What silly talk, to compare the St. Domingo insurrection with the eventual results of emancipation in the South! In St. Domingo the slaves were obliged to tear their liberty from the slaveholding planter, and from a government siding with the oppressor. Here the lawful government gives liberty to a peaceful laborer, and the planter is an outlawed traitor. But the genuine pro-slavery democrat is stupidly obtuse.
Oct. 18.—A few days ago the President wrote a letter to McClellan, with ability and lucidity, exposing to view the military urgency of a movement on the enemy with an army of one hundred and forty thousand men, as has now McClellan at Harper's Ferry. But the letter ends by saying that all that it contains is not to be considered by McNapoleon as being an order. Of course Mac obeys—the last injunction of the letter. Mr. Lincoln wishes not to hurt the great Napoleon's feelings; as for hurting the country, the people, the cause, this is of—no consequence! Ah! to witness all this is to be chained, and to die of thirst within the reach of the purest water.
Reverend Dr. Unitarian Sensation's broad church, admirer of the Southern gentleman, and a Jeremy Diddler.
Oct. 18.—The elections in several of the States evidence the deep imprint upon the country of Lincoln-Seward disorganizing, because from the first day vacillating, undecided, both-ways policy. The elections reverberate the moral, the political, and the belligerent condition in which the country is dragged and thrown by those two master spirits. No decided principle inspires them and their administration, and no principle leads and has a decided majority in the elections; neither the democrats nor the republicans prevail; neither freedom nor submission is the watchword; and finally, neither the North nor the South is decidedly the master on the fields of battle. All is confusion!
Scarcely one genuine republican was, or is, in the cabinet; the republican party is completely on the wane—and perhaps beyond redemption; all this is a logical result, and was easily to be foreseen by any body,—only not by the wiseacres of the party, not by the republican papers in New York, as the Times, the Tribune, and the Evening Post, only not by the Sumners, Doolittles, and many of the like leaders, all of whom, when, about a year ago, warned against such a cataclysm, self-confidently smiled; but who soon will cry more bitter tears than did the daughters of Judah over the ruins of Jerusalem.
And now likewise the phrase in McClellan's order No. 163, about "the remedy at the polls," the disclosures made by Colonel Key, receive their fullest, but ominous and cursed, signification; and now the blind can see that it is policy, and not altogether incapacity, in McClellan to have made a war to preserve slavery and the rebels. And thus McClellan outwitted Mr. Lincoln.
In general, human nature is passionately attracted, nay, is subdued, by energy, above all by civic intrepidity. It would have been so easy for Mr. Lincoln to carry the masses, and to avoid those disasters at the polls! But stubbornness is not energy.
From a very reliable source I learn that a few days after the battle of Antietam, General McClellan, or at least General or Colonel Marcy, of McClellan's staff, insinuated to the President that General McClellan would wish to be relieved from the command of the army, and be assigned to quiet duties in Washington—very likely to supersede Halleck. And the President seized not by the hairs the occasion to get rid of the nation's nightmare, together with the pets of the commander of the army of the Potomac. McClellan acted honestly in making the above insinuation; he is now, in part at least, irresponsible for any future disaster and blood.
Oct. 20.—I have strong indications that European powers, as England and France, are very sanguine to mediate, but would do it only if, and when, asked by our government. Those two governments, or some other half-friendly, may, semi-officially, insinuate to Mr. Seward to make such a demand. A few months ago, already Mr. Dayton wrote from Paris something about such a step. Mr. Seward is desperate, downcast, and may believe he can serve his country by committing the cabinet to some such combination. I must warn Stanton and others.
In the Express and in the World the New York Herald found its masters in ignominy.