DIARY. (continued 3)

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.

FEBRUARY, 1862.

Drifting — The English blue book — Lord John could not act differently — Palmerston the great European fuss-maker — Mr. Seward's "two pickled rods" for England — Lord Lyons — His pathway strewn with broken glass — Gen. Stone arrested — Sumner's resolutions infuse a new spirit in the Constitution — Mr. Seward beyond salvation — He works to save slavery — Weed has ruined him — The New York press — "Poor Tribune" — The Evening Post — The Blairs — Illusions dispelled — "All quiet on the Potomac" — The London papers — Quill-heroes can be bought for a dinner — French opinion — Superhuman efforts to save slavery — It is doomed! — "All you worshippers of darkness cannot save it!" — The Hutchinsons — Corporal Adams — Victories in the West — Stanton the man! — Strategy (hear! hear!)

We are obliged, one by one, to eat our official high-toned assertions and words, and day after day we drift towards putting the rebels on an equal footing with ourselves. We declared the privateers to be pirates (which they are), and now we proffer their exchange against our colonels and other honorable prisoners. So one radical evil generates numberless others. And from the beginning of the struggle this radical evil was and is the want of earnestness, of a firm purpose, and of a straight, vigorous policy by the administration. Paullatim summa petuntur may turn out true—but for the rebels.

The publication of the English blue book, or of official correspondence between Lord Lyons and Lord John Russell, throws a new light on the conduct of the English Cabinet; and, anglophobe as I am, I must confess that, all things considered, above all the unhappily-justified distrust of England in Mr. Seward's policy,—from the first day of our troubles Lord John Russell could not act differently from what he did. Lord John Russell had to reconcile the various and immense interests of England, jeopardized by the war, with his sincere love of human liberty. Therein Lord John Russell differs wholly from Lord Palmerston, this great European fuss-maker, who hates America. As far as it was possible, Lord J. Russell remained faithful to the noble (not hereditary, but philosophical) traditions of his blood. Lord John Russell's letter to Lord Lyons (No. 17), February 20, 1861, although full of distrust in the future policy of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet towards England, is nevertheless an honorable document for his name.

Lord J. Russell was well aware that the original plan of Mr. Seward was to annoy and worry England. Everything is known in this world, and especially the incautious words and conversations of public men. Months before the inauguration, Mr. Seward talked to senators of both parties that he had in store "two pickled rods" for England. The one was to be Green (always drunken), the Senator from Missouri, on account of the colored man Anderson; the other Mr. Nesmith, the Senator from Oregon, and the San Juan boundaries. Undoubtedly the Southern senators did not keep secret the like inimical forebodings concerning Mr. Seward's intentions towards England. Undoubtedly all this must have been known to Lord J. Russell when he wrote the above-mentioned letter, No. 17.

More even than Lord John Russell's, Lord Lyons's official correspondence since November, 1860, inspires the highest possible respect for his noble sentiments and character. Above all, one who witnessed the difficulties of Lord Lyons's position here, and how his pathway was strewn with broken glass, and this by all kinds of hands, must feel for him the highest and most sincere consideration. From the official correspondence, Lord Lyons comes out a friend of humanity and of human liberty,—just the reverse of what he generally was supposed to be. And during the whole Trent affair, Lord Lyons's conduct was discreet, delicate, and generous. Events may transform Lord Lyons into an official enemy of the Union; but a mind soured by human meanness is soothingly impressioned by such true nobleness in a diplomat and an Englishman.

Gen. Stone, of Ball's Bluff infamous massacre, arrested. Bravo! At the best, Stone was one of those conceited regulars who admired slavery, and who would have wished to save the Union in their own peculiar way. I wish he may speak, as in all probability he was not alone.

Sumner's resolutions infuse a new spirit in the Constitution, and elevate it from the low ground of a dead formula. The resolutions close the epoch of the Stories, of the Kents, of the Curtises, and inaugurate a higher comprehension of American constitutionalism. During this session Charles Sumner triumphantly and nobly annihilated the aspersions of his enemies, representing him as a man of one hobby, but lacking any practical ideas. His speech on currency was among the best. Not so with his speech about the Trent affair. It is superficial, and contains misconceptions concerning treaties, and other blunders very strange in a would-be statesman.

Ardently devoted to the cause of justice and of human rights, Sumner weakens the influence which he ought to exercise, because he impresses many with the notion that he looks more to the outside effect produced by him than to the intrinsic value of the subject; he makes others suppose that he is too fond of such effect, and, above all, of the effect produced in Europe among the circle of his English and European acquaintances.

It is positively asserted that Lincoln agreed to take Mr. Seward in the Cabinet, because Weed and others urgently represented that Mr. Seward is the only man in the Republican party who is familiar with Europe, with her statesmen, and their policy. O Lord! O Lord! And where has Seward acquired all this information? Mr. Seward had not even the first A B C of it, or of anything else connected with it. And, besides, such a kind of special information is, at the utmost, of secondary necessity for an American statesman. Marcy had it not, and was a true, a genuine statesman. Undoubtedly, nature has endowed Seward with eminent intellectual qualities, and with germs for an eminent statesman. But the intellectual qualities became blunted by the long use of crotchets and tricks of a politician, by the associations and influence of such as Weed, etc.; thereby the better germs became nipped, so to speak, in the bud. Mr. Seward's acquired information by study, by instruction, and by reading, is quite the reverse of what in Europe is regarded as necessary for a statesman. Often, very often, I sorrowfully analyze and observe Mr. Seward, with feelings like those evoked in us by the sight of a noble ruin, or of a once rich, natural panorama, but now marred by large black spots of burned and dead vegetation, or by the ashes of a volcano.

Now, Mr. Seward is beyond salvation—a "disappointed man," as he called himself in a conversation with Judge Potter, M. C.; he changed aims, and perhaps convictions. For Mr. Seward, slavery is no more the most hideous social disease; he abandoned that creed which elevated him in the confidence of the people. Now he works to preserve as much as possible of the curse of slavery; he does it on the plea of Union and conservatism; but in truth he wishes to disorganize the pure Republican party, which he hates since the Chicago Convention and since the days of the formation of the Cabinet. Under the advice of Weed, Mr. Seward attempts to form a (thus called) Union and conservative party, which at the next turn may carry him into the White House.

Seward considers Weed his good genius; but in reality Weed has ruined Seward. Now Mr. Seward supports strategy, imbecility, and McClellan. The only explanation for me is, that Seward, participating in all military counsels and strategic plans, and not understanding any of them, finds it safer to back McClellan, and thus to deceive others about his own ignorance of military matters.

The press—the New York one—worse and worse; the majority wholly degraded to the standard of the Herald and of the Times. The poor Tribune, daily fading away, altogether losing that bold, lofty spirit of initiative to which for so many years the Tribune owed its all-powerful and unparalleled influence over the free masses. Now, at times, the Tribune is similar to an old, honest sexagenarian, attempting to draw a night-cap over his ears and eyes. The flames of the holy fire, so common once in the Tribune, flash now only at distant, very distant epochs. The Evening Post towers over all of them. If the Evening Post never at a jump went as far as once did the Tribune, the Evening Post never made or makes a retrograde step; but perhaps slowly, but steadily and boldly, moves on. The Evening Post is not a paper of politicians or of jobbers, but of enlightened, well-informed, and strong-hearted patriots and citizens.

Mr. Blair, after all, is only an ambitious politician. My illusion about both the brothers is wholly dispelled and gone. I regret it, but both sustain McClellan, both look askant on Stanton, and belong to the conditional emancipationists, colonizationists, and other RADICAL preservers of slavery. All such form a class of superficial politicians, of compromisers with their creed, and are corrupters of others.

How ardently I would prefer not to so often accuse others; but more than forty years of revolutionary and public life and experience have taught me to discriminate between deep convictions and assumed ones—to highly venerate the first, and to keep aloof from the second. Gold is gold, and pinchbeck is pinchbeck, in character as in metal.

McClellan acts as if he had taken the oath to some hidden and veiled deity or combination, by all means not to ascertain anything about the condition of the enemy. Any European if not American old woman in pants long ago would have pierced the veil by a strong reconnoissance on Centreville. Here "all quiet on the Potomac." And I hear generals, West Pointers, justifying this colossal offence against common sense, and against the rudiments of military tactics, and even science. Oh, noble, but awfully dealt with, American people!

At times Mr. Seward talks and acts as if he lacked altogether the perception of the terrible earnestness of the struggle, of the dangers and responsibilities of his political position, as well now before the people as hereafter before history. Often I can scarcely resist answering him, Beware, beware!

Lincoln belittles himself more and more. Whatever he does is done under the pressure of events, under the pressure of the public opinion. These agencies push Lincoln and slowly move him, notwithstanding his reluctant heaviness and his resistance. And he a standard-bearer of this noble people!

Those mercenary, ignorant, despicable scribblers of the London Times, of the Tory Herald, of the Saturday Review, and of the police papers in Paris, as the Constitutionnel, the Pays, the Patrie, all of them lie with unparalleled facility. Any one knows that those hungry quill-heroes can be got for a good dinner and a douceur.

I am sorry that the Americans ascribe to Louis Napoleon and to the French people the hostility to human rights as shown by those échappés des bagnes de la littérature. Louis Napoleon and the French people have nothing in common with those literary blacklegs.

The Journal des Débats, the Opinion Nationale, the Presse, the Siècle, etc., constitute the true and honest organs of opinion in France. In the same way A. de Gasparin speaks for the French people with more authority than does Michel Chevalier, who knows much more about free trade, about canals and railroads, but is as ignorant of the character, of the spirit, and of the institutions of the American people, as he is ignorant concerning the man in the moon. So the lawyer Hautefeuille must have received a fee to show so much ill-will to the cause of humanity, and such gigantic ignorance.

