Louis Napoleon said his word about the Trent affair. All things considered, the conduct of the Emperor cannot be complained of. The Thouvenel paper is serious, severe, but intrinsically not unfriendly. Quite the contrary. Up to this time I am right in my reliance on Louis Napoleon, on his sound, cool, but broad comprehension.
Mr. Mercier behaves well, and he is to be relied on, provided we show mettle and fight the traitors. Now, as the European imbroglio is clarified, at them, at them! But nothing to hope or expect from McClellan. I daily preach, but in the wilderness. Prince de Joinville made a very ridiculous fuss about the Trent affair.
Americans believe that a statesman must be an orator. Schoolboy-like, they judge on English precedents. In England, the Parliament is omnipotent; it makes and unmakes administrations, therefore oratory is a necessary corollary in a statesman; but here the Cabinet acts without parliamentary wranglings, and a Jackson is the true type of an American statesman. Washington was not an orator, nor was Alexander Hamilton.
JANUARY, 1862.
The year 1861 ends badly — European defenders of slavery — Secession lies — Jeremy Diddlers — Sensation-seekers — Despotic tendencies — Atomistic Torquemadas — Congress chained by formulas — Burnside's expedition a sign of life — Will this McClellan ever advance? — Mr. Adams unhorsed — He packs his trunks — Bad blankets — Austria, Prussia, and Russia — The West Point nursery — McClellan a greater mistake than Scott — Tracks to the White House — European stories about Mr. Lincoln — The English ignorami — The slaveholder a scarcely varnished savage — Jeff. Davis — "Beauregard frightens us — McClellan rocks his baby" — Fancy army equipment — McClellan and his chief of staff sick in bed — "No satirist could invent such things" — Stanton in the Cabinet — "This Stanton is the people" — Fremont — Weed — The English will not be humbugged — Dayton in a fret — Beaufort — The investigating committee condemn McClellan — Lincoln in the clutches of Seward and Blair — Banks begs for guns and cavalry in vain — The people will awake! — The question of race — Agassiz.
An ugly year ended in backing before England, having, at least, relative right on our side. Further, the ending year has revealed a certain incapacity in the Republican party's leaders, at least its official leaders, to administer the country and to grasp the events. If the new year shall be only the continuation of the faults, the mistakes, and the incapacities prevailing during 1861, then the worst is to be expected.
The lowest in moral degradation is an European defending slavery here or in Europe. Such Europeans are far below the condemned criminals. Still lower are such Europeans who become defenders of slavery after having visited plantations, where, in the shape of wines and delicacies, they tasted human blood, and then, hyenas-like, smacked their lips And thirsted for more.
Always the same stories, lies, and humbugs concerning the hundreds of thousands of rebels in Manassas. These lies are spread here in Washington by the numerous secessionists—at large, by such ignoble sheets as the New York Herald and Times; and McClellan seems to willingly swallow these lies, as they justify his inaction and c——.
The city is more and more crowded with Jeremy Diddlers, with lecturers, with sensation-seekers, all of them in advance discounting their hero, and showing in broad light their gigantic stupidity. One of this motley finds in McClellan a Norman chin, the other muscle, the third a brow for laurels (of thistle I hope), another a square, military, heroic frame, another firmness in lips, another an unfathomed depth in the eye, etc., etc. Never I heard in Europe such balderdash. And the ladies—not the women and gentlewomen—are worse than the men in thus stupefying themselves and those around them.
The thus called arbitrary acts of the government prove how easily, on the plea of patriotic necessity, a people, nay, the public opinion, submits to arbitrary rule. All this, servility included, explains the facility with which, in former times, concentrated and concrete despotisms have been established. Here every such arbitrary action is submitted to, because it is so new, and because the people has the childish, naïve, but, to it, honorable confidence, that the power entrusted by the people is used in the interest and for the welfare of the people. But all the despots of all times and of all nations said the same. However, in justice to Mr. Lincoln, he is pure, and has no despotical longings, but he has around him some atomistic Torquemadas.