Whatever may say its revilers, this Congress will have a noble and pure page in American history. I speak of the majority.
The Congress showed energy, clear and broad comprehension and appreciation of the events and of men. The Congress was ready for every sacrifice, and would have accelerated the crushing of the rebellion but for the formulas, and for the inadequacy of the majority in the administration. If the Congress had no great leaders, the better for it; it had honest and energetic men, and their leader was their purpose, their pure belief in the justice of their cause and in the people. Such leaders elevate higher any political body than could ever a Clay, a Webster, etc., etc.
The Congress is palsied by the inefficiency of the administration, and but for this, the Congress would have done far more for the salvation of the country. All the best men in Congress support Stanton, and this alone speaks volumes. It is a curse that the administration is so independent of the Congress. Oh, why this Congress possesses not the omnipotence of an English Parliament? Then the Congress would have prevented all the evils hitherto brought upon the country by the vacillating military and general policy. Step by step this policy brings the country to the verge of an abyss, and it will tax all the energy of the people not to be precipitated in it.
Mr. Lincoln has gone to get inspiration and information from Gen. Scott. Good God! Can this man never go out from this rotten treadmill? One more advice from the "great ruin," and the country will also be a ruin.
Flatterers, sensation writers, and all this magna clientum caterva extol to the skies Mr. Lincoln's firmness and straightforwardness. The firmness is located, and is to be discovered in various places—in the lips, in the chin, in the jaw, and God knows where else. I cannot detect any firmness in his actions beyond that of sticking to McClellan,—of whom he has the worst opinion,—and of resisting the emancipation and the arming of Africo-Americans. He has firmness in letting the country be ruined.
McClellan's bulletins constitute the most original and strange collection of style in general, and of military style in particular. Capt. Morin says that the first thing is to teach McClellan how to write military bulletins.
Mr. Seward's crew of politicians is busily at work among congressmen, etc., to prepare a strong party in support of the administration's eventual concessions to slavery, in case Richmond is taken. Ultra Democratic, half secession Senators are sounded.
The more the events complicate, the more they require a powerful, all-embracing mind, but in the same proportion subside Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Seward, Mr. Weed, and all the rest of the great men. Alone the people and their true men subside not.
Poor McDowell suffers for the sins of others—above all, for those of Mr. Lincoln and of his aulic council. He is internally broken down, but behaves nobly; not as does this poor Fremont, whose disappearance from the military scene cannot and must not be regretted. He is not a military capacity; he was again badly surrounded, and his last battle was fought at random, without any unity. I spoke about it with various foreign officers serving under him, and all agree in the incapacity of Fremont and of his staff.
Gen. Pope, a man for the circumstances, acted well in the West; at last a new man.