Who began the civil war? is repeatedly discussed by those quill cut-throats and allies on the Thames and on the Seine.

Here some smaller diplomats (not Sweden, who is true to the core to the cause of liberty), and, above all, the would-be fashionable galopins des légations, are the cesspools of secession news, picked up by them in secesh society. Happily, the like galopins are the reverse of the opinions of their respective chiefs.

What superhuman efforts are made in Congress, and out of it, in the Cabinet, in the White House, by Union men,—Seward imagines he leads them,—by the weak-brained, and by traitors, to save slavery, if not all, at least a part of it. Every concession made by the President to the enemies of slavery has only one aim; it is to mollify their urgent demands by throwing to them small crumbs, as one tries to mollify a boisterous and hungry dog. By such a trick Lincoln and Seward try to save what can be saved of the peculiar institution, to gratify, and eventually to conciliate, the South. This is the policy of Lincoln, of Seward, and very likely of Mr. Blair. Such political gobe-mouche as Doolittle and many others, are, or will be, taken in by this manœuvre.

Scheme what you like, you schemers, wiseacres, politicians, and would-be statesmen, nevertheless slavery is doomed. Humanity will have the best against such pettifoggers as you. I know better. I have the honor to belong to that European generation who, during this half of our century, from Tagus and Cadiz to the Wolga, has gored with its blood battle-fields and scaffolds; whose songs and aspirations were re-echoed by all the horrible dungeons; by dungeons of the blood-thirsty Spanish inquisition, then across Europe and Asia, to the mines of Nertschinsk, in the ever-frozen Altai. We lost all we had on earth; seemingly we were always beaten; but Portugal and Spain enjoy to-day a constitutional regime that is an improvement on absolutism. France has expelled forever the Bourbons, and universal suffrage, spelt now by the French people, is a progress, is a promise of a great democratic future. Germany has in part conquered free speech and free press. Italy is united, Romanism is falling to pieces, Austria is undermined and shaky, and broken are the chains on the body of the Russian serf. All this is the work of the spirit of the age, and our generation was the spirit's apostle and confessor. And so it will be with slavery, and all you worshippers of darkness cannot save it.

Not the one who strikes the first blow begins a civil war, but he who makes the striking of the blow imperative. The Southern robbers cannot claim exemption; they stole the arsenals, and struck the first blow at Sumpter. So much for the infamous quill-heroes of the London Times, the Herald, and tutti quanti.

The highest crime is treason in arms, and this crime is praised and defended by the English would-be high-toned press. But sooner or later it will come out how much apiece was paid to the London Times, the Herald, and the Saturday Review for their venomous articles against the Union.

McClellan expelled from the army the Hutchinson family. It is mean and petty. Songs are the soul and life of the camp, and McClellan's heroic deeds have not yet found their minstrel.

After all, McClellan has organized—nothing! McDowell has, so to speak, formed the first skeletons of brigades, divisions, of parks of artillery, etc. The people uninterruptedly poured in men and treasures, and McClellan only continued what was commenced before him.

I positively know that already in December Mr. Lincoln began to be doubtful of McClellan's generalship. This doubtfulness is daily increasing, and nevertheless Mr. Lincoln keeps that incapacity in command because he does not wish to hurt McClellan's feelings. Better to ruin the noble people, the country! I begin to draw the conclusion that Mr. Lincoln's good qualities are rather negative than positive.

Mr. Adams complains that he is kept in the dark about the policy of the administration, and cannot answer questions made to him in London. But the administration, that is, Lincoln and Seward, are a little a la Micawber, expecting what may turn up. And, besides this, the great orator de lana caprina (Mr. Adams) deliberately degraded himself to the condition of a corporal under Mr. Seward's orders.

Victories in the West, results of the new spirit in the War Department. Stanton will be the man.

It is a curious fact that such commanders as Halleck, etc., sit in cities and fight through those under them; and there are ignoble flatterers trying to attribute these victories to McClellan, and to his strategy. As if battles could be commanded by telegraph at one thousand miles' distance. It is worse than imbecility, it is idiotism and strategy.

Stanton calls himself a man of one idea. How he overtops in the Cabinet those myrmidons with their many petty notions! One idea, but a great and noble one, makes the great men, or the men for great events. Would God that the people may understand Stanton, and that pettifoggers, imbeciles, and traitors may not push themselves between the people and Stanton, and neutralize the only man who has the one idea to break, to crush the rebellion.

Every day Mr. Lincoln shows his want of knowledge of men and of things; the total absence of intuition to spell, to see through, and to disentangle events.

If, since March, 1861, instead of being in the hands of pettifoggers, Mr. Lincoln had been in the hands of a man of one idea as is Stanton, nine-tenths of the work would have been accomplished.

McClellan's flunkeys claim for him the victories in the West. It is impossible to settle which is more to be scorned in them, their flunkeyism or their stupidity.

Lock-jaw expedition. For any other government whatever, in one even of the most abject favoritism, such a humbug and silly conduct of the commander and of his chief of the staff would open the eyes even of a Pompadour or of a Dubarry. Here, our great rulers and ministers shut the more closely their mind's (?) eyes * * * * *

For the first time in one of his dispatches Mr. Corporal Adams dares to act against orders, and mentions—but very slightly—slavery. Mr. Adams observes to his chief that in England public opinion is very sensitive; at last the old freesoiler found it out.

How this public opinion in America is unable to see the things as they naturally are. Now the public fights to whom to ascribe the victories in the West. Common sense says, Ascribe them, 1st, to the person who ordered the fight (Stanton); 2d, exclusively to the generals who personally commanded the battles and the assaults of forts. Even Napoleon did not claim for himself the glory for battles won by his generals when in his, Napoleon's, absence.

For weeks McClellan and his thus called staff diligently study international law, strategy (hear, hear!), tactics, etc. His aids translate for his use French and German writers. One cannot even apply in this case the proverb, "Better late than never," as the like hastily scraped and undigested sham-knowledge unavoidably must obfuscate and wholly confuse McClellan's—not Napoleonic—brains.

The intriguers and imbeciles claim the Western victories as the illustration of McClellan's great strategy. Why shows he not a little strategy under his nose here? Any old woman would surround and take the rebels in Manassas.

Now they dispute to Grant his deserved laurels. If he had failed at Donelson, the strategians would have washed their hands, and thrown on Grant the disaster. So did Scott after Bull Run.

Mr. Lincoln, McClellan, Seward, Blair, etc., forget the terrible responsibility for thus recklessly squandering the best blood, the best men, the best generation of the people, and its treasures. But sooner or later they will be taken to a terrible account even by the Congress, and at any rate by history.

It is by their policy, by their support of McClellan, that the war is so slow, and the longer it lasts the more human sacrifices it will devour, and the greater the costs of the devastation. Stanton alone feels and acts differently, and it seems that the rats in the Cabinet already begin their nightly work against him. These rats are so ignorant and conceited!

The celebrated Souvoroff was accused of cruelty because he always at once stormed fortresses instead of investing them and starving out the inhabitants and the garrisons. The old hero showed by arithmetical calculations that his bloodiest assaults never occasioned so much loss of human life as did on both sides any long siege, digging, and approaches, and the starving out of those shut up in a fortress. This for McClellan and for the intriguing and ignorant RATS.

MARCH, 1862.

The Africo-Americans — Fremont — The Orleans — Confiscation — American nepotism — The Merrimac — Wooden guns — Oh shame! — Gen. Wadsworth — The rats have the best of Stanton — McClellan goes to Fortress Monroe — Utter imbecility — The embarkation — McClellan a turtle — He will stick in the marshes — Louis Napoleon behaves nobly — So does Mr. Mercier — Queen Victoria for freedom — The great strategian — Senator Sumner and the French minister — Archbishop Hughes — His diplomatic activity not worth the postage on his correspondence — Alberoni-Seward — Love's labor lost.

Men like this Davis, Wickliffe, and all the like pecus, roar against the African race. The more I see of this doomed people, the more I am convinced of their intrinsic superiority over all their white revilers, above all, over this slaveholding generation, rotten, as it is, to the core. When emancipated, the Africo-Americans in immense majority will at once make quiet, orderly, laborious, intelligent, and free cultivators, or, to use European language, an excellent peasantry; when ninety-nine one-hundredths of slaveholders, either rebels or thus called loyal, altogether considered, as human beings are shams, are shams as citizens, and constitute caricatures and monsters of civilization.

Civilization! It is the highest and noblest aim in human destinies when it makes the man moral and true; but civilization invoked by, and in which strut traitors, slaveholders, and abettors of slavery, reminds one of De Maistre's assertion, that the devil created the red man of America as a counterfeit to man, God's creation in the Old World. This so-called civilization of the slaveholders is the devil's counterfeit of the genuine civilization.

The Africo-Americans are the true producers of the Southern wealth—cotton, rice, tobacco, etc. When emancipated and transformed into small farmers, these laborious men will increase and ameliorate the culture of the land; and they will produce by far more when the white shams and drones shall be taken out of their way. In the South, bristling with Africo-American villages, will almost disappear fillibusterism, murder, and the bowie knife, and other supreme manifestations of Southern chivalrous high-breeding.

Fremont's reports and defence show what a disorder and insanity prevailed under the rule of Scott. Fremont's military capacity perhaps is equal to zero; his vanity put him in the hands of wily flatterers; but the disasters in the West cannot be credited to him. Fremont initiated the construction of the mortar flotilla on the Mississippi (I positively know such is the fact), and he suggested the capture of various forts, but was not sustained at this sham, the headquarters.

