rested comparatively well last night. His face is
very painful yet at times.
SOURCE: “The Secretary
of State,” Evening Star, Washington,
D. C., Saturday, April 8, 1865, p. 2, col. 4
SOURCE: “Secretary
Seward. . .,” Daily Morning Chronicle,
Washington, D. C., Saturday Morning, April 8, 1862, p. 2, col. 2
We are gratified to
learn that Secretary SEWARD is much better to-day, and that the somewhat
alarming reports about him in circulation last evening are without foundation.
SOURCE: “Secretary
Seward’s Condition Improving,” National Republican,
Washington, D. C., Friday Evening, April 7, 1862, p. 2, col. 4
