More or less mean, contemptible ambition among the helmsmen, but patriotism, patriotic ambition are below zero—here in Washington. For the sake and honor of human nature, I pray to destiny Stanton may not fail, and still count among the Wadsworths, the Wades, and the like pure patriots.
The democratic elections and majorities united to Mr. Seward may enforce a compromise, and God knows if Mr. Lincoln will oppose it to the last. Then the only seeming salvation of the north will be the indomitable decision of the rebels not to accept any terms except a full recognition.
Oct. 22.—The incapacity of the military wiseacres borders on idiotism, if not on something worse. To do nothing McClellan absorbs every man, and keeps one hundred and forty thousand men on the Maryland side of the Potomac. Sigel has only a small command of twelve thousand men, in a position where, with one quarter of what is useless under McClellan, with his skill, his activity, and the truly patriotic devotion of his troops, of his officers, and of the commanders under him, Sigel would force the rebels to retreat from Winchester, and otherwise damage them far more than will or can do such McClellans, Hallecks, and all this c——e.
One of the greatest misfortunes for the American people is to have considered as statesmen the rhetors, the petty politicians, and the speech-makers. Now, those rhetors, petty politicians, and speech-makers are at the helm, are in the Senate, and—ruin the country.
The optimists and the subservients still console themselves and confuse the people by asserting that Mr. Lincoln will yet come out as a man and a statesman. Previous to such a happy change the country's honor and the country's political and material vitality will run out.
More than a year ago Mr. Seward said to the Prince Salm and to me, that this war ought to be fought out by foreigners; that the Americans fought the revolutionary war, but now they are devoted to peaceful pursuits; and that it is the duty of Europeans to save this refuge from the thraldoms in the old world.
Now, I see that Mr. Seward was right, although in a sense different from that in which he uttered the above sentence.
The Irish excepted, all the other foreign-born Americans, but preëminently the Germans, are more in communion with the lofty, pure, and humane element in the thus called American principle, are therefore more in communion with the creed of the immense majority of Americans, than are they, the present dabblers in politics, the would-be leaders, (civil and military,) the would-be statesmen, all of whom are eaten up by the admixture into what is vital and perennial in the signification of America, of all that in itself is local, muddy, petty, accidental, and transient.
Oct. 23.—The recent publication of General Scott's letter, and of a writing to President Buchanan, confirms my opinion that "the highest military authority in the land" faltered after March 4, 1861, and inaugurated that defensive warfare wherein we stick on the Potomac until this day.
Pseudo-liberal right-honorable Gladstone asserts that Jeff. Davis "has made the South a nation;" then Abraham Lincoln, with W. H. Seward and G. B. McClellan, have destroyed a noble and generous nation.