These Orleans have wholly espoused and share in the fallacious and mischievous notions of the McClellanites concerning the volunteers. Most probably with the authority of their name, they confirm McClellan's fallacious notions about the necessity of a great regular army. The Orleans are good, generous boys, but their judgment is not yet matured; they had better stayed at home.

Confiscation is the great word in Congress or out of it. The property of the rebels is confiscable by the ever observed rule of war, as consecrated by international laws. When two sovereigns make war, the victor confiscates the other's property, as represented by whole provinces, by public domains, by public taxes and revenues. In the present case the rebels are the sovereigns, and their property is therefore confiscable. But for the sake of equity, and to compensate the wastes of war, Congress ought to decree the confiscation of property of all those who, being at the helm, by their political incapacity or tricks contribute to protract the war and increase its expense.

Mr. Lincoln yields to the pressure of public opinion. A proof: his message to Congress about emancipation in the Border States. Crumb No. 1 thrown—reluctantly I am sure—to the noble appetite of freemen. I hope history will not credit Mr. Lincoln with being the initiator.

American nepotism puts to shame the one practised in Europe. All around here they keep offices in pairs, father and son. So McClellan has a father in-law as chief of the staff, a brother as aid, and then various relations, clerks, etc., etc., and the same in some other branches of the administration.

The Merrimac affair. Terrible evidence how active and daring are the rebels, and we sleepy, slow, and self-satisfied. By applying the formula of induction from effect to cause, the disaster occasioned by the Merrimac, and any further havoc to be made by this iron vessel,—all this is to be credited to McClellan.

If Norfolk had been taken months ago, then the rebels could not have constructed the Merrimac. Norfolk could have been easily taken any day during the last six months, but for strategy and the maturing of great plans! These are the sacramental words more current now than ever. Oh good-natured American people! how little is necessary to humbug thee!

Oh shame! oh malediction! The rebels left Centreville,—which turns out to be scarcely a breastwork, with wooden guns,—and they slipped off from Manassas.

When McClellan got the news of the evacuation, he gravely considered where to lean his right or left flanks, and after the consideration, two days after the enemy wholly completed the evacuation, McClellan moves at the head of 80,000 men—to storm the wooden guns of Centreville. Two hours after the news of the evacuation reached the headquarters, Gen. Wadsworth asked permission to follow with his brigade, during the night, the retreating enemy. But it was not strategy, not a matured plan. If Gen. Wadsworth had been in command of the army, not one of the rats from Manassas would have escaped. The reasons are, that Gen. Wadsworth has a quick, clear, and wide-encompassing conception of events and things, a clear insight, and many other inborn qualities of mind and intellect.

The Congress has a large number of very respectable capacities, and altogether sufficient for the emergencies, and the Congress would do more good but for the impediments thrown in its way by the double-dealing policy prevailing in Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet and administration. The majority in Congress represent well the spirit of self-government. It is a pity that Congress cannot crush or purify the administration.

All that passes here is maddening, and I am very grateful to my father and mother for having endowed me with a frame which resists the blows.

The pursuit of the enemy abandoned, the basis of operations changed. The rats had the best of Stanton. Utinam sim falsus propheta, but if Stanton's influence is no more all-powerful, then there is an end to the short period of successes. Mr. Lincoln's council wanted to be animated by a pure and powerful spirit. Stanton was the man, but he is not a match for impure intriguers. Also McClellan goes to Fortress Monroe, to Yorktown, to the rivers. This plan reveals an utter military imbecility, and its plausibility can only catch ——.

1st. Common sense shows that the rebels ought to be cut off from their resources, that is, from railroads, and from communication with the revolted States in the interior, and to be precipitated into the ocean. To accomplish it our troops ought to have marched by land to Richmond, and pushed the enemy towards the ocean. Now McClellan pushes the rebels from the extremity towards the centre, towards the focus of their basis,—exactly what they want.

I am sure that McClellan is allured to this strategy by the success of the gunboats on the Mississippi. He wishes that the gunboats may take Richmond, and he have the credit of it.

The Merrimac is still menacing in Hampton Roads, and may, some day or other, play havoc with the transports. The communications by land are always more preferable than those by water—above all for such a great army. A storm, etc., may do great mischief.

McClellan assures the President, and the other intriguers and fools constituting his supporters, that in a few days he will throw 55,000 men on Yorktown. He and his staff to do such a thing, which would be a masterpiece even for the French military leaders and their staffs! He, McClellan, never knew what it was to embark an army. Those who believe him are even greater imbeciles than I supposed them to be. Poor Stanton, to be hampered by imbecility and intrigue! I went to Alexandria to see the embarkation; it will last weeks, not days.

From Yorktown to Richmond, the country is marshy, very marshy; McClellan, a turtle, a dasippus, will not understand to move quick and to overcome the impediments. Faulty as it is to drive the rebels from the sea towards their centre, this false move would be corrected by rash and decisive movements. But McClellan will stick in the marshes, and may never reach Richmond by that road.

Any man with common sense would go directly by land; if the army moves only three miles a day it will reach Richmond sooner than by the other way. Such an army in a spell will construct turnpike roads and bridges, and if the rebels tear up the railroads, they likewise could be easily repaired. Progressing in the slowest, in the most genuine McClellan manner, the army will reach Richmond with less danger than by the Peninsula.

The future American historian ought to record in gold and diamonds the names of those who in the councils opposed McClellan's new strategy. Oh! Mr. Seward, Mr. Seward, why is your name to be recorded among the most ardent supporters of this strategy?

Jeff. Davis sneers at the immense amount of money, etc., spent by Mr. Lincoln. As he, Jeff. Davis, is still quietly in Richmond, and his army undestroyed, of course he is right to sneer at Mr. Lincoln and McClellan, whom he, Jeff. Davis, kept at bay with wooden guns.

Senator Sumner takes airs to defend or explain McClellan. The Senator is probably influenced by Blair. The Senator cannot be classed among traitors and intriguers supporting the great strategian. Perhaps likewise the Senator believes it to be distingué to side with strategy.

If the party and the people could have foreseen that civil war was inevitable, undoubtedly Mr. Lincoln would not have been elected. But as the cause of the North would have been totally ruined by the election of Lincoln's Chicago competitor, Mr. Lincoln is the lesser of the two evils.

A great nuisance is this competition for all kinds of news by the reporters hanging about the city, the government, and the army. Some of these reporters are men of sense, discernment, and character; but for the sake of competition and priority they fish up and pick up what they can, what comes in their way, even if such news is altogether beyond common sense, or beyond probability.

In this way the best among the newspapers have confused and misled the sound judgment of the people; so it is in relation to the overwhelming numbers of the rebels, and by spreading absurdities concerning relations with Europe. The reporters of the Herald and of the Times are peremptorily instructed to see the events through the perverted spectacles of their respective bosses.

Mr. Adams gets either frightened or warm. Mr. A. insists on the slavery question, speaks of the project of Mason and Slidell in London to offer certain moral concessions to English anti-slavery feeling,—such as the regulations of marriage, the repeal of laws against manumission, etc. Mr. Adams warns that these offers may make an impression in England.

When all around me I witness this revolting want of energy,—Stanton excepted,—this vacillation, these tricks and double-dealings in the governmental spheres, then I wish myself far off in Europe; but when I consider this great people outside of the governmental spheres, then I am proud to be one of the people, and shall stay and fall with them.

How meekly the people accept the disgrace of the wooden guns and of the evacuation of Manassas! It is true that the partisans of McClellan, the traitors, the intriguers, and the imbeciles are devotedly at work to confuse the judgment of the people at large.

Mr. Dayton's semi-official conversation with Louis Napoleon shows how well disposed the Emperor was and is. The Emperor, almost as a favor, asks for a decided military operation. And in face of such news from Europe, Lincoln, Seward, and Blair sustain the do-nothing strategian!

Until now Louis Napoleon behaves nobly, and not an atom of reproach can be made by the American people against his policy; and our policy many times justly could have soured him, as the acceptation of the Orleans, etc. No French vessels ran anywhere the blockade; secesh agents found very little if any credit among French speculators. Very little if any arms, munitions, etc., were bought in France. And in face of all these positive facts, the American wiseacres here and in Europe, all the bar-room and street politicians here and there, all the would-be statesmen, all the sham wise, are incessant in their speculations concerning certain invisible, deep, treacherous schemes of Louis Napoleon against the Union. This herd is full of stories concerning his deep hatred of the North; they are incessant in their warnings against this dangerous and scheming enemy. Some Englishmen in high position stir up this distrust. On the authority of letters repeatedly received from England, Senator Sumner is always in fits of distrust towards the policy of France. The last discovery made by all these deep statesmen here and in France is, that Louis Napoleon intends to take Mexico, to have then a basis for cooperation with the rebels, and to destroy us. But Mexico is not yet taken, and already the allies look askance at each other. Those great Anglo-American Talleyrands, Metternichs, etc., bring down the clear and large intellect of Louis Napoleon to the atomistic proportions of their own sham brains. I do not mean to foretell Louis Napoleon's policy in future. Unforeseen emergencies and complications may change it. I speak of what was done up to this day, and repeat, not the slightest complaint can be made against Louis Napoleon. And in justice to Mr. Mercier, the French minister here, it must be recorded that he sincerely seconds the open policy of his sovereign. Besides, Mr. Mercier now openly declares that he never believed the Americans to be such a great and energetic people as the events have shown them to be. I am grateful to him for this sense of justice, shared only by few of his diplomatic colleagues.

