The Problems before the People — the Circassian — Department of State and International Laws — Foresight — Patriot Stanton and the Rats — Honest Conventions — Sanitary Commission — Harper's Ferry — John Brown — the Yellow Book — the Republican Party — Epitaph — Prize Courts — Suum cuique — Academy of Sciences — Democratic Rank and File, etc. etc. etc.
February 1.—The task which this great American people has on its hands is one utterly unexampled in the history of the world. While in the midst of a great civil war, and struggling as it were in very death-throes, to emancipate and organize four millions of men, most of whom, up to this very day, have by deliberate legislation been kept in ignorance and savagery. Thoroughly to comprehend the immensity of such a task, we must also reflect that the men to whom that task is intrusted are anything rather than intellectual giants. Yet the true solution of the problem will be given by the principle of self-government and by the self-governing People. And it is therein that consists the genuine American originality which Europe finds it so impossible to understand. And it is just as little understood by most of the diplomatists here, and what is still worse, it is not even studied by them. It is wretched work to be obliged to witness the low, the actually ignoble parts which many men play in the great farce of political life. I could easily mention a full score of would-be-eminent men, who are unsurpassed by the meanest of the vulgar herd in flippancy and an utter want of self-respect.
The diary published in London by Bull Run Russell deserves to be read by every American. Russell deals blows to slavery which will tell in England. However annoying may be to many the disclosures made by this indiscreet confidant of their vanity, Russell's revelations establish firmly the broad historical—not gossipping—fact, that before and after Sumter, the most absolute want of earnestness, of statesmanlike foresight, and the most childish but fathomless vanity inspired all the actions of the American Secretary of State. I am one of the few who, having often met Russell here, never fawned to him, nay who not even took any notice of him; but I am grateful to him for his falsely-called indiscreetness—for his having done the utmost to bring out truth—in his own way. It is the best that I have seen, or heard, or read of him. Flatterers, Secretaries, Senators, and Generals crowded to Russell and to his table, and he exposes them. Among others, General McDowell was Russell's guest, very likely to show his gratitude to the slanderer of the volunteers, whom McDowell did not understand how to lead to victory.
Seward showed to Russell his dispatches to Lord John Russell. Mr. Sumner, at Bull Run Russell's table, asked Russell's aid to keep peace with England. Good! Unspeakably good!
Not only the Emancipation problem must be solved, so to speak, amidst the storm of battle—but other and very mighty problems, social, constitutional, jurisprudential, and financial, must be similarly and promptly dealt with. And these great questions must be debated to the accompaniment of the music of musketry and cannon. In some respects the situation of America at present may be said to resemble that of France in the days of her great Revolution. But affairs here and now are still more complicated than they were in France from 1789 to 1793.
Formerly I took a more active part than I now take in revolutionary and reformatory struggles, and was seldom daunted by their difficult problems, or by their most violent tempests. But now I have a chilling sense of weariness and disgust as I note the strange things that are done under my very eyes.
The burden of taxes laid upon a people who have an inborn hatred of taxation, a debt created in a few months surpassing that which England and France contracted in half a century; and that debt contracted as if by magic, and in the very crisis of a civil war such as any foreign war would be mere baby's play to.
The people at large see the precipice, and hear the roaring of the breakers ahead, but despair not! Sublime phenomena for the future historian to dwell upon! All this is genuine American originality. In its sublime presence, down, down upon your knees in the dust, all you European wiseacres!
The capture of the Circassian, an English blockade runner, gave birth to some very delicate international complications. The decision of the Prize Court shows up the absolute destitution of statesmanship in the Department of State, generally coruscated with ignorance of international principles, rules of judicial international decisions, and of belligerent rights and observances. Every day shows what a masterly stroke it was of the Secretary of State to have proclaimed the blockade in April, 1861, and to have been the first to recognize the rebels in the character of independent belligerents. The more blockade runners will be captured by our cruisers, the more the complications will grow. A false first step generates false conditions ad infinitum. The question of the Circassian is only the beginning, and not even the worst. The worst will come by and by. But Seward is great before Allah! The truth is, that Mr. Seward and the Department are as innocent of any familiarity with international laws, as can be. The people, the intelligent people would be horror-stricken could they suddenly be made acquainted with all the shameful ignorance which is corrosively fermenting in the State Department.
To every intelligent and well regulated Government in Europe, the Department of Foreign Affairs—which in America is called the State Department—has attached to it a board of advisers for the solution of all international questions.