Senator Wilson answered Douglass in the Senate, that "when the Republican party took the power, treason was in the army, in the navy, in the administration," etc. Dreadful, but true assertion. It is to be seen how the administration will act to counteract this ramified treason.
What a run, a race for offices. This spectacle likewise new to me.
The Cabinet Ministers, or, as they call them here, the Secretaries, have old party debts to pay, old sores to avenge or to heal, and all this by distributing offices, or by what they call it here—patronage. Through patronage and offices everybody is to serve his friends and his party, and to secure his political position. Some of the party leaders seem to me similar to children enjoying a long-expected and ardently wished-for toy. Some of the leaders are as generals who abandon the troops in a campaign, and take to travel in foreign parts. Most of them act as if they were sure that the battle is over. It begins only, but nobody, or at least very few of the interested, seem to admit that the country is on fire, that a terrible struggle begins. (Wrote in this sense an article for the National Intelligencer; insertion refused.) They, the leaders, look to create engines for their own political security, but no one seems to look over Mason and Dixon's line to the terrible and with lightning-like velocity spreading fire of hellish treason.
The diplomats utterly upset, confused, and do not know what god to worship. All their associations were with Southerners, now traitors. In Southern talk, or in that of treacherous Northern Democrats, the diplomats learned what they know about this country. Not one of them is familiar, is acquainted with the genuine people of the North; with its true, noble, grand, and pure character. It is for them a terra incognita, as is the moon. The little they know of the North is the few money or cotton bags of New York, Boston, Philadelphia,—these would-be betters, these dinner-givers, and whist-players. The diplomats consider Seward as the essence of Northern feeling.
How little the thus-called statesmen know Europe. Sumner, Seward, etc. already have under consideration if Europe will recognize the secesh. Europe recognizes faits accomplis, and a great deal of blood will run before secesh becomes un fait accompli. These Sewards, Sumners, etc. pay too much attention to the silly talk of the European diplomats in Washington; and by doing this these would-be statesmen prove how ignorant they are of history in general, and specially ignorant of the policy of European cabinets. Before a struggle decides a question a recognition is bosh, and I laugh at it.
The race, the race increases with a fearful rapidity. No flood does it so quick. Poor Senators! Some of them must spend nights and days to decide on whom to bestow this or that office. Secretaries or Ministers wrangle, fight (that is the word used), as if life and death depended upon it.
Poor (Carlylian-meaning) good-natured Senator Sumner, in his earnest, honest wish to be just and of service to everybody, looks as a hare tracked by hounds; so are at him office-seekers from the whole country. This hunting degrades the hounds, and enervates the patrons.
I am told that the President is wholly absorbed in adjusting, harmonizing the amount of various salaries bestowed on various States through its office-holders and office-seekers.
It were better if the President would devote his time to calculate the forces and resources needed to quench the fire. Over in Montgomery the slave-drivers proceed with the terrible, unrelenting, fearless earnestness of the most unflinching criminals.
After all, these crowds of office-hunters are far from representing the best element of the genuine, laborious, intelligent people,—of its true healthy stamina. This is consoling for me, who know the American people in the background of office-hunters.