April 22.—The English Cabinet takes in sails, and begins to show less impudence in the violation of neutral duties. Lord John Russell's letter to the constructors of the piratical ships. Certainly Mr. Seward will claim the credit of having brought England to terms by his eloquent dispatches. Sumner may dispute with Seward the influence on English fogies. In reality, the bitter and exasperated feeling of the people frightened England.
April 24.—It is repulsive to read how the press exults that the famine in the South is our best ally. Well! I hate the rebels, but I would rather that the superiority of brains may crush them, and not famine. The rebels manfully supporting famine, give evidence of heroism; and why is it in such disgusting cause!
April 23.—Senator Sumner emphatically receives and admits into church and communion, the freshly to emancipation converted General Thomas, Adjutant General, now organizing Africo-American regiments in the Mississippi valley. Better late than never, for such Thomases, Hallecks, etc., only I doubt if a Thomas will ever become a Paul.
April 24.—Our State Department does not enjoy a high consideration abroad. I see this from public diplomatic acts, and from private letters. I am sure that Mr. Dayton has found this out long ago, and I suppose so did Mr. Adams. Of course not a Sanford. If the State Department had not at its back twenty-two millions of Americans, foreign Cabinets would treat us—God, alone, knows how.
April 24.—I hope to live long enough to see the end of this war, and then to disentangle my brains from the pursuits which now fill them. Then goodbye, O, international laws, with your customs and rules. England handled them for centuries, as the wolf with the lamb at the spring. When I witness the confusion and worse, here, I seem to see—en miniature—reproduced some parts of the Byzantine times. All cracks but not the people, and to —— I am indebted that my brains hold out.
April 24.—What a confusion Burnside's order No. 8 reveals; the president willing, unwilling, shifting, and time rapidly running on.
April 24.—Senator Sumner, without being called as he ought to have been—to give advice, discovered the Peterhoff case. The Senator laid before the President, all the authorities bearing on the case, showed by them to the President, that the mail was not to be returned to the English Consul, but lawfully ought to be opened by the Prize Court. The Senator so far convinced the President, that Mr. Lincoln, next morning at once violated the statutes, and through Mr. Seward, instructed the District Attorney to instruct the Court to give up the mail unopened to England.
Brave and good Sumner exercises influence on Mr. Lincoln.
April 24.—Every one has his word to say about civilized warfare, about international warfare, laws of war, etc. In principle, no laws of public war are applicable to rebels, and if they are, it is only on the grounds of expediency or of humanity. Laws of international warfare are applicable to independent nations, and not to rebels. Has England ever treated the Irish according to the laws of international warfare? Has England considered Napper Tandy and his aids as belligerents? The word war in its legal or international sense ought to have been suppressed at the start from the official, national vocabulary; to suppress a rebellion is not to wage a war.
April 25.—When the bloody tornado shall pass over, and the normal condition be restored, then only will begin to germinate the seeds of good and of evil, seeds so broadcast sown by this rebellion. All will become either recast or renovated, the plough of war having penetrated to the core of the people. Customs, habits, notions, modes of thinking and of appreciating events and men, political, social, domestic morals will be changed or modified. The men baptized in blood and fire will shake all. Many of them endowed with all the rays of manhood, others lawless and reckless. Many domestic hearths will be upturned, extinct, destroyed; the women likewise passing through the terrible probation. Many women remained true to the loftiest womanhood, others became carried away by the impure turmoil. All this will tell and shape out the next generations.