In one word, official and unofficial Europe, in its immense majority, is on our side. The exceptions, therefore, are few, and if they are noisy, they are not intrinsically influential and dangerous. The truest woman, Queen Victoria, is on the side of freedom, of right, and of justice. This ennobles even her, and likewise ennobles our cause. Not the bad wishes of certain Europeans are in our way, but our slowness, the McClellanism and its supporters.

Quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur achivi! The achivi is the people, and the McClellanists are the reges.

Mr. Seward, elated by victories, insinuates to foreign powers that they may stop the "recognition of belligerents." Oh imagination! Such things ought not even to be insinuated, as logic and common sense clearly show that the foreign cabinets cannot do it, and thus stultify themselves. Seward believes that his rhetoric is irresistible, and will move the cabinets of France and of England. * * * Not the "recognition of belligerents;" let the rebels slip off from Manassas, etc. Mr. Seward would do better for himself and for the country to give up meddling with the operations of the war, and backing the bloodless campaigns of the strategian. But Mr. Seward, carried away by his imagination, believes that the cabinets will yield to his persuasive voice, and then, oh! what a feather in his diplomatic cap before the befogged Mr. Lincoln, and before the people. But pia desideria.

In all the wars, as well as in all the single campaigns and battles, every captain deserving this name aimed at breaking his enemy in the centre or at seizing his basis of operations, wherefrom the enemy draws its resources and forces. The great strategian changed all this; he goes directly to the circumference instead of aiming at the heart.

Mr. Seward, answering Mr. Dayton's dispatch concerning his, Dayton's, conversation with Louis Napoleon, points to Europe being likewise menaced by revolutionists. Unnecessary spread-eagleism, and an awful want of any, even diplomatic, tact. I hope that Mr. Dayton, who has so much sound sense and discernment, will keep to himself this freak of Mr. Seward's untamable imagination.

Under the influence of insinuations received from his English friends, Senator Sumner said to Mr. Mercier (I was present) that with every steamer he expects a joint letter of admonition directed by the French and English to our government. Mr. Mercier retorted, "How can you, sir, have such notions? you are too great a nation to be treated in this way. Such letters would do for Greece, etc., but not for you." I was sorry and glad for the lesson thus given.

Archbishop Hughes was not over-successful in France, and went off rather second-best in the opinion of the press, of the public, and of the Catholic, even ultra-Montane clergy of France. All this on account of his conditional anti-slaverism and unconditional pro-slaverism. All this was easily to be foreseen. His Eminence is in Rome, and from Rome is to influence Spain in our favor.

Oh diplomacy! oh times of Capucine and Jesuit fathers and of Abbes! We, the children of the eighteenth century, we recall you to life. I do not suppose that the whole diplomatic activity of his Eminence is worth the postage of his correspondence. But Uncle Sam is generous, and pays him well. So it is with Thurlow Weed, who tries to be economical, is unsuccessful, and cries for more monish. A schoolboy on a spree!

It seems that Weed loses not his time, and tries with Sandford to turn a penny in Belgium. Oh disinterested saviors of the country, and patriots!

But for this violent development of our domestic affairs, Mr. Seward would have appeared before the world as the mediator between the Pope and the insubordinate European nations, sovereigns, and cabinets.

Oh, Alberoni! oh, imaginary! It beats any of the wildest poets. In justice it must be recorded, that this great scheme of mediation was dancing before Mr. Seward's imagination at the epoch when he was sure that, once Secretary of State, his speeches would be current and read all over the South; and they, the speeches, would crush and extinguish secession. This Mr. Seward assured one of the patriotic members of Buchanan's expiring Cabinet.

Mr. Seward is now busy building up a conservative Union party North and South to preserve slavery, and to crush the rampant Sumnerism, as Thurlow Weed calls it, and advises Seward to do so.

Mr. Seward's unofficial agents, Thurlow Weed, his Eminence, and others, are untiring in the incense of their benefactor. Occasionally, Mr. Lincoln gets a small share of it.

Sandford in Paris and Brussels, Mr. Adams and Thurlow Weed in London, work hard to assuage and soften the harsh odor in which Mr. Seward is held, above all, among certain Englishmen of mark. It seems, however, that love's labor is lost, and Mr. Adams, scholar-like, explains the unsuccess of their efforts by the following philosophy: That in great convulsions and events it is always the most eminent men who become selected for violent and vituperative attacks. This is Mr. Seward's fate, but time will dispel the falsehoods, and render him justice. Well, be it so.

Weed tried hard to bring the Duke of Newcastle over to Mr. Seward; but the Duke seems perfectly unmoved by the blandishments, etc. To think that the strict and upright Duke, who knows Weed, could be shaken by the ubiquitous lobbyist! Rather the other way.

One not acquainted with Mr. Seward's ardent republicanism may suspect him of some dictatorial projects, to judge from the zeal with which some of the diplomatic agents in Europe, together with the unofficial ones there, extol to all the world Mr. Seward's transcendent superiority over all other eminent men in America. Are the European statesmen to be prepared beforehand, or are they to be befogged and prevented from judging for themselves? If so, again is love's labor lost. European statesmen can perfectly take Mr. Seward's measure from his uninterrupted and never-fulfilled prophecies, and from other diplomatic stumblings; and one look suffices European men of mark to measure a Hughes, a Weed, a Sandford, and tutti quanti.

In Mr. Lincoln's councils, Mr. Stanton alone has the vigor, the purity, and the simplicity of a man of deep convictions. Stanton alone unites the clear, broad comprehension of the exigencies of the national question with unyielding action. He is the statesman so long searched for by me. He, once a friend of McClellan, was not deterred thereby from condemning that do-nothing strategy, so ruinous and so dishonorable. Stanton is a Democrat, and therefore not intrinsically, perhaps not even relatively, an anti-slavery man, but he hesitates not now to destroy slavery for the preservation of the Union. I am sure that every day will make Stanton more clear-sighted, and more radical in the question of Union and rebellion. And Seward and Blair, who owe their position to their anti-slavery principles, arcades ambo, try now to save something of slavery, and turn against Stanton.

APRIL, 1862.

Immense power of the President — Mr. Seward's Egeria — Programme of peace — The belligerent question — Roebucks and Gregories scums — Running the blockade — Weed and Seward take clouds for camels — Uncle Sam's pockets — Manhood, not money, the sinews of war — Colonization schemes — Senator Doolittle — Coal mine speculation — Washington too near the seat of war — Blair demands the return of a fugitive slave woman — Slavery is Mr. Lincoln's "mammy" — He will not destroy her — Victories in the West — The brave navy — McClellan subsides in mud before Yorktown — Telegraphs for more men — God will be tired out! — Great strength of the people — Emancipation in the District — Wade's speech — He is a monolith — Chase and Seward — N. Y. Times — The Rothschilds — Army movements and plans.

If the military conduct of McClellan, from the first of January to the day of the embarkation of the troops for Yorktown—if this conduct were tried by French marshals, or by the French chief staff, or by the military authorities and chief staffs of Prussia, Russia, and even of Austria, McClellan would be condemned as unfit to have any military command whatever. I would stake my right hand on such a verdict; and here the would-be strategians, the traitors, the intriguers, and the imbeciles prize him sky-high.

Only by personal and close observation of the inner working of the administrative machinery is it possible to appreciate and to understand what an immense power the Constitution locates in the hands of a President. Far more power has he than any constitutional sovereign—more than is the power of the English sovereign and of her Cabinet put together. In the present emergencies, such a power in the hands of a Wade or of a Stanton would have long ago saved the country.

Mr. Seward looks to all sides of the compass for a Union party in the South, which may rise politically against the rebels. That is the advice of Weed, Mr. Seward's Egeria. I doubt that he will find many, or even any. First kill the secesh, destroy the rebel power, that is, the army, and then look for the Union men in the South. Mr. Seward, in his generalizations, in his ardent expectations, etc., etc., forgets to consider—at least a little—human nature, and, not to speak of history, this terra incognita. Blood shed for the nationality makes it grow and prosper; a protracted struggle deepens its roots, carries away the indifferent, and even those who at the start opposed the move. All such, perhaps, may again fall off from the current of rebellion, but that current must first be reduced to an imperceptible rivulet; and Mr. Seward, sustaining the do-nothing strategian, acts against himself.

Mr. Seward's last programme is, after the capture of Richmond and of New Orleans, to issue a proclamation—to offer terms to the rebels, to restore the old Union in full, to protect slavery and all. For this reason he supports McClellan, as both have the same plan. Of such a character are the assurances given by Mr. Seward to foreign diplomats and governments. He tries to make them sure that a large Union party will soon be forthcoming in the South, and again sounds his vaticinations of the sacramental ninety days. I am sorry for this his incurable passion to play the Pythoness. It is impossible that such repeated prophecies shall raise him high in the estimation of the European statesmen. Impossible! Impossible! whatever may be the contrary assertions of his adulators, such as an Adams, a Sandford, a Weed, a Bigelow, a Hughes, and others. When Mr. Seward proudly unveiled this his programme, a foreign diplomat suggested that the Congress may not accept it. Mr. Seward retorted that he cares not for Congress; that he will appeal to the people, who are totally indifferent to the abolition of slavery.

Why does Mr. Seward deliberately slander the American people, and this before foreign diplomats, whose duty it is to report all Mr. Seward's words to their respective governments? Such words uttered by Mr. Seward justify the assertions of Lord John Russell, of Gladstone, those true and high-minded friends of human liberty, that the North fights for empire and not for a principle. The people who will answer to Mr. Seward's appeal will be those whose creed is that of the New York Herald, the Boston Courier, the people of the Fernando and Ben Woods, of the Vallandighams, etc.

