Part 3 (1/2)
The civil power of the president penetrates beyond the pickets, and in virtue of that civil power, and of the sacred duty to save the fatherland, the President of the United States, and not the Commander-in-Chief, can say to the slaves: ”Arise, you are free, you have no servitude, no duties towards a rebel and traitor to the Union. I, the president, dissolve your bonds in the name of the American people.”
Jan. 4.-How the tempest of events changes or modifies principles. The South rebelled in the name of State rights, and now Jeff Davis absorbs all States and all parliamentary rights for the sake of salus populi or rather of salus of slavocracy. Jeff Davis nominates officers in the regiments whatever be the opposition of the respective Governors. In the North, the Governors, all of them, (Seymour?) true patriots, insist upon power and the right to organize new regiments, and resist the centralization by the United States Government. Perhaps-as the satraps and martinets a.s.sert-thereby the organisation of the army is thrown on a false track. Whether so or not, one thing is certain, but for the States and Governors, Lincoln, Scott, Seward, McClellan, Halleck, or the Union, would be nowhere.
Jan. 4.-They fight battles in the West. Generals, to be victorious, must be in spiritual and in electric communion with the heroic soldiers. So it was at Murfreesborough. Rosecrans, at the head of his cavalry or body guard, dashes in the thickest, and turns the dame fortune, who smiles on heroes, but never smiled on McClellan nor on his tail. Rosecrans sticks not to regulations, and keeps not a few miles in the rear. Franklin, at Fredericksburgh mounted not even his horse but stood in front of his tent. Similar to Rosecrans here was Kearney, the bravest of the brave, more of a captain than any of the West-Point high-nosed nurslings; so is Heintzelman, Hooker, Reno, Sigel and many, many others, whom McClellanism, Halleckism, Lincolnism kept or keeps down.
I positively learned that in the last days of the summer of 1862, a list without heading circulated in the Potomac army, and all who signed it bound themselves to obey only McClellan. The McClellan clique originated this conspiracy, which extended throughout all the grades.
What confusion prevails about the rights of existence of slavery. How they discuss it. How they pettifog. Why not establish the rights of existence of syphilis, of plica in the human body. O, casuists. O, Intelligencers. O, Worlds!
Well, to me, slavery seems to legally (cursed legality) exist in virtue of the special State rights, and not in virtue of the Const.i.tution. But for the State rights, the Africo-American is a man and citizen of the United States-and this under the Const.i.tution which is paramount to State rights. The rebellion annihilates the State rights, and all special const.i.tutions guaranteed by the Union, and at the same time annihilates the relation of the Africo-American to the specific States or const.i.tutions. It restores to him the rights of man guaranteed to him as man by the Union and the Const.i.tution of the United States. The Africo-American recovers his rights, lost and annihilated by specific State rights and munic.i.p.al, local laws. The president had to issue his proclamation as guardian and executor of the Const.i.tution, and then Africo-Americans recovered their citizens.h.i.+p on firmer and broader grounds than under, or by the war power. Calhoun, the father of the rebellion-as Milton's Satan-and all the rebels now curse or cursed the preamble of the Const.i.tution as Satan cursed the light. I suppose Calhoun's and the rebels' reasons are similar to me. Inde irae.
The commanders in the West bear evidence of the devotion, the heroism and the endurance of the Africo-Americans, sacrificing their lives without hope; martyrs by the rebels as well as by Hallecks and the like.
I met a farmer from Maine. He was rather old and poor. Had two sons-lost them both-they were all his hope. He spoke simply of it, but to break one's heart. He grudged not, (his own words,) his hopes and blood for the cause, and considered it good luck to have recovered the body of one of his boys, and brought it back home to the ”old woman,” (wife, mother.) I shook hands with him. I ought to have kissed him. Unknown, unnamed hero-patriot! and similar are hundreds of thousands, and such is the true people. And so sacrilegiously dealt with by insane helplessness.
