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

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.

It is, or will be forgotten, what a b.l.o.o.d.y trail over the North is left, and has been imprinted by the half measures, the indecisions, and the vascillations of the Administration.

The medley composed of politicians, jobbers, contractors, and newspapers, already scream "Hosanna," and attempt to spatter with lies and dust the road to the White House, and thus to prepare the way. And the medley already shakes hands, and enemies kiss each other, because if their elect succeeds, there will be peace over, and pickings for all the world. But the justice of history will overtake them all, and the better, younger generation will crush them to atoms.

September 6. L. B.-Wilkes' Spirit of the Times maintains its paramount, independent position in the American press. I cannot detect any shadow of a politician in its columns. It is all over independent and patriotic. The Spirit fights the miscreants.

"Principles not men," is an axiom, but the axiom must be well understood and applied, and it has its limitations. Are bad, worthless, insincere, selfish men to be the agencies and the factors of great and lofty principles? Is such a thing possible? Is the example of Judas forgotten? O, you Bible-reading people, can Judases and rotten consciences carry out good principles? The press that teaches and preaches principles not men, that never dares to attack bad men in its own ranks, such a press betrays the confidence of the people, and degrades below expression the elevated and n.o.ble position which the press ought to occupy in the development of the progress of human society.

September 6.-Computing together and comparing the mental and intellectual characteristics, the manifestations and utterances of pa.s.sions in the Africo American and in the Irish of the Iro-Roman nursery, the anthropologist, the psychologist and the philosopher must give the palm to the Africo-American. And nevertheless Doctors of Divinity and many truly religious men plead in favor of slavery, that is, of brute force. I ask all such to meditate the words of Professor J. W. Draper, in his great and profound History of the Intellectual Development of Europe: That brute force must give way to intellect, and that even the meanest human being has rights in the sight of G.o.d.

September 10: New York.-Head-quarters of all kinds of politicians, of schemers, of perpetrators of treasonable attempts, of falsifiers, of poisoners of the people's mind. The rendezvous of those who devour the vitals of the country-who, as contractors, jobbers, brokers, stock and gold speculators, agioteurs, etc. are the most ardent patriots, and wish that the war may be indefinitely continued. In the columns of the Herald the future historian will find the best information concerning all that-not-blessed race. The race deserves to be recorded and scavenged in the Herald.

And nevertheless New York contains the most pure and the most devoted patriots. New York and New Yorkers have been foremost in coming to the rescue when the matricide rebels dealt their first blow. From New York came the best and the most energetic urgings on the gasping and vascillating Administration.

The New Yorkers originated the Sanitary Commission, for which I can find no words of sufficiently warm praise. New York contains many young, fresh, elevated and n.o.ble minds and intellects. Why, O why do some of them disappear in the muddy part of the great city, and others are overawed and overleaped by the hacks and by the politicians, or the so-called wire-pullers.

September 10. New York.-It is the place to ascertain the manuvres of political schemers. Those who know, most emphatically a.s.sure me of the existence of the following Sewardiana.

1. Seward has given up in despair all dreams of finding people to back him for the next Presidency.

2. Seward hesitated between McClellan and Banks,

3. And finally settled on Lincoln;

4. And although afraid of being finally shelved by Lincoln, he advocates Lincoln's re-election-

5. As being the paramount means to politically murder Chase.

Oh American people! Oh American people! how those foul political pilferers dice for thy blood and thy destinies!

Years ago, I justified the existence and a.s.serted the necessity of politicians in the political public life of America. I considered them an unavoidable and harmless result of free democratic inst.i.tutions. [See "America and Europe."] At that time I observed the politician from a distance, and reasoned on him altogether metaphysically, after the so-called German fas.h.i.+on. Since 1861 I have come into personal contact with the genus politician-and oh! what a monstrous breed they are!

September 10. New York.-Senator Sumner on our foreign relations. The Senator enumerates all the violations of good comity, of international duties, of the obligations of neutrals, violations so deliberately and so maliciously perpetrated by England and by France. But why has the Senator forgotten to ascend to one of the paramount causes? Previous to England or France, the State Department in Was.h.i.+ngton and Mr. Lincoln recognized in the rebels the condition of belligerents. It was done by the Proclamation inst.i.tuting the blockade. The Blue Book fully proves that already months before Mr. Lincoln's inauguration the English Government had a perfect knowledge of the vascillating policy which was to be inaugurated after March 1, 1861. At the same time, the English Government knew well that already previous to March 4, the rebel conspirators were fully decided on carrying out their treacherous aim across streams of blood. A long war was imminent, and a recognition of the rebels as in parte belligerents, could not have been avoided. A part of the English nation, a part of the English Cabinet, was and is overflowing with the most malicious ill will, and such ones crave for an occasion to satisfy their hatred. But our domestic and foreign policy singularly served our English ill-wishers.

I deeply regret that the Senator preferred the halls of the Cooper Inst.i.tute to the hall of the United States Senate; that he threw the gauntlet to Europe as a lecturer, when for days and months he could have done it so authoritatively as a Senator of the United States; could have done it from his senatorial chair, and in the fulfilment of the most sacred public and patriotic duty. How could the Senator thus belittle one of the most elevated political positions in the world, that of a Senator of the United States?

Not so happy is the part of the lecture concerning Intervention. It is rather sentimental than statesmanlike. Intervention is, and will remain, an act of physical, material force, and history largely teaches that Intervention, even for higher moral purposes, was always exercised by the strong against the weak, the strong always invoking "higher motives." Thus did the Romans; and about a century ago, the Powers which part.i.tioned Poland began by an Intervention, justified on "higher moral, etc. grounds."

September 11: New York.-Prince Gortschakoff's answer to the demonstration of lying, hypocritical, official diplomatic sympathies made in favor of the Poles by the cabinets of France, of England, and of Austria. The Gortschakoff notes are masterpieces for their clear, quiet, but bold and decided exposition and argument, and in the records of diplomacy those notes will occupy the most prominent place. O, why cannot Mr. Seward learn from Gortschakoff how not to put gas in such weighty doc.u.ments? Could Seward learn how to be earnest, precise and clear, without spread-eagleism? The greater and stronger a nation, the less empty phraseology is needed when one speaks in the nation's name.

September 15.-Returned to Was.h.i.+ngton. From what I see and hear, Mr. Lincoln is earnestly and hard at work to secure his re-election. I hope that Mr. Lincoln is as earnest in his efforts to destroy Lee's army and to put an end to the guerrillas who rob to the right and to the left, and under the nose of the supreme military authorities.

Governor Andrew, of Ma.s.sachusetts, always the same-active, intelligent, clear and far-sighted. Andrew is the man to act for, and in the name of the most intelligent community on the globe, which the State of Ma.s.sachusetts undoubtedly is. As I have observed several times, Andrew is among the leading (Americanize, tip-top,) men of the younger generation, is no politician, and never was one. If a civilian is to be elected to the Presidency, Andrew ought to be the choice of the people, if the people will be emanc.i.p.ated from the politicians.

I learn that that monster, the politician, has almost wholly disappeared from New England, above all from Ma.s.sachusetts. The New England people are too earnest and too intelligent to be the prey of the monster. Sound reason throttled the politician. All hail to this result of the b.l.o.o.d.y storm! I hope the other States will soon follow the example of Ma.s.sachusetts.

The State of Ma.s.sachusetts and the city of Boston noiselessly spend millions for their coast and harbor defences. Governor Andrew has the confidence of the people, and is untiring in procuring the best war material. He sent an agent to England to buy heavy guns.