What is the use of urging on the foreign Cabinets—above all, England and France—to rescind the recognition of belligerents? They cannot do it. It does not much—nay, not any—harm, as the English speculators will risk to run the blockade if the rebels are belligerent or not. And besides, the English and French Cabinets may throw in Mr. Seward's face the decisions of our own prize courts, who, on the authority of Mr. Seward's blockade, in their judicial decisions, treat the rebels as belligerents. The European statesmen are more cautious and more consequential in their acts than is our Secretary.

As it stands now, the conduct of the English government is very correct, and not to be complained of. I do not speak of the infamous articles in the Times, Herald, etc., or of the Gregories and such scums as the Roebucks; but I am satisfied that Lord John Russell wishes us no harm, and that it is our own policy which confuses and makes suspicious such men as Russell, Gladstone, and others of the better stamp.

As for the armaments of secesh vessels in Liverpool and the Bahamas, it is so perfectly in harmony with the English mercantile character that it is impossible for the government to stop it.

The English merchant generally considers it as a lawful enterprise to run blockades; in the present case the premium is immense; it is so in a twofold manner. 1st, the immediate profits on the various cargoes exchanged against each other by a successful running of the blockade; such profits must equal several hundred per cent. 2d, the prospective profits from an eventual success of the rebellion for such friends as are now supporting the rebels. These prospects must be very alluring, and are partly justified by our slow war, slow policy. I am sure that the like armaments for the secessionists are made by shares owned by various individuals; the individual risk of each shareholder being comparatively insignificant when compared with the prospective gains.

If Seward, McClellan, and Blair had not meddled with Stanton, not weakened his decisions, nor befogged Mr. Lincoln, Richmond would be in our hands, together with Charleston and Savannah; and all the iron-clad vessels built in England for secesh would be harmless.

Mr. Weed and Mr. Seward expect Jeff. Davis to be overthrown by their imaginary Southern Union party. O, wiseacres! if both of you had only a little knowledge of human nature—not of that one embodied in lobbyists—and of history, then you would be aware that if Jeff. Davis is to be deposed it will be by one more violent than he, and you would not speculate and take clouds for camels. During the weeks of embarkation for Yorktown, the thorough incapacity of McClellan's chief of the staff was as brilliant as the cloudless sun. It makes one shudder to think what it will be when the campaign will be decidedly and seriously going on.

It is astonishing, and psychologically altogether incomprehensible, to see persons, justly deserving to be considered as intelligent, deny the evidence of their own senses; forbid, so to speak, their sound judgment to act; to be befogged by thorough imbeciles; to consider incapacity as strategy, and to take imbecility for deep, mysterious, great combinations and plans. Even the Turks could not long be humbugged in such a way.

No sovereign in the world, not even Napoleon in his palmiest days, could thus easily satisfy his military whims concerning the most costly and variegated material for an army, as does McClellan. He changes his plans; every such change is gorgeously satisfied and millions thrown away. Guns, mortars, transports, spades, etc., appear at his order as if by charm; and all this to veil his utter incapacity. This Yorktown expedition uncovers Washington and the North, and such a deep plan could have been imagined only by a strategian.

What are doing in Europe all these various agents of Mr. Seward, and paid by Uncle Sam? all these Weeds, Sandfords, Hughes, Bigelows, and whoever else may be there? They cannot find means in their brains to better direct, inform, or influence the European press. Almost all the articles in our favor are only defensive and explanatory; the offensive is altogether carried by the secesh press in England and in France. But to deal offensive blows, our agents would be obliged to stand firm on human principles, and show up all the dastardly corruption of slavery, of slaveholders, and of rebels. Such a warfare is forbidden by Mr. Seward's policy; and perhaps if such a Weed should speak of corruption, some English secesh may reprint Wilkeson's letter. In one word, our cause in Europe is very tamely represented and carried on. Members of the Chamber of Deputies in Paris complain that they can nowhere find necessary information concerning certain facts. There Seward's agents have not even been able to correct the fallacies about the epoch of the Morrill tariff,—fallacies so often invoked by the secesh press,—and many other similar statements. I shall not wonder if the public opinion in Europe by and by may fall off from our cause. Our defensive condition there justifies the assumptions of the secesh. As we dare not expose their crimes, the public in Europe must come to this conclusion, that secesh may be right, and may begin to consider the North as having no principle.

And to think that all these agents heavily phlebotomize Uncle Sam's pockets to obtain such contemptible results!

Many persons, some among them of influence and judgment, still speak and speculate upon what they call the starving of the rebellion. They calculate upon the comparative poverty of the rebels, repeating the fallacious adage, that money is the sinews of war. Money is so, but only in a limited degree, and more limited than is generally supposed; more limited even now when war is a very expensive pastime.

This fallacy, first uttered by the aristocrat Thucydides, was repeated over and over again until it became a statesmanlike creed. But even Thucydides gave not to that dictum such a general sense, and Macchiavelli scorned the fallacy and exposed it. When poor, the Spartans have been the bravest. The historical halo surrounding the name of Sparta originated at that epoch when the use of money and of gold had been almost forbidden. The wealth of Athens began after the victories over the Persians; but those victories were won when the Athenians were comparatively poor. So it was with the Romans until the subjugation of Carthage, and in modern Europe the Swiss, etc., etc., etc.

Manhood in a people, and self-sacrifice, are the genuine sinews of war; wealth alone saved no nation from disgrace and from death, nay, often accelerated the catastrophe.

The colonization of Africo-Americans is still discussed; very likely inspired by Seward and by his Yucatan schemes. Senator Doolittle runs himself down at a fearful rate. I regret Doolittle's mistake. Those colonizers forget that if they should export even 100,000 persons a year, an equal number will be yearly born at home, not to speak of other impossibilities. If carried on on a small scale, this scheme amounts to nothing; and on a grand scale it is altogether impossible, besides being as stupid as it is recklessly cruel. Only those persons insist on colonization who hate or dread general emancipation.

When the slaves shall be emancipated, then the owners of plantations will be forced to offer very acceptable terms to the newly made free laborers to have their plantations cultivated, which otherwise must become waste and useless lands, and the planters themselves poor starving wretches. With very little of governmental interference, the mutual relation between planter and laborer can be regulated, and the planter will be the first to oppose colonization.

Look from whatever side you like, a colonization schemer is a cruel deceiver, he is an enemy of emancipation, and if he claims to be an emancipator then he is an enemy of the planter and of the prosperity of the southern region.

Besides, the present scheme of colonization to Chiriqui is an infamous speculation to help some Ambrosio Thompson to work coal mines in that part of Central America. That individual has a grant for some lands in Chiriqui, and there these poor victims are to be exported. The grant itself is contested by the New Grenadian government. Those poor coolies will be the prey of speculators; there will arise claims against the Grenadian government—a rich mine for lobbyists and claimants. Infamy! and these fathers of the country are as blind as moles. Central America is always in convulsions, and of course the colonists will be robbed by every party of those semi-savages. The colonists being Methodists, etc., will be pointed out by the stupid Catholic clergy as being heretics and miscreants.

Washington's proximity to the theatre of war in Virginia is the greatest impediment for rapid movements; it is the ruin of generals and of armies.

Being within reach of the seat of government and of the material means, the generals are never ready, but always have something to complete, something to ask for, and so days after days elapse. In all other countries and governments of the world the commanders move on, and the objects of secondary necessity are sent after them.

In all other countries and wars the principal aim of commanders is to become conspicuous by rapidity of movements. The paramount glory is to have achieved and obtained important results with comparatively limited means. Here, the greater the slowness with which they move, the greater captains they are; and the more expensive their operations, the surer they are of the applause of the administration, and of a great many f——.

After all, the above is the result of pre-existing causes. Slowness, indecision, and waste of money, are the prominent features of this administration.

Stanton excepted, I again think of the dictum of Professor Steffens, and every day believe it more.

Mr. Blair worse and worse; is more hot in support of McClellan, more determined to upset Stanton, and I heard him demand the return of a poor fugitive slave woman to some of Blair's Maryland friends.

Every day I am confirmed in my creed that whoever had slavery for mammy is never serious in the effort to destroy it. Whatever such men as Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Blair will do against slavery, will never be radical by their own choice or conviction, but will be done reluctantly, and when under the unavoidable pressure of events.

Mr. Seward restive and bitter against all who criticise. Mr. Seward assumes that everybody does his best, and ought therefore to be applauded. But Mr. Seward forgets the proverb about hell being paved with good intentions. In this terrible emergency the people want men who really do the best, and not those who only try and intend to do it.

McClellan had the full sway so long—appointed so many, perhaps more than sixty, brigadier generals—that it is not astonishing when those appointees prefer rather not to see for themselves, but blindly "hurrah" for their creator.

Victories in the West, triumphantly establishing the superiority of our soldiers in open battle-fields, and the superiority of all generals who are distant from any contact with Washington, as Pope, Grant, Curtis, Mitchell, Sigel, and others. The brave navy,—this pure democratic element which assures the greatest results, and makes the less laudatory noise. The navy is admirable; the navy is the purest and most glorious child of the people.

The destruction of the rebellion saves the future generations of the Southern whites. Secession would for centuries have bred and raised only formidable social hyenas.

McClellan subsided in mud before Yorktown. Any other, only even half-way, military capacity commanding such forces would have made a lunch of Yorktown. But our troops are to dig, perhaps their graves, to the full satisfaction of Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Blair.