Jan. 5.-The Doctors Const.i.tutionis break their formula brains concerning the const.i.tutionality of the proclamation, and foretell endless complications. If so, if complications arise, the reasons thereof are moral, logical and practical. 1st.-The emanc.i.p.ation was neither conceived nor executed in love; but it was for Lincoln as Vulcan for Jupiter. The proclamation is generated neither by Lincoln's brains, heart or soul, and what is born in such a way is always monstrous. 2d.-Legally and logically, the proclamation has the smallest and the most narrow basis that could have been selected. When one has the free choice between two bases, it is more logical to select the broader one. The written Const.i.tution had neither slavery nor emanc.i.p.ation in view, but it is in the preamble, and the emanc.i.p.ation ought to be deduced from the preamble. Many other reasons can be enumerated pregnant with complications and above all when Lincoln-Seward are the accoucheurs. My hope and confidence is in the logic of events always stronger than man's helplessness and imbecility.
Jan. 5.-European rulers, wiseacres, meddlers, humbugs, traitors, demons, diplomats, a.s.sert that they must interfere here because European interests suffer by the war. Indeed! You have the whole old continent and Australia to boot, and about nine hundreds millions of population; can you not organise yourself so as not to depend from us? And if by your misrules, etc., our interests were to suffer, you would find very strange any complaint made on our part. Keep aloof with your good wishes, and with your advices, and with your interference. You may burn your noses, and even lose your little scalps. You robbers, murderers, hypocrites, surrounded by your liveried lackeys, you presumptuous, arrogant curses of the human race, stand off, and let these people whose worst criminal is a saint when compared to a Decembriseur-let this people work out its destinies, be it for good or for evil.
Jan. 5.-Early in December, 1860, therefore soon after Mr. Lincoln's election, a shrewd and clear-sighted politician, Gen. Walsh, from New York, visited Springfield, and made his bow to the rising sun. On his return from the Illinois Medira, I asked the general what was his opinion concerning the new President. ”Well, sir,” was the general's answer, ”in parting, I advised Mr. Lincoln to get a very eminent man for his private secretary.”-Sapienti sat.
Jan. 6.-Oh for a voice of thousand storms to render justice to the patriots in Congress, to make the ma.s.ses of the people know and appreciate them, and to show up the littleness and the ignorance of the pillars of the Republican press. Never and in no country has the so-called good press shown itself so below the great emergencies of the day as are the old hacks semperliving in the press.
Jan. 7.-The great military qualities shown by Gen. Rosecrans, thrilled with joy all the best men in the Potomac Army. The war horse Hooker is the loudest to admire Rosecrans. Happy the Western heroes to be beyond the immediate influence of Was.h.i.+ngton-of the White House-and above all, of such as Halleck!
Rosecrans has revealed all the higher qualities of a captain; coolness, resolution, stubbornness and inspiration. His army began to break,-he ordered the attack on the whole line, and thus transformed defeat into victory. Not of McClellan's school, is Rosecrans.
Jan. 7.-Senator Sumner who, during the ministerial crisis, ought to have exposed to the country the mischievous direction given by Mr. Seward to our foreign relations, and who ought to have done it n.o.bly, boldly, authoritatively, patriotically, and from his Senatorial chair, Senator Sumner's preferred to keep stoically quiet, notwithstanding that his personal friends and the country expected it from him. Yet next to Chase, Senator Sumner, more than any body, attacks Seward in private conversation! I read in the papers that Senator Sumner's influence on Mr. Lincoln is considerable (nevertheless Seward remained as the greatest curse to the country,) and that he, Sumner, is a power behind the throne. Has Sumner insinuated this himself to some newspaper reporter in extremis for news? Power behind the throne, what a tableau: Sumner and Lincoln! O, Hogarth, O, Callot! Oh, for your crayon! and now-of course-the country is safe, having such Power behind the throne.
Mr. Lincoln's good intentions I hear talked about right and left. Oh, for one sensible, good, energetic action, and all his intentions may go where the French proverb puts them.
