March 12.—Since the adjournment of Congress, everything looks sluggish and in suspense. The Administration, that is, Mr. Lincoln, is at work preparing measures, etc., to carry out the laws of Congress; Mr. Seward is at work to baffle them; Blair is going over to border-State policy; Stanton, firm, as of old; so is Welles; Bates recognises good principles, but is afraid to see such principles at once brought to light; Chase makes bonds and notes. We shall see what will come from all these preparations. But for Congress, Lincoln or the executive, would have been disabled from executing the laws. Congress, by its laws or statutes, aided the Executive branch in its sworn duty.
March 13.—The various Chambers of Commerce petition and ask that the president may issue letters of marque. It is to be supposed, or rather to be admitted, that the Chambers of Commerce know what is the best for them, how our commerce is to be protected, how the rebel pirates swept from the oceans, and how England, treacherous England, perfidious Albion, be punished. But Sumner—of course—knows better than our Chambers of Commerce, and our commercial marine; with all his little might, Sumner opposes what the country's interests demand, and demand urgently. I am sure that already this general demonstration of the national wish and will, the demonstrations made by our Chambers of Commerce, etc., will impress England, or at least the English supporters of piracy.
Sumner will believe that his letters to English old women will change the minds of the English semi-pirates. Sumner is a little afraid of losing ground with the English guardians of civilization. Sumner is full of good wishes, of generous conceptions, and is the man for the millennium. Sumner lacks the keen, sharp, piercing appreciation of common events. And thus Sumner cannot detect that England makes war on our commerce, under the piratic flag of the rebels.
March 14.—The primitive Christians scarcely had more terrible enemies, scarcely had to overcome greater impediments, than are opposed to the principle of human rights, and of emancipation. All that is the meanest, the most degraded, the most dastardly and the most treacherous, is combined against us. Many of the former confessors, many of our friends, many, unconscious of it—Sewardise and Blairise.
Mud is stirred up, flows, rises and penetrates in all directions. The Cloaca Maxima in Rome, during thirty centuries scarcely carried more filth than is here besieging, storming the departments, all the administrative issues, and all the so-called political issues.
I am sure that the enemies of emancipation, that Seward, Weed, etc., wait for some great victory, for the fall of Vicksburgh or of Charleston, to renew their efforts to pacify, to unite, to kiss the hands of traitors, and to save slavery. I see positive indications of it. Seward expects in 1864 to ride into the White House on such reconciliation. What a good time then for the Weeds, and for all the Sewardites!
March 15.—Persons who seemed well informed, assured me that Weed got hold of Stanton, and secretly presides over the contracts in the War Department. If so, it is very secretly done; as I investigated, traced it, and found out nothing. At any rate, Weed would never get at a Watson, a man altogether independent of any political influences. Watson is the incarnation of honest and intelligent duty.
Wilkes' Spirit of the Times is unrelenting in its haughty independence. It is the only public organ in this country of like character; at least I know not another.
March 15.—It is so saddening to witness how all kinds of incapacities, stupidities, how meanness, hollowness, heartlessness, all incarnated in politicians, in trimmers, in narrow brained; how all of them ride on the shoulders of the masses, and use them for their sordid, mean, selfish and ambitious ends. And the masses are superior to those riders in everything constituting manhood, honesty and intellect!
March 16.—Halleck wrote a letter to Rosecrans, explaining how to deal with all kinds of treason, and with all kinds of traitors. It looks as if Halleck improved, and tried to become energetic. What is in the wind? Is Mr. Lincoln becoming seriously serious?