McClellan telegraphs for more men, and he has more already than he can put in action, and more than he has room for. He subsides in digging. The rebels will again fool him as they fooled him in Manassas. If McClellan could know anything, then he would know this—that nothing is so destructive to an army as sieges, as diggings, and camps, and nothing more disciplines and re-invigorates men, makes them true soldiers, than does marching and fighting. Poor Stanton! how he must suffer to be overruled by imbeciles and intriguers. McClellan telegraphing for reinforcements plainly shows how unmilitary are his brains. He and a great many here believe that the greater the mass of troops, the surer the victory. History mostly teaches the contrary; but speak to American wiseacres about history! He, McClellan, and others on his side, ignore the difficulty of handling or swinging an army of 100,000 men.

A good general, confident in his troops, will not hesitate to fight two to three. But McClellan feels at ease when he can, at the least, have two to one. In Manassas he had three to one, and conquered—wooden guns! We will see what he will conquer before Yorktown.

Louis Napoleon always well disposed, but of course he cannot swallow Mr. Seward's demand about belligerents. I am so glad and so proud that up to this day events justify my confidence in the French policy, although our policy may tire not only Louis Napoleon, but tire the God whom we worship and invoke. I should not wonder if God, tired by such McClellans, Lincolns, Sewards, Blairs, etc., finally gives us the cold shoulder. This demand concerning belligerents is a diplomatic and initiative step made by Mr. Seward; it is unsuccessful, as are all his initiatives, and no wonder.

Mr. Lincoln, incited by Mr. Seward and by Mr. Blair, overrules the opinion of the purest, the ablest, and the most patriotic men in Congress—that of Stanton, and of the few good generals unbefogged by McClellanism. Such a power as the Constitution gives to a President is the salvation of the people when in the hands of a Jackson, but when in the hands of a Lincoln, ——!

The muscular strength of the American people, and the strength of its backbone, beat all the Herculeses and Atlases supporting the globe. Any other people would have long ago broke down under the policy and the combined weight of Lincoln, Seward, and McClellan.

Mr. Lincoln is forced out again from one of his pro-slavery entrenchments; he was obliged to yield, and to sign the hard-fought bill for emancipation in the District of Columbia; but how reluctantly, with what bad grace he signed it! Good boy; he wishes not to strike his mammy; and to think that the friends of humanity in Europe will credit this emancipation not where it is due, not to the noble pressure exercised by the high-minded Northern masses, but to this Kentucky ——.

Senator Wade made a powerful speech in relation to the arrest of General Stone. It was powerful, patriotic, and rises to the skies over the Lilliputian oratory of the thus-called scholars, etc. Wade is a monolith,—he is cut out full in a rock.

It seems that the new law increasing the number of judges for the Supreme Court weakened many backbones. Congress ought to have added the clause that a senator can be nominated only after six years from the day of the promulgation.

Mr. Seward again chalked before the dazzled eyes of foreign powers certain future military operations; but again events have been so impolite as to upturn Mr. Seward's prophecies.

The report of the Senate committee on the destruction of Norfolk speaks of the "insane delusion" of the administration. I am proud to have considered it in the same light about a year ago.

Mr. Thouvenel politely but logically refuses to acquiesce in Mr. Seward's demand concerning the belligerents. Thouvenel's reasons are plausible. The support given to strategy by Mr. Seward,—that support does more mischief to us than do all the pirates and all the violations of blockade. Let us take Richmond,—a thing impossible with McClellan,—and take by land Charleston, Savannah, etc.; then the pirates and belligerents are strangulated. And—as says Gen. Sherman—Savannah and Charleston could have been taken several months ago. Orders from Washington forbade to do it; and it would be curious to ascertain how far Mr. Seward is innocent in the perpetration of these orders.

Chase and Seward dear-dearing each other! Amusing! Kilkenny cats! At this game Seward will have the best of Chase, who is not a match for tricks.

The New York Times attacks Capt. Dahlgren, of the Navy Yard. It is in the nature of the "little villain" to bespatter men of such devotion, patriotism, and eminent capacity as is Captain Dahlgren.

Thurlow Weed calls the Tribune "infernal," because it wishes a serious war, and thus prevents the raising of a Union party in the South, so flippantly looked for by him and Mr. Seward, his pupil. I see the time coming when all these gentlemen of the concessions, of the not-hurting policy,—when all these conservative seekers for the Union party will try, Pilatus-like, to wash their hands of the innocent blood; but you shall try, and not succeed, to whitewash your stained hands; you have less excuses on your side than had the Roman proconsul on his side.

When Mr. Mercier was in Richmond, some of the rebel leaders and generals told him that they believed not their senses on learning that McClellan was going to Yorktown; that he never could have selected a better place for them, and that they were sure of his destruction on the Peninsula.

Perhaps McClellan wished to try his hand and rehearse the siege of Sebastopol.

If McClellan's ignorance of military history were not so well established, he would know that since Archimedes, down to Todleben, more genius was displayed in the defence than in the attack of any place. The making of approaches, parallels, etc., is an affair of engineering school routine. Napoleon took Toulon rather as an artillerist, who, having, calculated the reach of projectiles, put his battery on a spot wherefrom he shelled Toulon. Napoleon took Mantua by destroying the Austrian army which hastened to the relief of the fortress. But the great American strategian knows better, and satisfies (as said above) the rebels.

The New York Herald, the New York Times, and other staunch supporters of McClellan, again and again trumpet that the rebels fear McClellan, that they consider him to be the ablest general opposed to them. The rebels are smart, and so is their ally, the New York Herald. As for the Times, it is only a flunkeying "little villain."

McDowell, Banks, Fremont have about 70,000 men; the last two are nearly at the head of the Shenandoah valley; they could unite with McDowell, and march and take Richmond. They beg to be ordered to do it, and so wishes Stanton; but, fatally befogged by McClellan, by McClellan's clique in the councils, or by strategians, Lincoln emphatically forbids any junction, any movement; the President forbids McDowell to take Fredericksburg, or to throw a bridge across the river. And thus McClellan prevents any glorious military operation; is losing in the mud a hundred men daily by disease, and Mr. Lincoln—still infatuated. But infatuation is the disease of small and weak brains.

Rothschild in Paris, and very likely the Rothschilds in London, are for the North. But if the Rothschilds show that they well understand and respect the Old Testament, whose spirit is anti-slavery, they show they understand better the true Christian spirit than do the Christians. The Rothschilds show themselves more thoroughly of our century than are such Michel Chevaliers, or such impure Roebucks, and all the supporters of free trade in human flesh.

McClellan's supporters, and such strategians as Blair and Seward, assert that McClellan's plan was ruined by not sending McDowell to Gloucester; that then the whole rebel army would have been caught in a trap. That silly plan to go to the Peninsula is defended in a still more silly way.

By McDowell's going to Gloucester, Washington would have been wholly at the mercy of an army of thirty to forty thousand men; the celebrated defences of Washington, this result of the united wisdom of Scott and McClellan, facilitating to the rebel army a raid on Washington.

Further; McClellan, in concocting and maturing his thus called plans, probably believes that the rebels will do just the thing which, in his calculations, he wishes them to do; and such erroneous suppositions are the sole basis of his plans. But the rebels repeatedly showed themselves by far too smart for his Napoleonic brains; and besides, not much wit to the rebel generals was necessary to see through and through what the great Napoleon was about, by ordering McDowell to Gloucester. Of course, the rebel generals would not have had the politeness towards McClellan to sheepishly accede to his wishes, and go into the trap. The whole plan was worse than childish, and I am glad to learn that several generals showed brains to condemn it. The whole plan was up to the comprehension of McClellanites, of consummate strategians in McClellan's official tross, for those in the Cabinet and out of it.

Would God that all this ends not in disasters. If it ends well it will be the first time success has crowned such transcendent incapacity.

MAY, 1862.

Capture of New Orleans — The second siege of Troy — Mr. Seward lights his lantern to search for the Union-saving party — Subserviency to power — Vitality of the people — Yorktown evacuated — Battle of Williamsburg — Great bayonet charge! — Heintzelman and Hooker — McClellan telegraphs that the enemy outnumber him — The terrible enemy evacuate Williamsburg — The track of truth begins to be lost — Oh Napoleon! — Oh spirit of Berthier! — Dayton not in favor — Events are too rapid for Lincoln — His integrity — Too tender of men's feelings — Halleck — Ten thousand men disabled by disease — The Bishop of Orleans — The rebels retreat without the knowledge of McNapoleon — Hunter's proclamation — Too noble for Mr. Lincoln — McClellan again subsides in mud — Jackson defeats Banks, who makes a masterly retreat — Bravo, Banks! — The aulic council frightened — Gov. Andrew's letter — Sigel — English opinion — Mr. Mill — Young Europa — Young Germany — Corinth evacuated — Oh, generalship! — McDowell grimly persecuted by bad luck.

The capture of New Orleans. The undaunted bravery of the Navy—this most beautiful leaf in the American history. The Navy fights without talk and strategy, because it does not look to win the track to the White House. The capture of New Orleans may lead the rebels to evacuate Yorktown and to fool the great strategian.

It is a very threatening symptom, that no genuine harmony—nay, no sympathy—exists between the best, the purest, the most intelligent, the most energetic members of both the Houses of Congress and the President, including the leading spirit of his Cabinet. The New York Herald is the principal supporter of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward; in the Congress their supporters are the Democrats, and all those who wish to make concessions to the South, who ardently wish to preserve slavery, and in any way to patch up the quarrel.

In times as trying as are the present ones, such a shameful and dangerous anomaly must, in the long run, destroy either the government or the nation. If it turns out differently here, the exclusive reason thereof will be the great vitality of the people. All the deep and dangerous wounds inflicted by the policy of the administration will be healed by the vigorous, vital energy of the people.

