Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 Part 13

June 1.-For some time Banks seems to move in the right direction. Banks no more intends to destroy slavery, and not thereby to hurt the slave-holders. So Banks has become himself again, and the Sewardean creed is evaporated. Banks has under him very good officers, and intelligent, fighting generals; some of them left by Butler, others, as for instance, Generals Augur, Stone, etc., who embarked with Banks.

June 2.-I hear it reported that Hooker maintains that he has worsted and crippled the enemy more than if he had taken Richmond.

If the enemy in reality was worsted to that extent, it was not in the least done by Hooker, b.u.t.terfield & Co.'s generals.h.i.+p, but this time, as always, it was done by the bravery of the troops, notwithstanding the bad generals.h.i.+p, not by, but in spite of, that bad generals.h.i.+p.

June 3.-Count Zeppelin, an officer of the staff and aide to the King of Wurtemberg, came here to observe and to learn how not to do it! The Count visited the army at Falmouth. He was horror-struck at the prevailing disorder, and at the general and special miscomprehension of the needed knowledge and of the duties prevailing in the staff of the army. The Count says that if this confusion continues, the rebels may dare almost every thing. Count Zeppelin is what would be called here, a thorough Union man. He revolted greatly at witnessing the nonchalance with which human life is dealt with in the army, and the carelessness of commanders about the condition of soldiers; the latter he most heartily admires, and therefore the more pities their fate. He a.s.sured me that rebel agents scattered in Germany tried their utmost to secure for the rebel army officers of the various arms. This explains the organization and the brilliant manuvrings of the celebrated Stuart's cavalry, the novel rebel tactics in the use of artillery, and the attack by columns at Chancellorsville.

June 3.-Hooker, they say, waits to see what Lee will do. In other words, we are on the defensive, after such efforts and so much blood wasted. O, Ezekiel! O, Deuteronomy! help me to bless the leaders and the chiefs of this people.

I am told by a very good authority, that Mr. Lincoln takes a special care of his fellow-townsmen in Springfield. What a good, honest, neighborly sentiment, provided always that the public good is not suffering by it!

June 3.-A senator, who urged Mr. Lincoln to dismiss Halleck, was answered, that "as Halleck has not a single friend in the country, Mr. Lincoln feels himself in duty bound to stand by him." Admirable, but costly stubbornness.

June 3.-Poor Hooker! He is now the laughingstock of Europe. I wish he may recover what he has lost or squandered. But alas! even now Hooker makes no attempt to surround himself with a genuine staff.

I wrote to Stanton, imploring him for the country's and for his own sake, to compel Hooker to reform his staff, and not to allow science to be any longer trodden under foot. I implored Stanton that either the President or he would select and nominate a chief-of-staff for Hooker, or rather for the Potomac army, as it is done in Europe. Stanton understands well the disastrous deficiency, and if he could, he would immediately go at it and change. But, first, the statutes or regulations, obligatory here, leave it with the commander to appoint his own staff and its chief. Stupid, rusty, foggyish and fogyish regulations, so perfectly in harmony with the general ignorance of what ought to be the staff of an army! Second, Stanton must yield to another will, and to what is believed here to be the higher knowledge of military affairs.

June 3.-"Give to Hooker one chance more," says Mr. Lincoln, and so say several members of the Cabinet; "McClellan had so many."-Because they allowed McClellan to waste human life and time, it surely is no reason to repeat the sacrilegious condescension. A general may be unfortunate, lose a battle, or even lose a campaign; all this without being d.a.m.nable when he has shown capacity, when he did his utmost, but could not conciliate fatum on his side. But such is not the case with Hooker, and such emphatically was not the case with McClellan and with Burnside.

June 3.-During these last fourteen days, the big men have been expecting a raid on Was.h.i.+ngton. More fortifications are constructed, and rifle pits dug. This time the Administration is perfectly right. All is probable and possible when capacity, decision, and lightning-like execution are on the one side, and on the other sham-science, want of earnestness, slowness and indecision.

June 5.-A very reliable and honorable patriot tells me that grandissimo Chase looks down upon any advice, suggestion, or warning. O, the great man! A time must come when all these great men will be held to a terrible account, will shed tears of blood, and their names will be scorned by coming generations, and the track to the White House may become also the track to the Tarpeian rock.

