Part 10 (1/2)

Oh! how the old hacks turn their dizzy heads towards the White House. It would be ludicrous, and the lowest comedy of life, were not the track running through blood and among corpses. I am told that even Halleck squints that way. And why not? All is possible; and Halleck's nag has as long ears as have the nags and hacks of the other race-runners.

April 14.-Halleck consolidates the regiments and incidentally deprives the army of the best and most experienced officers. The numerically smaller regiment is dissolved in the larger one. But most generally the smaller regiment was the bravest and has seen more fire which melted it. Thus good officers are mustered out and thrown on the pavement, and the enthusiasm for the flag of the regiment destroyed, for its victorious memories, for the recollections of common hards.h.i.+ps and all the like n.o.ble cements of a military life. Certainly, great difficulty exists to remount or to restore a regiment. But O, Hallecks! O, Thomases! O, McDowells! all of you, genii, or genuises, surmount difficulties.

April 14.-In a public speech in New York, General Fremont has explained the duty and the obligations of a soldier in a republic. Few, very few, of our striped and starred citizens, and still less those educated at West Point have a comprehension of what a Republican citizen soldier is.

April 14.-Halleck directly and indirectly exercises a fatal influence on our army. I learn that his book on military not-science largely circulates; above all, in the Potomac Army.

April 14.-It is the mission of the American people to make all the trials and experiences by which all other nations will hereafter profit. So the social experiment of self-government; the same with various mechanical and commercial inventions. The Americans experiment in political and domestic economy, in the art provided for man's well-being and in the art of killing him. New fire-arms, guns, etc., are now first used.

The until now undecided question between batteries on land and floating ones will be decided in Charleston harbor. Who will have the best, the Monitors or the batteries?

April 15.-I wrote to Hooker imploring him for the sake of the country, and for the sake of his good name, to put an end to the carousings in his camp, and to sweep out all kind of women, be they wives, sisters, sweethearts or the promiscuous rest of crinolines.

April 15.-Certain Republican newspapers perform now the same capers to please and puff Seward and Halleck, as they did before to puff McClellan when in power.

April 16.-Night after night the White House is serenaded. And why not?... From all sides news of brilliant victories on land and on sea; news that Seward's foreign policy is successful; everywhere Halleck's military science carries before it everything, and lickspittles are numberless.

Wild jauchtzend schleudert selbst der Gott der Freude, Den Pechkrantz in das brenene Gebaude!

My veins and brains almost bursting to witness all this. But for ... it would be all over.

... tibi desinet.

April 17.-I met one of the best and of the most radical ex-members of Congress. He was very desponding, almost despairing at the condition of affairs. He returned from the White House, and notwithstanding his despair, tried to explain to me how Mr. Lincoln's eminent and matchless civil and military capacities finally will save the country. Et tu, Brute, exclaimed I, without the cla.s.sical accent and meaning. The ex-honorable had in his pocket a nomination for an influential office.

April 17.-Immense inexhaustible means in men, money, beasts, equipment, war material devoured and disappearing in the bottomless abyss of helplessness. The counterfeits ask for more, always for more, and more of the high-minded people grudge not its blood.

Labitur ex oculis ... gutta meis.

A Forney puffs Cameron over Napoleon! A true American gentlewoman as patriotic as patriotism itself, quivering under the disastrous condition of affairs at home and abroad, exclaimed: ”that at least the Southern leaders redeem the honor of the American name by their indomitable bravery, their iron will and their fertility of resources.” What was to be answered?

April 18.-As long as England is ruled by her aristocracy, whether Tories or Whigs, a Hannibalian hate ought to be the creed of every American. Let the government of England pa.s.s into the hands of John S. Mill, and into those of the Lancas.h.i.+re working cla.s.ses, and then the two peoples may be friends.

April 18.-Hooker is to move. If Hooker brings out the army victorious from the bad strategic position wherein the army was put by Halleck-Burnside, then the people can never sufficiently admire Hooker's genius. Such a manuvre will be a revelation.

April 18.-I learn that General Hunter has about seven thousand disposable men in his whole department, for the attack of Charleston. If he is to storm the batteries by land, then Hunter has not men enough to do it; it is therefore folly and crime to order, or to allow, the attack of the defenses of Charleston.

April 18.-Mr. Seward has not at all given up his firm decision to violate the national statutes and the international rules, by insisting upon the restoration to England of the mails of that Anglo-Piratic vessel, the Peterhoff. A mail on a blockade-runner enjoys no immunity, since regular mail steamers, or at least mail agents and carriers are established by England. Even previously, neutral private vessels could not always claim the immunity for the mail, when they are caught in an unlawful trade. But, of course, the State Department knows better.

In the case of the s.h.i.+p Labuan, an English blockade-runner, Mr. Seward, backed by Mr. Lincoln, ordered the judge how to decide, ordered the judge to give up the prize, and Mr. Seward urged the English agents not to lose time in prosecuting American captors for costs and damages. The Labuan was a good prize, but Mr. Seward is the incarnation of wisdom and of justice!

April 20.-The not quite heavenly trio-Lincoln, Seward and Halleck-maintain, and find imbeciles and lickspittles enough to believe them, that they, the trio, could not as yet, act decidedly in the Emanc.i.p.ation question, they being in this, as in other questions, too far in advance of the people. What blasphemy! Those lumina mundi believe that the people will forget their records. To be sure, the Americans, good-natured as they are, easily forget the misdeeds of yesterday, but this yesterday shall be somehow recalled to their memory.

If all the West Pointers were like Grant, Rosecrans, Hooker, Barnard and thousands of them throughout all grades, then West Point would be a blessing for the country. Unhappily, hitherto, the small, bad clique of West Point engineers No. one, exercised a preponderating influence on the conduct of the war, and thus West Point became in disrespect, nay, in horror. I believe that the good West Pointers are more numerous than the altogether bad ones, but they often mar their best qualities by a certain, not altogether admirable, esprit du corps.

April 20.-The generation crowding on this fogyish one will sit in court of justice over the evil-doers, over the helpless, over the egotists who are to-day at work. That generation will begin the a.s.sizes during the lifetime of these great leaders in Administration, in politics, in war.

Discite just.i.tiam moniti nec temere divos!

April 20.-Yesterday, April 19th, Mr. Lincoln and his Aide, Halleck, went to Acquia Creek to visit Hooker, to have a peep into his plans, and, of course to babble about them. I hope Hooker will most politely keep his own secrets.