"For Heaven's sake finish quick your war!" Such are the exclamations—nay, the prayers—coming from the French statesmen, as Fould and others, from our devoted friends, as Prince Napoleon, and from all the famishing, but nevertheless nobly-behaving, operatives in England. And here McClellan inaugurates before Yorktown a second siege of Troy or of Sebastopol; Lincoln forbids the junction of McDowell with Banks and Fremont, by which Richmond could be easily taken from the west side, where it ought to be attacked; and Mr. Seward reads the like dispatches and backs McClellan; Mr. S. lights his lantern in search North and South of the Union-saving party!

Speak to me of subserviency to power by European aristocrats, courtiers, etc.! What almost every day I witness here of subserviency of influential men to the favored and office-distributing power, all things compared and considered, beats whatever I saw in Europe, even in Russia at the Nicolean epoch.

General Cameron, in his farewell speech, said that at the beginning of the civil war General Scott told him, Cameron, that he, Scott, never in his life was more pained than when a Virginian reminded him of his paramount duties to his State. I take note of this declaration, as it corroborates what a year ago I said in this diary concerning the disastrous hesitations of General Scott.

It is said that Turtschininoff is all in all in General Mitchell's command. Turtschininoff is a genuine and distinguished officer of the staff, and educated in that speciality so wholly unknown to West-Pointers. Several among the foreigners in the army are thoroughly educated officers of the staff, and would be of great use if employed in the proper place. But envy and know-nothingism are doubly in their way. Besides, the foreign officers have no tenderness for the Southern cause and Southern chivalry, and would be in the cause with their whole heart.

By the insinuations of an anonymous correspondent in the Tribune, Mr. Seward tries to re-establish his anti-slavery reputation. But how is it that foreign diplomats, that the purest of his former political friends, consider him to be now the savior of what he once persecuted in his speeches?

At every step this noble people vindicates and asserts the vitality of self-government, continually jeopardized by the inexhaustible errors of the policy followed by the master-spirits in the administration. European doctors, prophets, vindictive enemies like the London Times, the Saturday Review, etc., and the French journals of the police, all of them are daily—nay, hourly—baffled in their expectations—paper money and no bankruptcy, no inflation, bonds equal to gold, etc., etc. And all this, not because there is any great or even small statesman or financier at the head of the administration, but because the people at large have confidence in themselves, in their own energies; because they have the determination to succeed, and not to be bankrupt; not to discredit their own decisions. All these phenomena, so new in the history of nations, are incomprehensible to European wiseacres; they are too much for the hatred and dulness of the Europeans in France, England, and for that of the many Europeans here.

Yorktown evacuated!—under the nose of an army of 160,000 men, and within the distance of a rifle shot!—evacuated quietly, of course, during several days. One cannot abstain from saying Bravo! to the rebel generals. Their high capacity forces the mind to an involuntary applause. Traitors, intriguers, and imbeciles applaud, extol the results of the bloodless strategy. McClellan is used by the rebels only to be fooled by them. It must be so. It is one proof more of the transcendent capacity of the strategian, and, above all, of the capacity and efficiency of the chief of the staff of the great army. Such an operation as that of Yorktown, anywhere else, would be considered as the highest disgrace; here, glorifications of strategy. McClellan's bulletins from Yorktown describe the rebel fortifications as being almost impregnable. Of course impregnable! but only to him.

Battle at Williamsburg; and McClellan and his so perfect staff altogether ignorant of the whole bloody but honorable affair as fought against terrible odds by Heintzelman and Hooker; but the great Napoleon's bulletin mentions a real—Oh hear! hear the great Mars!—charge with the bayonet, made at the other extremity of Williamsburg, and in which from twenty to forty men were killed!

Heintzelman's and Hooker's personal conduct, and that of their troops, was heroic beyond name. McClellan ignored the battle; ignored what was going on, and, as it is said, gave orders to Sumner not to support Heintzelman.

McClellan telegraphs that the enemy far outnumbers him (fears count doubly), but that he will do his utmost and his best. This Napoleon of the New York Herald's manufacture in everything is the reverse of all the leaders and captains known in history: all of them, when before the battle they addressed their soldiers, represented the enemy as inferior and contemptible; after the battle was won, the enemy was extolled.

From the first of his addresses to this his last dispatch from Williamsburg, McClellan always speaks of the terrible enemy whom he is to encounter; and in this last dispatch he tries to frighten not only his army, but the whole country. During the night the terrible enemy evacuated Williamsburg; McClellan breathes more free, takes fresh courage, and his bulletin estimates the enemy's forces at 50,000.

The track of truth begins to be lost. By comparing dates, bulletins, and notes, it results that at the precise minute when McClellan telegraphed his wail concerning the large numbers of the enemy and the formidable fortifications of Williamsburg, the rebels were evacuating them, pressed and expelled therefrom by Hooker, Kearney, and Heintzelman. Oh Napoleon! Oh spirits not only of Berthier and of Gneisenau, but of the most insignificant chiefs of staffs, admire your caricature at the head of the army commanded by this freshly-backed Napoleon!

A foreign diplomat was in McClellan's tent before Yorktown, on the eve of the day when the rebels wholly evacuated it. One of McClellan's aids suggested to the general that the comparative silence of the rebel artillery might forebode evacuation. "Impossible!" answered the New York Herald's Napoleon. "I know everything that passes in their camp, and I have them fast." (I have these details from the above-mentioned diplomat.) In the same minute, when the strategian spoke in this way, at least half of the rebel army had already withdrawn from Yorktown. Comments thereupon are superfluous.

Dayton, from Paris, very sensibly objects to the policy of insisting that England and France shall annul their decision concerning the belligerents. Dayton considers such a demand to be, for various reasons, out of season. I am sure that Dayton is respected by Louis Napoleon and by Thouvenel on account of his sound sense and rectitude, although he parleys not French. Dayton must impress everybody differently from that French parleying claims' prosecutor and itinerant agent of a sewing machine, who breakfasts in Brussels with Leopold, and the same day dines in Paris with Thouvenel, and may take his supper in h—l, so far as the interest of the cause is concerned. But Dayton seems not to be in favor with the department.

The admirers of McClellan assert that one parallel digged by him was sufficient to frighten the rebels and force them to evacuate. Good for what it is worth for such mighty ignorant brains. The mortars, the hundred-pounders, frightened the rebels; they break down not before parallels, strategy, or Napoleon, but before the intellectual superiority of the North, in the present case embodied in mortars and other armaments.

Following the retreating enemy, McClellan loses more prisoners than he makes from the enemy. A new and perfectly original, perfectly sui generis mode of warfare, but altogether in harmony with all the other martial performances of the pet of the New York Herald, of Messrs. Seward and Blair, and of the whole herd of intriguers and imbeciles.

People who approach him say that Mr. Lincoln's conceit groweth every day. I guess that Seward carefully nurses the weed as the easiest way to dominate over and to handle a feeble mind.

Since Mr. Mercier judges by his own eyes, and not by those of former various Washington associations, his inborn soundness and perspicacity have the upper hand. He is impartial and just to both parties; he is not bound to have against the rebels feelings akin to mine, but he is well disposed, and wishes for the success of the Union.

The events are too grand and too rapid for Lincoln. It is impossible for him to grasp and to comprehend them. I do not know any past historical personality fully adequate to such a task. Happily in this occurrency, the many, the people at large, by its grasp and forwardness, supplies and neutralizes the inefficiency or the tergiversations, intrigues and double-dealings of the few, of the official leaders, advisers, etc.

I willingly concede to Mr. Lincoln all the best and most variegated mental and intellectual qualities, all the virtues as claimed for him by his eulogists and friends. I would wish to believe, as they do, Mr. Lincoln to be infallible and impeccable. But all those qualities and virtues represented to form the residue of his character, all shining when in private life, some way or other are transformed from positives into negatives, since Mr. Lincoln's contact with the pulsations and the hurricane of public life. Thus Mr. Lincoln's friends assert that all his efforts tend to conciliate parties and even individuals. This candor was beneficial and efficient in the court or bar-rooms, or around a supper table in Springfield. It was even more so, perhaps, when seasoned with stories more or less * * * But one who tries to conciliate between two antipodic principles, or between pure and impure characters, unavoidably must dodge the principal points at issue. Such is the stern law of logic. Who dodges, who biasses, unavoidably deviates from that straight and direct way at the end of which dwells truth. Further: feeble, expectative and vacillating minds, deprived of the faculty to embrace in all its depth and extension the task before them,—such minds cannot have a clear purpose, nor the firm perception of ways and means leading to the aim, and still less have they the sternness of conviction so necessary for men dealing with such mighty events, on which depend the life and death of a society. Such men hesitate, postpone, bias and deviate from the straight way. Such men believe themselves in the way to truth, when they are aside of it. It results therefrom, that when certain amiable qualities, such as conciliation, a little dodging, hesitation, etc., are practised in private life and in a very restrained area, their deviations from truth are altogether imperceptible, and they are then positive good qualities, nay, virtues. But such qualities, transported and put into daily friction with the tempestuous atmosphere of human events, lose their ingenuousness, their innocence, their good-naturedness; the imperceptibility of their intrinsic deviation becomes transparent and of gigantic dimensions.

Mr. Lincoln's crystal-pure integrity prevented not the most frightful dilapidation, nay, robbing of the treasury by contractors, etc., etc. Nor has it kept pure his official household. His friend Lamon and the to-be-formed regiments; the splendid equipages and coupes of his youthful secretaries, to be sure, came not from Springfield, etc., etc., nor sees he through the rascally scheme of the Chiriqui colonization.