June 5.-I often meet Mr. Lincoln in the streets. Poor man! He looks exhausted, care-worn, spiritless, extinct. I pity him! Mr. Lincoln's looks are those of a man whose nights are sleepless, and whose days are comfortless. That is the price for a greatness to which he is not equal. Yet Mr. Lincoln, they say, wishes to be re-elected!

June 5.-Mr. Seward makes a speech to the volunteers of Auburn. All the same logomachy, all the same cold patriotism, all the same I, and all the same squint towards the next presidential election.

June 6.-Lincoln cannot realize to what extent Seward is and has been his evil spirit. Even the nearest in blood and heart to Lincoln know it, feel it, are awe-struck by it, warn him, and he is insensible.

June 7.-How I sympathize with Stanton, and admire his rude-others call it coa.r.s.e-contempt of all that is said about him. That impure, lying, McClellan-Copperhead motley crew, accuse Stanton of all the numberless criminal mistakes committed in the conduct of the war-committed by the generals, etc. Stanton never interferes with Mr. Lincoln nor with Halleck in matters that exclusively relate to pure warfare, as where and how to march the respective armies, how and in what way to attack the enemy, etc.

Reliable patriots coincide with me, that Stanton as clearly sees every thing to-day, as he saw it when entering on his th.o.r.n.y duty. I only wonder that he holds out in such an atmosphere. Stanton's energy is indomitable. Blair's party says that "Stanton goes off at half-c.o.c.k." It is not true; but even if true, better to go off at half-c.o.c.k than not at all. Many say that Stanton ought to retire, if he is hampered by others in the exercise of his duties. But if he were to retire, he could not at this moment reveal to the people the causes of such a step, and by remaining at his post, Stanton prevents still greater disasters and disgraces. He never asks any of his friends to say or to write a word in his defence, or rather to dispel the lies with which McClellanites and copperheads poison the atmosphere all around them.

June 8.-Alexandria fortified, rifle-pits dug, etc. The third year of the war is the third terror upon Was.h.i.+ngton, and upon those counterfeit penates.

June 8.-What for-for heaven's or devil's sake-Hooker throws a division of cavalry across the Rappahannock, right in the dragon's jaw! All the rebel army is on the other side, and this, our division, can never be decidedly supported. It cannot be a reconnaissance-of what? It cannot be a stratagem to surprise Lee. If Lee wants to march anywhere north or west, this demonstration of Hooker's will not for a minute arrest Lee.

June 9.-The great Henry Ward Beecher emigrates for a time to Europe. His parish richly supports him for the trip, and the preacher sells his choice, and as it is said, beloved picture gallery. It is not for want of money. Strange! What a curious manifestation of patriotism!

June 10.-The demonstration over the Rappahannock turned out to be a slaughter of the cavalry. What! Was Hooker again stunned, to make such a deliberate mistake-nay, crime? Such a demonstration never could prevent Stuart from moving, even if our troops had defeated or worried him-even if victorious, our cavalry would have been forced to recross the Rappahannock, and Stuart, having behind him Lee's whole army, which could easily reinforce him, would then move again. Our force of nine thousand men, distant from support, attack a superior force of fifteen thousand, who besides have within supporting distance a whole army! This demonstration prevents nothing, decides nothing, beyond the worst, the most d.a.m.nable generals.h.i.+p. General Hooker and his chief-of-staff are personally responsible for every soldier lost there.

June 11.-Again visitings to the army. Senators, ladies, magnifico Chase leading on. O, if the guerrillas could sweep them!

June 12.-Crippled men are to be met in all directions, on all the streets. One-third of the amputated limbs undoubtedly could have been saved by the Medical Department, were it in better hands, and above all, if surgeons had been called in from Europe-the domestic surgeons not being sufficient for the demand.

June 13.-The principle of election, the only true one, a principle recognized and a.s.serted as well by antiquity as by the primitive Church, recognized by rationalists, by Fourier, by radical, or any democracy whatever-that principle must undergo an immense improvement before it shall act in all its perfection. The elector must be altogether self-governing, and not governed or influenced by anybody in his choice and vote. The elector himself must stand on an elevated level before by his vote he raises one or several above that level. When the people's vote confers the highest trust to one rather below than in the level, and still less one above the level, then even the most intelligent people in the world, being thus misdirected, misconducted, confused, in a very short time become almost enervated, and, so to speak, loses its self-possession, and its sense of duty and of right becomes shaken, its intellectual light dimmed. Exempla sunt odiosa.

