Part 18 (1/2)
The Confiscation Act is based on a wrong principle-the right to confiscate the whole rebel property in America. This right is derived from the public law. A conqueror of a country becomes ipso facto the proprietor of all that belonged to the conquered sovereign and what is called public property, as domains, taxes, revenues, public inst.i.tutions, etc. The rebels claim to be sovereigns-that is each freeman in each respective State is a respective sovereign. The area of such revolted State, with all the lands, cultivated or uncultivated, with the farms, and all industrial, mercantile or mining establishments whatever, is the property of the sovereign, or of the sovereigns. Property of a, or of many sovereigns, is in its whole nature a public property, and as such, ipso facto, is liable to be confiscated by the conqueror.
August 24: L. B.-The ma.s.sacre at Lawrence, Kansas, must exclusively be credited to those who appointed for that region a pro-slavery military commander. But the power-holders are not troubled by more or less blood, by more or less victims of their incapacity and double-dealing!
August 25: L. B.-Any future historian must beware not to seek light in the newspapers of this epoch. The so-called good press throws no light on events; that press is not in the hands of statesmen or of thinkers, or of ardent students of human events, or of men having for their aim any pursuits of science or knowledge. The luminaries of the press are no beacons for the people during this b.l.o.o.d.y and deadly tempest! For the sake of what is called political capital, the most simple fact often becomes distorted and upturned by this political, short-sighted, and selfishly envious press.
August 26: L. B.-All things considered, the inflation of the currency and the rise in gold has proved to be beneficial to the country. The agricultural interest, above all, in the West, was particularly sustained thereby. Wheat and grain would have fallen to prices ruinous for the farmers. When the gold fell, the farmer felt it by the reduction of the price of his produce. The agriculturist, the backbone and marrow of the country, spends less money for manufactured products than he netted clear profits by the rise in gold. If the farmer sold now his wheat for six s.h.i.+llings, without inflation the price might have been four s.h.i.+llings, and then the farmer would have been bankrupt, unable to pay the taxes. The inflation saved the greatest interest in the country. And thus agriculture and industry flourish, the country is not ruined, is not bankrupt, as the European wiseacres took great pleasure in foreboding that it would be. So much for absolute laws of political economy.
August 27: L. B.-The New York Republican papers insinuate that a Mr. Evarts, who was sent to Europe by Mr. Seward, has given a.s.surances to European governments that slavery will be abolished. If such declaration was needed, why not make it through the regular representatives of the country, as are Mr. Adams and Mr. Dayton? Mr. Seward is incorrigible. I am curious to know where he learned this original mode of diplomatizing. Such unofficial, confidential, semi-confidential agents confuse European governments. They inspire very little, if any respect for our statesmans.h.i.+p, and are offensive to our regularly appointed ministers. What must the crown lawyers in England have thought of Mr. Evart's great mastery of international laws?
August 30.-Our military powers in Was.h.i.+ngton, led on and inspired by Halleck, cannot put an end to guerrillas, or rather to those highwaymen who rob, so to speak, at the military gates of Was.h.i.+ngton. Lieber-Halleck-Hitchc.o.c.k's treatise frightened not the guerrillas, but most a.s.suredly the gallows will do it. Everywhere else the like banditti would be summarily treated; and these would-be guerrillas here are evidences of the uttermost social dissolution. They are no soldiers, no guerrillas, and deserve no mercy.
August 31: L. B.-According to the Tribune, Mr. Lincoln deserves all the credit for General Gilmore's success before Charleston. There we have it! Mr. Lincoln, outdoing Carnot for military sagacity and capacity, Mr. Lincoln approved Gilmore's plans. Mr. Lincoln-Halleck aiding-at once understood the laws of ballistics, and other et ceteras which underlay the plan of every siege. And now to doubt that Lincoln, with his Halleck, are military geniuses! O Tribune!
August 31: L. B.-I learned that Grant most positively refused to accept the command of the Potomac Army. They cannot ruin Grant-they will neutralize him.
SEPTEMBER, 1863.
Jeff Davis - Incubuerunt - O, Youth! - Lucubrations - Genuine Europe - It is forgotten - Fremont - Prof. Draper - New Yorkers - Senator Sumner's Gauntlet - Prince Gortschakoff - Governor Andrew - New Englanders - Re-elections - Loyalty - Cruizers - Matamoras - Hurrah for Lincoln - Rosecrans - Strategy - Sabine Pa.s.s, etc., etc., etc.
September 1: L. B.-Jeff Davis is to emanc.i.p.ate eight hundred thousand slaves-calls them to arms, and promises fifty acres of land to each. Prodigious, marvellous, wonderful-if true. Jeff Davis will become immortal! With eight hundred thousand Africo-Americans in arms, Secession becomes consolidated-and Emanc.i.p.ation a fixed fact, as the eight hundred thousand armed will emanc.i.p.ate themselves and their kindred. Lincoln emanc.i.p.ates by tenths of an inch, Jeff Davis by the wholesale. But it is impossible, as-after all-such a step of the rebel chiefs is as much or even more, a death-warrant of their political existence, as the eventual and definitive victory of the Union armies would be. If the above news has any foundation in truth, then the sacredness of the principle of right and of liberty is victoriously a.s.serted in such a way as never before was any great principle. The most criminal and ignominious enterprise recorded in history, the attempt to make human bondage the corner-stone of an independent polity, this attempt ending in breaking the corner-stone to atoms, and by the hands of the architects and builders themselves. Satan's revolt was virtuous, when compared with that of the Southern slavers, and Satan's revolt ended not in transforming h.e.l.l into an Eden, as will be the South for the slaves when their emanc.i.p.ation is accomplished. Emanc.i.p.ation, n'importe par qui, must end in the reconstruction of the Union.