Mr. Lincoln, his friends assert, does not wish to hurt the feelings of any one with whom he has to deal. Exceedingly amiable quality in a private individual, but at times turning almost to be a vice in a man entrusted with the destinies of a nation. So he never could decide to hurt the feelings of McClellan, and this after all the numerous proofs of his incapacity. But Mr. Lincoln hurts thereby, and in the most sensible manner, the interests, nay, the lives, of the twenty millions of people. I am sure that McClellan may lose the whole army, and why not if he continues as he began? and Mr. Lincoln will support and keep him, as to act otherwise would hurt McClellan's, Marcy's, Seward's, and perhaps Blair's feelings.

Finally, Mr. Lincoln, advised, they say, by Mr. Seward, holds in contempt public opinion as manifested by the press, with the exception of the incense burnt to him by the New York Herald. If this is true, Mr. Lincoln's mind is cunningly befogged.

It is very soothing for the quiet of private life to ignore newspapers; but all over Europe men in power, sovereigns and ministers, carefully and daily study and watch the opinions of the newspapers, and principally of those which oppose and criticise them.

Such, Mr. Lincoln, is the wisdom of the truly experienced statesman. Better ask Louis Napoleon than Seward.

I am astonished that concerning Mexico Louis Napoleon was taken in by Almonte. Experience ought to have fully made him familiar with the general policy of political refugees. This policy was, is, and will be always based on imaginary facts.

Political refugees befog themselves and befog others. And this Mr. de Saligny must be a d——; Louis Napoleon ought to expel him from the service.

Halleck likewise seems to lay the track to the White House. Nothing has been done since he took the command in person. Halleck, as does also McClellan, tries to make all his measures so sure, so perfect, that he misses his aim, and becomes fooled by the enemy. In war, as in anything else, after having quickly prepared and taken measures, a man ought to act, and rely as much as possible on fortune—that is, on his own acuteness—how to cut the knot when he meets it in his path.

Halleck before Corinth, and McClellan before Manassas and Yorktown, both spend by far more time than it took Napoleon from Boulogne and Bretagne to march into the heart of Germany, surround and capture Mack at Ulm, and come in view of Vienna.

The French and English naval officers in the Mississippi assured our commanders that it was impossible to overcome the various defences erected by the rebels. Our men gave the lie to those envious forebodings. McClellan, in a dispatch, assures the Secretary of War that he, McClellan, will take care of the gunboats. Risum teneatis.

The most contemptible flunkeys on the face of the earth are the wiseacres, and the thus-called framers of public opinion. Until yet McClellan, literally, has not stood by when a cartridge was burned, and they sing hosanna for him.

Ten thousand men have been disabled by diseases before Yorktown; add to it the several thousands in a similar way disabled in the camp before Manassas, and it makes more than would have cost two battles, fought between the Rappahannock and Richmond,—battles which must have settled the question.

Although ultra-Montane, the Bishop of Orleans nobly condemns slavery. The Bishop's pastoral is an answer to H. E., Archbishop of New York. The French bishop therein is true to the spirit of the Catholic church. The Irish archbishop, compared to him, appears a dabbler in Romanism.

During the administration of Pierce and of Buchanan, the Democratic senators ruled over the President and the Cabinet. Perhaps it is not as it ought to be; but for the salvation of the country it were desirable that a curb be put on Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Seward, Mr. Blair, by the Republican senators, by men like Wade, Wilson, Chandler, Grimes, Fessenden, Hale, and others.

The retreat of the rebels was masterly conducted, and their pursuit by McClellan has no name. Nowhere has this Napoleon got at them. The affair at Williamsburg was bravely done by Heintzelman and Hooker; but it was done without the knowledge of McNapoleon, and contrary to his expectations and strategy. This he confesses in one of his masterly bulletins. Perhaps McNapoleon ignored Heintzelman's corps' heroic actions, because neither Heintzelman, nor Hooker, nor Kearney worship strategy, and the deep, well-matured plans of Mc.

General Hunter's proclamation in South Carolina is the greatest social act in the course of this war. How pale and insignificant are Mr. Lincoln's disquisitions aside of that proclamation, which is greeted in heaven by angels and cherubim—provided they are a reality.

Of course Mr. Lincoln overrules General Hunter's proclamation. It is too human, too noble, too great, for the tall Kentuckian. Many say that Seward, Blair, Seaton from the Intelligencer, and other Border State patriots, pressed upon Lincoln. I am sure that it gave them very little trouble to put Mr. Lincoln straight —— with slaveocracy. Henceforth every Northern man dying in the South is to be credited to Mr. Lincoln!

Mr. Lincoln again publishes a disquisition, and points to the signs of the times. But does Mr. Lincoln perceive other, more awful, signs of the times? Does he see the bloody handwriting on the wall, condemning his unnatural, vacillating, dodging policy?

All things considered, it will not be astonishing in Europe if they lose patience and sneer at the North, when they learn that McClellan is continually doing strategy; when they will read his bulletins; when they will find out that from West Point to Richmond he pursued the enemy at the enormous speed of two miles a day,—and that of course nobody was hurt,—and finally, that, surrounded by a brilliant and costly staff, he was ignorant of the condition of the roads, and of the existence of marshes and swamps into which he plunged the army.

The President repeatedly speaks of his strong will to restore the Union. Very well; but why not use for it the best, the most decided, and the most thorough means and measures?

Continually I meet numbers and numbers of soldiers who are discharged because disabled in the camps during winter. Thus McClellan's bloodless strategy deprived several thousands of their health, without in the least hurting the enemy. And daily I meet numbers of able-bodied Africo-Americans, who would make excellent soldiers. I decided to try to form a regiment of the Africo-Americans, and, after whipping the F. F. V.'s, establish, beyond doubt, the perfect equality of the thus called races.

McClellan subsides in mud,—digs,—and the sick list of the army increases hourly at a fearful ratio. And McClellan refuses to slaves admittance within his lines. If, at least, McClellan was a fighting general; but a mud-mole as he —-—-. Any other general in any other country, in Asia, in Africa, etc., would use any elements whatever within his grasp, by using which he could strengthen his own and weaken the enemy's resources. McNapoleon knows better!

One of the best diplomatic documents by Mr. Seward is that on Mexico; and so is also the policy pursued by him. Why does Mr. Seward dabble in war and strategy at home?

McClellan digs, and by his wailings has disorganized the corps of McDowell, and of Banks, who retreats and is pressed by Jackson. The men who advised, or the McClellan worshippers who prevented the union of McDowell with Banks and Fremont, are as criminal as any one can be in Mr. Lincoln's councils.

Now Jackson is reorganized; he penetrated between Fremont and Banks, who were sorely weakened by transferring continually divisions from one to another army, and this between the Chickahominy and the lower Shenandoah.

New diplomatic initiative by Mr. Seward. France and England are requested to declare to the rebels that they have no support to expect from the above-mentioned powers.

This initiative would be splendid if it could succeed; but it cannot, and for the same logical reasons as failed the recent initiative about belligerents. Such unsuccessful initiatives are lowering the consideration of that statesman who makes them. Such failures show a want of diplomatic and statesmanlike perspicacity.

The nation is assured by Mr. Lincoln and by Mr. Seward that a perfect harmony prevails in the Cabinet. Beautiful if true.

General Banks attacked by Jackson and defeated; but, although surrounded, makes a masterly retreat, without even being considerably worsted. Bravo, Banks! Such retreats do as much honor to a general as a won battle.

This bold raid of Jackson—a genuine general—wholly disorganized that army which, if united weeks ago, could have taken Richmond, and rendered Jackson's brilliant dash impossible. The military aulic council of the President is frightened out of its senses, and asks the people for 100,000 defenders. General Wadsworth advised not to thus, without any necessity, frighten the country.

On this occasion Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, wrote a scorching letter to the administration on account of General Hunter's proclamation. Governor Andrew always acts, speaks, and writes to the point.

This alarming appeal, so promptly responded to, has its good, as it will show to Europe the untired determination of the free States.

The President took it into his head to direct himself, by telegraph, the military operations from Fredericksburg to Shenandoah. The country sees with what results. The military advisers of the President seem no better than are his civil advisers—Seward, Blair, etc. If the President earnestly wishes to use his right as Commander-in-Chief, then he had better take in person the command of the army of the Potomac.

There McClellan's diggings and strategy neutralize the gallantry of the generals and of the troops. There action, not digging, is needed. I wrote to the President; suggesting to make Sigel his chief of the staff (Sigel has been educated for it), and then to let our generals fight under his, the President's, eyes.

Great injustice was and is done to Mr. Seward by the lying and very extensively spread rumor that he is often intoxicated. I am sure that it is not so, and I contradict it with all my might. At last I discovered the reason of the rumor. It is Mr. Seward's unhappy passion for generalizations. He goes off like a rocket. Most people hearing him become confused, understand nothing, are unable to follow him in his soarings, and believe him to be intoxicated. His devotees alone get in ecstacies when these rockets fly.

Every time after any success of our troops, that perfidious sheet, the London Times, puts on innocent airs, and asks, "Why are the Americans so bitter against England?" Why? At every disaster the Times pours upon the North the most malicious, poisonous, and lacerating derisions; derisions to pierce the skin of a rhinoceros. When in that strain no feeling is respected by this lying paper.

Derision of the North was the Times's order of the day even before the civil war really began. People, who probably have it from the fountain itself, assert that in one of his hours of whiskey expansion the great Russell let the cat out, and confessed that the Times's firm purpose was, and is, to definitely break the Union.