June 14.-The cavalry expedition over the Rappahannock was to arrest any further offensive movements of the rebels. But lo! the rebel army, so to speak, spreads in all directions, and takes the offensive. We do not even know positively where Lee is going, where he will appear and strike. We are shaking in, and for, Was.h.i.+ngton.

"Weh, Messina! wehe, wehe, wehe!"

Mr. Lincoln is unshaken in his confidence in Hooker and b.u.t.terfield.

June 15.-By a bold and rapid manuvre Lee has thrown his troops over the valley, over the Potomac, into Maryland, and G.o.d alone knows where Lee will stop. Lee's advance must have been already on the Potomac when the slaughter of our cavalry over the Rappahannock was planned at the various head-quarters. How splendidly Lee's movements have been arrested by that demonstration! Lee is on the Potomac, and it seems that his movements have been ignored. His armies, to be sure, have not been surrounded by a cloud, as the Jews were in their exodus from the land of bondage, but the cloud was hanging over the head-quarters in the army and in Was.h.i.+ngton.

June 16.-The North invaded-threatened, shaken to the marrow! The audacity of the rebels is stimulated by our sluggishness. If the accounts in the War Department are true, then from Fortress Monroe to the Potomac, including Baltimore and Maryland, we have about two hundred thousand men, and the rebels dare! O, the rebels! what a desperate conception, what a lightning-like execution! Dutifully re-echoing the words uttered by their masters, the partisans of the Administration console themselves by saying that "this invasion of the North will have the effect of stirring up the North from its lethargy." O, you blasphemers! worse blasphemers than ever have been stoned or burned alive! Is the North not pouring forth its blood and its treasures, and are they not all squandered by counterfeits?

June 16.-The draft is not put in motion, because for weeks and months Mr. Lincoln adjusts the appointments to be made under this law, adjusts them to the exigencies of politicians. Jeff Davis executes the draft with an iron hand. Mr. Lincoln thus gives time to the Copperheads, to the disciples of the Seymours, of the Woods, of the World, to organize a resistance. Bloodshed may come!

June 16.-This invasion of Pennsylvania ought to be investigated. Light must be brought into this dark, muddy, stinking labyrinth. Weeks ago, honest, clear-sighted, patriotic Governor Curtin asked authority to arm the militia of his State, and was snubbed in Was.h.i.+ngton. Will this new disgrace serve to strengthen the Administration? Quite possible.

June 16.-Pennsylvania invaded, the country disgraced, and our helmsmen, our Secretaries of State and of the Treasury, give banquets! O, what a stoicism! a stoicism sui generis. The homes of the farmers whose sons bleed on fields of battle, are invaded, their hearths threatened with desolation, and the helmsmen sip Champagne, paid for by the people!

June 17.-Halleckiana. Rosecrans telegraphed to head-quarters that he cannot send any troops to Grant, and that if he, Rosecrans, is to attack Bragg, he must have reinforcements. Answer: "Do what you like, on your own responsibility."

June 17.-Hooker seems to have lost his former dash. He must have known that the rebels extended from Gordonsville to Pennsylvania, and he, moving in almost a parallel direction to that line, ought to have cut it, or at least its tail.

General Ewell at Winchester. Hooker seems to doubt what he can do. The soldiers of his army can do anything ever done by any soldiers in the world-but lead them on, O Generals! Hooker has ninety-four thousand men, and, McClellan-like, waits for more; laments that he is outnumbered. A good general, having such a number, and of such troops, would never hesitate to attack an enemy numbering one hundred and twenty thousand, and the more so, as Hooker's command is ma.s.sed, while Lee's is not. And I'll risk my head that Lee's whole army, all over the valley, and over Pennsylvania, and over Maryland, is smaller than Hooker's. It is the same old trick of the rebels and of their friends, to throw dust in our eyes by magnifying their numbers. The trick is always successful, because on our side it is wished to extenuate incapacity by the supposed large numbers of the rebel armies.

June 18.-The North rises. New York sends its militia. The people fails not, but how about the helmsmen?

The Democrats-the Copperheads roar for McClellan. Well! the like Democrats glorifying McClellan, show their patriotism, their metal and their judgment. These Copperhead-Democrats may insist upon calling McClellan a captain and a hero, but history will give another verdict, and history will credit to the Democrats the fact that they have adroitly poisoned and perverted the good faith of the honest but credulous Democratic rank and file.