September 2: L. B.-Garibaldi to Lincoln. The letter, if genuine, is well-intentioned trash. I am afraid that this prolific letter-writing will use up Garibaldi. It seems that in letter-writing Garibaldi intends to rival Lincoln or Seward.
September 3: L. B.-More and more manifestations in favor of Lincoln's re-election. All the New York Republican papers begin to be lined with Lincoln. And thus politicians in and out of the press will-
Incubuerunt mare (people) totumque a sedibus imis.
September 3: L. B.-In the great Barnum diplomatic tour, Seward killed under him nearly all the diplomats, and returned to Was.h.i.+ngton in company with one. Poor Europe, and its representatives, to be used up in such a way! But it is only the official Europe, the crowned privileged stratum patched up with rotten relics of ma.s.sacre (December 2d,) of official, regal heartlessness and of servile cunning. That crust presses down the genuine Europe, the marrow of mankind. The genuine Europe is ardent, n.o.ble, progressive and coruscant; and from Cadiz to the White Sea, that genuine Europe is on the side of freedom, on the side of the North.
September 3: L. B.-Lincoln to Grant, July 13. This letter shows how the President dabbles in military operations. It clearly establishes Mr. Lincoln's right to be considered at least a Carnot, if not a Napoleon, vide the Republican newspapers.
September 3: L. B.-State Conventions, and the old party-hacks under arms. Will not the younger generation rise in its might, break the chains of this intellectual subserviency, scatter the hacks to the winds, take the lead, enlighten the ma.s.ses, find out new, not used-up men, brains and hearts, for the sacred duty of serving the people. To witness so much intelligence, knowledge, ardor, elasticity, clear-sightedness as animate the American youth, to witness all this subdued, curbed by the hacks!-O, youth, awake!
It is the most sacred duty of the younger generation, to rescue the country from the hands of the old politicians of every kind; to call to political paramount activity the better and purer agencies. It is a task as emphatically, nay, even more, urgent and meritorious than emanc.i.p.ation of the Africo-Americans.
September 4: L. B.-In their official or unofficial quality, numerous Americans amorously dabble in International questions and laws. How much the rights of war, etc., have been discussed; how many letters, signed, anonymous, official and unofficial, have been published-and very little, if any light thrown on these questions. What a cruel fate of a future historian, who, if conscientious, will be obliged to read all these darkness-spreading lucubrations!
September 5: L. B.-Mr. Lincoln's letter to the Illinois Convention stirs up the whole country. It is a very, very good manifesto,-had it not a terrible YESTERDAY. It is a heavy bid for re-election and may secure it. The Americans forget the yesterday, and Mr. Lincoln's yesterday! ... is full of s.h.i.+ftings, hesitations, mistakes which draw out the people's life-blood. The people will forget that a man of energy and of firm purpose in the White House, such a man would have at once clearly seen his way, and then a year ago rebellion and slavery would have been crushed.
A man of energy would not have had for his familiar demons, the Scotts, the Sewards, the Blairs, the border-state politicians, the Weeds, etc.
September 5: L. B.-The siege of Charleston tire en longueur; it has cost thousand of lives and millions upon millions, and will still cost more. And it is already forgotten that when nearly two years ago Sherman and Dupont took Port Royal, Charleston and Savannah were defenceless; it is forgotten that Sherman asked for orders to siege the two cities, but such were not given from Was.h.i.+ngton, because Mr. Lincoln-Seward (literally) was afraid to get possession of the focuses of rebellion, and General McClellan, with one hundred and fifty thousand men in Was.h.i.+ngton, could not bear the idea that the rebels should be disturbed either in Centerville or in their chivalric homes in South Carolina. It is forgotten that civil and military leaders and chiefs then and there refused to deal a death blow to the rebellion.
And as I am en train to recall to memory what is already forgotten, and what the Illinois letter intends to wholly erase from the people's memory; I go on.
In the first days and months after the explosion of the rebellion, Mr. Lincoln was as innocent of any wish to emanc.i.p.ate the slaves, as could be a Seward, or a Yancey, or McClellan, or a Magruder or a Wise or a Halleck. All this is forgotten. It is forgotten that General Butler is the earliest initiator of emanc.i.p.ation, and that to him exclusively belongs the word and the fact of an emanc.i.p.ated contraband. It is forgotten that when Butler began to emanc.i.p.ate the contrabands, the big men in the Administration, Lincoln, General Scott, and Seward, became almost frantic against Butler for thus introducing the ”n.i.g.g.e.r” into the struggle. The fate of Fremont is forgotten. Fremont was ahead of the times. Fremont emanc.i.p.ated when Lincoln-Seward-Scott-Blair, etc., heartily wished to save and preserve slavery. Down went Fremont.
Early in the summer of 1861 General Fremont wished to do what was now accomplished by the, until yet, sans pareil Grant-that is, to clear the Mississippi at a time when neither Island No. 10, nor Vicksburgh, nor Port Hudson nor any other port was fortified. But the plan displeased and frightened the powers in Was.h.i.+ngton. Fremont was never to be pardoned for having shown farsightedness when the great men deliberately blindfolded themselves. Fremont might not be a Napoleon, not a captain; Fremont committed military mistakes,-other generals commit military crimes.
The angel of justice very easily will white-wash Fremont from military responsibility for the unnecessary waste of human life; and with all his various faults Fremont's aspirations are patriotic and lofty, and he is by far a better and n.o.bler man than all his revilers put together. But all this seems to be forgotten.