Part 16 (1/2)
Mirmidons, race feconde, enfin nous commandons.
Some say that the generals who let Lee off, intended not to humiliate their former chief and pet McClellan.
July 20.-Cavalry wanted. Stables and corrals filled with horses, but no saddles. No saddles in this most industrious country! No brains in the Quartermasters or in those to whom it belongs. And perhaps no will, and perhaps no honesty. No saddles! Oh! I am sure it is n.o.body's fault; no workmen are to be found, and no leather, and no men to look after the country's good. That is the rub.
July 20.-Captain Collins, commanding a United States man-of-war, captures an English blockade-runner near an isolated shoal somewhere in the vicinity of Bermuda. England a.s.serts that the shoal is a sh.o.r.e, and that the maritime league is violated. Mr. Seward at once yields, Neptune defends as he always does, the rights of the national Tritons, and of the national flag. The supreme power sides with Seward, and an order is given to reprimand Collins or something like it: it is done, and the prize-court decides that Captain Collins has made a lawful capture. I hope Collins will be consoled, and light his segar with the reprimand.
The future historian will duly ponder and establish Mr. Seward's claims to the salvage of the country.
July 20.-From all that I learn, Meade has a better and larger army than Lee; oh, may only Meade establish that he has the biggest brains of the two.
July 20.-From time to time, I read the various statutes issued by the last Congress, and am strengthened in my opinion that Congress served the people well. The various statutes are the triumph of legislation. They are clear, precise, well-worded results of patriotic, devoted, far-seeing and undaunted minds and brains. All glory to the majority of the Thirty-seventh Congress!
July 21.-A manly and patriotic letter from James T. Brady is published in the papers. Such Democrats, Irishmen and lawyers, like Brady, honor the party, the nationality, and the profession.
July 21.-A mystery surrounds the appointment of Grant to the command of the fated Potomac army. Yes and no say the helmsmen. The truth seems to be, it was offered to Grant, and he respectfully refused to accept it. If so, it is an evidence in favor of Grant. To give up glory and devoted companions in arms, to give all this up for the sake of running into the unknown, and into the jaws of the still breathing McClellanism, and into the vicinity of the central telegraphic station! Grant believes in volunteers; and for this reason it is to be regretted that he refused to correct the West Point notions.
July 21.-The draft occasions much bad blood, and evokes violent dissatisfaction. The draft is a dire necessity; but it could have been avoided if time, men, and the people's enthusiasm had not been so sacrilegiously wasted. The three hundred dollar clause is not a happy invention, and its omission would have given a better character to that law.
July 21.-If the New York traitors succeed in preventing the draft, then they will riot against taxes; after breaking down the taxes, they will riot against the greenbacks, against the emanc.i.p.ation, and finally force the reconstruction of the Union with the murderous rebel chiefs in the senatorial chairs, according to the Seward-Mercier-Richmond programme. Any one can see in the Cain-Copperhead newspapers of New York, of Boston, of Philadelphia, and in the letters and speeches of those matricides, what are their aims, and how their plans are laid out.
July 21.-Again I am most positively a.s.sured that some time ago a friendly offensive and defensive alliance was concluded between W. H. Seward and Edwin Stanton. The high powers were represented by Thurlow Weed and Morgan for Seward, and the virtuous, lachrymose, white-cravated Whiting acted for Stanton. I was told that this alliance drove Watson, (a.s.sistant Secretary,) from the War Department. This would be infernal, if true. I know that no Weed whatever could approach such a man as Watson; but Watson a.s.sured me that he returns back, and I cannot believe that Stanton could consent to be thus sold.
July 22.-Honorable, virtuous, tear-shedding, jockey-dressing Whiting wanted to make a trip to Europe. Sharp and acute, the great expounder found out at once that Mr. Seward is one of the greatest and n.o.blest patriots of all times. Reward followed. Whiting goes to Europe on a special mission-to dine, if he is invited, with all the great and small men to whom Mr. Adams or Mr. Dayton may introduce him, and to convince everybody in Europe that the Sewards, the Whitings, &c., are the creme de la creme of the American people. Vive la bagatelle.