June 18.-The Administration's simon pure echoes, politicians, etc., try to persuade everybody that the invasion of Pennsylvania is nothing, a mere tempest in a tea-pot. Whom do they hope to humbug in this way? The disgrace is nameless, only they are callous enough not to feel it. Their cheeks can no more redden.... However, Stanton is not so optimist. It would look so farcical if it were not so deadly to witness. Hooker groping his way after Lee; Lincoln and the all-knowing head-quarters in the utmost darkness about Lee, his army, his movements, and his plans. And all this while the country, the people, is kept officially ignorant of its honor, of its fate. All publicity and communication is suppressed-not to inform thereby the enemy of our movements. How idiotic, how silly! As if the march and the movements of an army of one hundred thousand men could be kept secret from a vigilant and desperate enemy, and the enemy wanted to read the papers for it. Good for us!

I cannot hope against hope, and expect that Hooker, b.u.t.terfield, Lincoln, Halleck will out-manuvre Lee, bold, quick, and desperate as he is.

June 19.-The jobbers, the contractors, the gold, stock, and exchange speculators wish for the prolongation of the war. For this reason, disasters are rather welcome to them. Oh! to crush those ign.o.ble and demoniac monsters.

June 20.-I cannot comprehend how Lee could have dared such a desperate movement, even if relying on the confusion and senselessness prevailing in our military movements. Lee must have had some kind of encouragement from the Copperheads before he risked a step, which ought to end in his utter destruction, even with a Halleck, Hooker and b.u.t.terfield as our commanders.

June 20.-Hooker has more than ninety thousand men in hand-his rear, his supplies, his depots covered by Heintzelman, and by the defences of Was.h.i.+ngton. This alone is equal to fifty thousand more. And with all this, the treble head-quarters, in the White House in G street, and in the army cannot find Lee, and therefore the rebels are not attacked, and lay Pennsylvania waste. O, staffs, O, staffs!

June 20.-More than any other army in the world, the American army requires to have a thoroughly organized staff, with very intelligent staff officers. Such staff officers carry orders to generals and to colonels who, although brave and devoted, may often not altogether comprehend certain sacramental technicalities of an order delivered by mouth, or written briefly in the saddle.

The officer ought to be able to explain the order. Think of it, you wiseacres and organisers of American armies.

June 21.-Small cavalry skirmishes without signification. The curtain is not rended, and the enemy rolls towards the heart of Pennsylvania. How will it end?

June 22.-n.o.body of the various upper and lower Chiefs can find Lee. Give twenty thousand men to a bold man even not a general, and in twenty-four hours he will bring you positive news about Lee's army.

June 23.-It seems that Lee waits, if we divide our army, to strike a blow on Was.h.i.+ngton. Thus he will be baffled; there is a limit even to our military blunders.

June 24.-Incorrigible Seward. France invites our Government to partic.i.p.ate in the diplomatic coercion against Russia. Of course, Americans refuse. Mr. Seward, in harmony with the feeling of the people politely snuff off France. But O, Mr. Seward, why pervert history or show your ignorance, even of the national events and of Congressional records. The United States, Adams II., President, sent commissioners to the Congress of Panama, and the United States Congress did it after a discussion of several days. What is the use to deny it now? Then Mr. Seward is insincere to both parties. Speaking of "a temporary transient revolt here" he seemingly insinuates, that but for this transient revolt he would perhaps try his hand at the European game. It would look so grand to be in company with the Decembriseur. Then the only impediment would be the people's will different from yours, oh, Seward! The refusal in the dispatch re-echoes the convictions of the American people; its s.h.i.+lly-shally conditionality is exclusively Sewardism and only fit to catch a Russian diplomat in Was.h.i.+ngton.

June 25.-Hooker crosses to Maryland with nearly one hundred thousand men. Lee is still on both sides of the Potomac. By a blow Hooker could cut Lee's army, break it, and retrieve what he lost at Chancellorsville. Oh, how I wish he may do it. But since Hooker has refused to mend his staff, all hope is lost. Stanton sees the condition very clearly, but b.u.t.terfield is in good odor in the White House.

June 26.-Lee's movements and invasion puzzle me more and more. The raid into Pennsylvania is the move of a desperate commander, almost of a madman, playing his whole fortune on one card. If Lee comes safe out of it, then doubtless he is the best general of our times, and we the best nincomp.o.o.ps that ever the sun looked upon and blushed for.