Jan. 7.-The city crowded with Major Generals and Brigadier-Generals not in activity. When Mr. Lincoln is cornered, then he makes a Brigadier or a Major General, according to circ.u.mstances and in obedience to political or to backstairs influence. From the beginning of the war, no sound notions directed the nominations, either under Cameron, Scott, or McClellan, or now; at the beginning of the war they had Generals without troops, then troops without Generals, and now they have Generals who have not commanded, or cannot command, troops. If, during the war in Poland in 1831, Warsaw, the Capital, had been overrun in such a way by do-nothing Generals, the chambermaids in the city would have taken the affair into their fair hands, and armed with certain night effluvia made short work with the military drones.
Jan. 8.-A poor negro woman with her child was refused entrance into the cars. It snowed and stormed, and she was allowed to s.h.i.+ver on the platform. A so-called abolitionist Congress and President gave the charter to the constructors of the city railroad and the members of Congress have free tickets, and the Africo-American is treated as a dog. Human honesty and justice!
Jan. 8.-Horse contracts the word. Never in my life saw I the horse so maltreated and the cavalry so poorly, badly, brainlessly organised, drilled and used. Some few exceptions change not the truth of my a.s.sertions, and McClellan is considered a great organiser. They ruin more horses here in this war than did Napoleon I. in Russia, (I speak not of the cold which killed thousands at once.)
How ignorant and conceited! Halleck solicits Rarey, the horse-tamer, for instructions. O, Halleck, you are unique! Officers who have served in armies with large, good, well-organised and well-drilled cavalry-such officers will teach you more than Rarey. But such officers are from Europe, and it would be a shame for a West-Point incarnation of ignorance and conceit to learn anything from an officer of European experience. Bayard, however, thought not so. Justice to his name.
The rebels are not so conceited as the simon pure West-Pointers. Above all the rebels wish success, and have no objections to learn; they imported good European cavalry officers, and have now under Stuart (his chief of staff is a Prussian officer) a cavalry which has made a mark in this war.
Jan. 8.-O rhetors! O, rhetors! malediction upon you and upon the politicians! You have no heart, no sensibilities. Not one, not one has yet uttered a single word for the fallen, for the suffering, the dying and nameless heroes of our armies. It seems, O rhetors and politicians! that the people ought to bleed that you may prosper. Corpses are needed for your stepping stones! The fallen are not mentioned now in Congress, as you never mentioned them in your poor stump speeches. O, you whitened sepulchres!
O rhetors and politicians! O, powers on, before, and ”behind the throne!” In your selfish, heartless conceit, you imagine that the Emanc.i.p.ation is and will be your work, and will be credited to you. Oh yes, but by old women.
The people's blood, the fallen heroes, tore the divine work of emanc.i.p.ation, from the hands of jealously watching demons. To the shadows of the fallen the glory, and not to your round, polished or unpolished phrases. Not the pen with which the proclamation was written is a trophy and a relic, but the blood steaming to heaven, the corpses of the fallen, corpses mouldering scattered on all the fields of the Union.
Jan. 8.-As a rapid spring tide, so higher and higher, and with all parties-even, with the decided Copperheads-rises the haughty contempt toward the crowned, the official, the aristocratic, and the flatfooted (livery stable) part of Europe. Good and just! Marshy, rotten rulers and aristocrats who scarcely can keep your various shaky and undermined seats, you and your lackeys, you take on airs of advisors, of guardians, of initiators of civilization! Forsooth! I except Russia. In Russia the sovereign, his ministers and nine-tenths of the aristocracy are in uni sono with the whole nation; and all are against slavery, against the rebels, against traitors. The Russian government and the Russian nation often are misrepresented by their official or diplomatic agents.
Any well organized American village in the free States contains more genuine, moral and intellectual civilization than prevails among European higher circles, those gilded pasteboards. This is all that you, you conceited advisors, represent in that splendid, all-embracing edifice of civilization! At the best you are ornaments, or-with Wilhelm von Humboldt-you are culture, but not the higher, man-inspiring civilization. A John S. Mill, a G.o.dwin Smith, and those many outside of the would-be-something strata in England, in France, almost the whole Germany, those are the representatives of the genuine civilized Europe.