I seldom saw a man with greater facility of labor than Seward. When once he is at work, it runs torrent-like from his pen. His mind is elastic. His principal forte is argument on any given case. But the question is how far he masters the variegated information so necessary in a statesman, and the more now, when the country earnestly has such dangerous questions with European cabinets. He is still cheerful, hopeful, and prophesies a speedy end.
Seward has no Know-Nothingism about him. He is easy, and may have many genuine generous traits in his character, were they not compressed by the habits of the, not lofty, politician. At present, Seward is a moral dictator; he has Lincoln in his hand, and is all in all. Very likely he flatters him and imposes upon his simple mind by his over-bold, dogmatic, but not over-correct and logical, generalizations. Seward's finger is in all the other departments, but above all in the army.
The opposition made to Seward is not courageous, not open, not dignified. Such an opposition betrays the weakness of the opposers, and does not inspire respect. It is darkly surreptitious. These opponents call Seward hard names, but do this in a corner, although most of them have their parliamentary chair wherefrom they can speak. If he is bad and mischievous, then unite your forces and overthrow him; if he is not bad, or if you are not strong enough against him, do not cover yourself with ridicule, making a show of impotent malice. When the Senate confirmed him, every one throughout the land knew his vacillating policy; knew him to be for compromise, for concessions; knew that he disbelieved in the terrible earnestness of the struggle, and always prophesied its very speedy end. The Senate confirmed Seward with open eyes. Perhaps at the start his imagination and his patriotism made him doubt and disbelieve in the enormity of treason—he could not realize that the traitors would go to the bitter end. Seemingly, Seward still hopes that one day or another they may return as forlorn sheep. Under the like impressions, he always believed, and perhaps still believes, he shall be able to patch up the quarrel, and be the savior of the Union. Very probably his imagination, his ardent wishes, carry him away, and confuse that clear insight into events which alone constitutes the statesman.
Suggested to Sumner to demand the reduction of the tariff on certain merchandises, on the plea of fraternity of the working American people with their brethren the operatives all over Europe; by it principally I wished to alleviate the condition of French industry, as I have full confidence in Louis Napoleon, and in the unsophisticated judgment of the genuine French people. The suggestion did not take with the Senate.
When the July telegraph brought the news of the victory at Romney (Western Virginia), it was about midnight. Mr. Seward warmly congratulated the President that "the secession was over." What a far-reaching policy!
When the struggle will be over, England, at least her Tories, aristocrats, and politicians, will find themselves baffled in their ardent wishes for the breaking of the Union. The free States will look tidy and nice, as in the past. But more than one generation will pass before ceases to bleed the wound inflicted by the lies, the taunts, the vituperations, poured in England upon this noble, generous, and high-minded people; upon the sacred cause defended by the freemen.
These freemen of America, up to the present time, incarnate the loftiest principle in the successive, progressive, and historical development of man. Nations, communities, societies, institutions, stand and fall with that principle, whatever it be, whereof they are the incarnation; so teaches us history. Woe to these freemen if they will recede from the principle; if they abandon human rights; if they do not crush human bondage, this sum of all infamies. Certainly the question paramount to all is, to save and preserve pure self-government in principle and in its direct application. But although the question of slavery seems to be incidental and subordinate to the former, virtually the question of slavery is twin to the former. Slavery serves as a basis, as a nurse, for the most infamous and abject aristocracy or oligarchy that was ever built up in history, and any, even the best, the mildest, and the most honest oligarchy or aristocracy kills and destroys man and self-government.
From the purely administrative point of view, the principle whose incarnation is the American people, the principle begins to be perverted. The embodiment of self-government fills dungeons, suppresses personal liberty, opens letters, and in the reckless saturnalias of despotism it rivals many from among the European despots. Europe, which does not see well the causes, shudders at this delirium tremens of despotism in America.
Certainly, treason being in ebullition, the holders of power could not stand by and look. But instead of an energetic action, instead of exercising in full the existing laws, they hesitated, and treason, emboldened, grew over their heads.
The law inflicted the severest capital punishment on the chiefs of the revolt in Baltimore, but all went off unharmed. The administration one day willingly allows the law to slide from its lap, and the next moment grasps at an unnecessary arbitrary power. Had the traitors of Baltimore been tried by court-martial, as the law allowed, and punished, few, if any, traitors would then have raised their heads in the North.