January 18.—The emancipation proclamation is out. Very well. But until yet not the slightest signs of any measures to execute the proclamation, at once, and in its broadest sense. Now days, even hours, are equal to years in common times. Had Lincoln his heart in the proclamation, on January 2d he would begin to work out its expansion, realization, execution. I wish Lincoln may lift himself, or be lifted by angels to the grandeur of the work. But it is impossible. Surrounded as he is, and led in the strings by Seward, Blair, Halleck, and by border-state politicians, the best that can be expected are belated half measures.
Stanton comprehends broadly and thoroughly the question of emancipation and of arming the Africo-Americans. As I intend to realize my plans of last year and organise Africo-American regiments, I had conversations with Stanton, and find him more thorough about the matter than is any body whom I met. He agreed with me, that the cursed land of Secessia ought to be surrounded by camps to enlist and organise the enslaved, as a scorpion surrounded with burning coals. Such organizations introduced rapidly and simultaneously on all points, would shake Secessia to its foundations, and put an end to guerillas, alias murderers and robbers. We will again think and talk it over. But as is wont with Lincoln, he will hesitate, hesitate, until much of precious time will be lost.
January 18.—A surgeon in one of the hospitals in Alexandria writes in a private note:
"Our wounded bear their sufferings nobly; I have hardly heard a word of complaint from one of them. A soldier from the 'stern and rock bound coast' of Maine—a victim of the slaughter at Fredericksburgh—lay in this hospital, his life ebbing away from a fatal wound. He had a father, brothers and sisters, a wife, and one little boy of two or three years old, on whom his heart seemed set. Half an hour before he ceased to breathe, I stood by his side, holding his hand. He was in the full exercise of his intellectual faculties, and knew he had but a brief time to live. He was asked if he had any message to leave for his dear ones whom he loved so well. "Tell them," said he, "how I died—they know how I lived!"
January 19.—Senator Wright, of Indiana, stirred the hearts of the Senate and of the people. It was not the oration of a rhetor—it was the confession of an ardent, pure patriot. I never heard or witnessed anything so inspiring and so kindling to soul and heart.
January 20.—General Butler palsied and shelved, Halleck all powerful and with full steam running the country and the army to destruction—such is the truest photograph of the situation. But as an adamantine rock among storms, so Mr. Lincoln remains unmoved. Unmoved by the yawning, bleeding wounds of the devoted, noble people—unmoved by the prayers and supplication of patriots—of his—once—best friends. Mr. Lincoln answers, with dignity not Roman, and with obstinacy unparallelled even by Jackson, that he will stand or fall with his present advisers, and that he takes the responsibility for all the cursed misdeeds of Seward, Halleck, Chase, and others. So children are ready to set a match to a powder magazine unconscious of the terrible results—unconscious of the awful responsibility for its destructive action.
A death pang runs through one's body to see how rapidly the dial marks the disappearing hours, and how unrelentingly approaches March 4th, and the death-knell of this present patriotic, devoted Congress. For this terrible storm and clash of events, the people, perhaps, feel not the immensity of the loss. Paralyzed as Congress has been and now is, by the infernal machinations of Seward, Chase, and others, and by Mr. Lincoln's stubborn helplessness, the patriots in both Houses nevertheless, succeeded in redeeming the pledge which the name of America gives to the expansive progress of humanity. The patriots of both Houses, as the exponents of the noble and loftiest aspirations of the American people, whipped in—and this literally, not figuratively—whipped Mr. Lincoln into the glory of having issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The laws promulgated by this dying Congress initiated the Emancipation—generated the Proclamation of the 22d September, and of January 1st. History will not allow one to wear borrowed plumage.
—Congress ought not to have so easily abdicated its well established rights of more absolute and direct control of the deeds of the Administration and of its clerks, alias Secretaries of Departments. It is to be eternally regretted that Congress has shown such unnecessary leniency; but in justice it must be said that the patriotic and high-minded members of Congress wished to avoid the degrading necessity of showing the nation the prurient administrative sores. Advised, directed, tutored and pushed by Seward, Blair and Chase, Mr. Lincoln is—innocently—as grasping for power, as are any of those despots not over respectfully recorded by history.
With all this, the presence of Congress keeps in awe the reckless and unscrupulous Administration, as, according to the pious belief of medieval times, holy water awed the devil. But Congress once out of the way, without having succeeded in rescuing Mr. Lincoln from the hands of those mean, ignorant, egotistic bunglers, all the time squinting towards the succession to the White House, and unable to surround the President with men and patriots, then all the plagues of Egypt may easily overrun this fated country. Such conjurors of evil as the Sewards, Hallecks, and others, will have no dread of any holy water before them, and they will be sure that the great party of the "Copperheads" in the future Congress will applaud them for all the mischief done, and lift them sky high, if they succeed in treading down in the gutter, or in any way palsying emancipation, tarnishing the people's noble creed, and endangering the country's holiest cause.
General Fitz-John Porter's trial before court-martial ended in his dismissal, but ought punishment to fall on him alone, when the butchers of Fredericksburgh and when the pontoon men are in high command? when a Franklin is still sustained, when a Seward and a Halleck remain firm in their high places as the gates of hell?