McClellan acts as if he had taken the oath to some hidden and veiled deity or combination, by all means not to ascertain anything about the condition of the enemy. Any European if not American old woman in pants long ago would have pierced the veil by a strong reconnoissance on Centreville. Here "all quiet on the Potomac." And I hear generals, West Pointers, justifying this colossal offence against common sense, and against the rudiments of military tactics, and even science. Oh, noble, but awfully dealt with, American people!
At times Mr. Seward talks and acts as if he lacked altogether the perception of the terrible earnestness of the struggle, of the dangers and responsibilities of his political position, as well now before the people as hereafter before history. Often I can scarcely resist answering him, Beware, beware!
Lincoln belittles himself more and more. Whatever he does is done under the pressure of events, under the pressure of the public opinion. These agencies push Lincoln and slowly move him, notwithstanding his reluctant heaviness and his resistance. And he a standard-bearer of this noble people!
Those mercenary, ignorant, despicable scribblers of the London Times, of the Tory Herald, of the Saturday Review, and of the police papers in Paris, as the Constitutionnel, the Pays, the Patrie, all of them lie with unparalleled facility. Any one knows that those hungry quill-heroes can be got for a good dinner and a douceur.
I am sorry that the Americans ascribe to Louis Napoleon and to the French people the hostility to human rights as shown by those échappés des bagnes de la littérature. Louis Napoleon and the French people have nothing in common with those literary blacklegs.
The Journal des Débats, the Opinion Nationale, the Presse, the Siècle, etc., constitute the true and honest organs of opinion in France. In the same way A. de Gasparin speaks for the French people with more authority than does Michel Chevalier, who knows much more about free trade, about canals and railroads, but is as ignorant of the character, of the spirit, and of the institutions of the American people, as he is ignorant concerning the man in the moon. So the lawyer Hautefeuille must have received a fee to show so much ill-will to the cause of humanity, and such gigantic ignorance.
Who began the civil war? is repeatedly discussed by those quill cut-throats and allies on the Thames and on the Seine.
Here some smaller diplomats (not Sweden, who is true to the core to the cause of liberty), and, above all, the would-be fashionable galopins des légations, are the cesspools of secession news, picked up by them in secesh society. Happily, the like galopins are the reverse of the opinions of their respective chiefs.
What superhuman efforts are made in Congress, and out of it, in the Cabinet, in the White House, by Union men,—Seward imagines he leads them,—by the weak-brained, and by traitors, to save slavery, if not all, at least a part of it. Every concession made by the President to the enemies of slavery has only one aim; it is to mollify their urgent demands by throwing to them small crumbs, as one tries to mollify a boisterous and hungry dog. By such a trick Lincoln and Seward try to save what can be saved of the peculiar institution, to gratify, and eventually to conciliate, the South. This is the policy of Lincoln, of Seward, and very likely of Mr. Blair. Such political gobe-mouche as Doolittle and many others, are, or will be, taken in by this manœuvre.
Scheme what you like, you schemers, wiseacres, politicians, and would-be statesmen, nevertheless slavery is doomed. Humanity will have the best against such pettifoggers as you. I know better. I have the honor to belong to that European generation who, during this half of our century, from Tagus and Cadiz to the Wolga, has gored with its blood battle-fields and scaffolds; whose songs and aspirations were re-echoed by all the horrible dungeons; by dungeons of the blood-thirsty Spanish inquisition, then across Europe and Asia, to the mines of Nertschinsk, in the ever-frozen Altai. We lost all we had on earth; seemingly we were always beaten; but Portugal and Spain enjoy to-day a constitutional regime that is an improvement on absolutism. France has expelled forever the Bourbons, and universal suffrage, spelt now by the French people, is a progress, is a promise of a great democratic future. Germany has in part conquered free speech and free press. Italy is united, Romanism is falling to pieces, Austria is undermined and shaky, and broken are the chains on the body of the Russian serf. All this is the work of the spirit of the age, and our generation was the spirit's apostle and confessor. And so it will be with slavery, and all you worshippers of darkness cannot save it.