July 22.-How putrescent is all around! But it is not the nation, not the people. And as the sun raises above the darkest and heaviest vapors, so in America the spirit of mankind, incarnated in and animating the people, towers above the filth of politicians, of cabinet-makers, of presidential-peddlers, etc. Look to the ma.s.ses to find consolation. How splendidly acts Ma.s.sachusetts and New England's sons! And what free State is not New England's son? The youth of Ma.s.sachusetts are almost all in the field-the rich and the poor, those of the best social standing, and of the genuine good blood and standing; scholars and mechanics, all of them shouldered the musket.
July 23.-How strangely and how slowly Meade manuvres! It looks McClellan-like. O, G.o.d of battles, warm and inspire Meade!
July 23.-Only boys in the corps of invalids. It has its good. For scores of years to come, these invalids will be the living legend of this treasonable, matricidal rebellion, and of the atrocious misconduct of our helmsmen. I hope that when returned home, these invalids will be as many extirpators of all kinds of Weeds in their respective towns.h.i.+ps and villages. They will become the lights of the new era.
July 23.-Were it not for the murdered, these New York riots could be considered welcome. The rioting cannibals, and their prompters and defenders showed their hands. No one in his senses can now doubt how heartily and devotedly Jeff Davis was served by his hirelings among the Copperhead leaders and among the New York Copperhead press. The cannibals cheered for McClellan, and the Administration has neither enough courage nor self respect to put that fetish on the retired list.
In the old, flouris.h.i.+ng times of Romanism and papacy, such a Most Eminent Hughes would long ago have been suspended by the Holy See. The Most Eminent's standing among the continental European Episcopacy is not eminent at all, whatever be Mr. Seward's opinion. The Most Eminent is a curious observer of the canons, of the papal bulls, and of other clerical and episcopal paraphernalia. The spirit animating the Most Eminent is not the spirit of the Roman Sapienzia. I well recollect what I heard lectured in that Roman papal university.
July 24.-As a dark and ominous cloud, Lee with his army hovers around Was.h.i.+ngton, keeps the Shenandoah valley, and may again cross over to the c.u.mberland valley. It seems that the generals whose council-of-war allowed Lee to recross the river unhurt, believed that Lee with all speed would run to Richmond; and now they hang to his brow and eye.
The crime of Williamsport bears fruit. Never, never in this or in the other life, can the perpetrators of the Williamsport crime atone for it.
It may come that the western armies and generals will bring the civil war to an end, the Potomac army all the time marching and countermarching between the Potomac and the Rappahannock. And such a splendid army, such heroic soldiers and officers, to be sacrificed to the ignorant stubbornness of sham military science!
July 25.-I positively learn that Gilmore has scarcely ten thousand men, infantry, and is to storm the various forts and defenses around the Charleston harbor. If Gilmore succeeds, then it is a wonder. But in sound valuation, Gilmore has not men enough to organize columns of attack so that the one shall follow the other within a short, very short supporting distance. And the losses will almost hourly reduce Gilmore's small force. I dread repulse and heavy losses. Some one at the head-quarters deserves to be quartered for such a distribution of troops. With the immense resources and means of transportation, it is so easy to send twenty thousand troops to Gilmore, attack, make short work of it, and then carry the troops back to where they belonged. But to concentrate and act in ma.s.ses is not the credo of the-not yet quartered-head-quarters.
July 26.-Old-but not slow-Welles again gives to Seward a lesson of good-behavior, of sound sense, and of mastery of international laws. The prize courts side with Welles. Because Neptune has a white wig and beard, he is considered slow, when in reality he is active, unflinching, and progressive.
July 26.-O, could I only exclaim, Exegi monumentum aere perennius, to the n.o.ble, the patriotic, and the good, as well as to the helpless, the selfish, and the counterfeits.
July 27.-Philadelphia. Flags in all the streets, volunteers parading and drilling. Prosperity, activity and devotion permeate the country. So at least I am led to believe. All this is so refres.h.i.+ng, after witnessing in Was.h.i.+ngton such strenuous efforts how not to do it.
Bad news. I learn that Gilmore is repulsed. When the forlorn hope entered Fort Wagner, no support promptly came, and the heroes, black and white, were ma.s.sacred or expelled. Gilmore ought to have been more cautious, and not to have undertaken an operation which was on its outside stamped with impossibility. Perhaps Gilmore obeyed peremptory orders. Who gave them?