This is all that I caught in one day, after several days' interruption.
July 9.—Lee retreats towards the Potomac. If they let him recross there, our shame is nameless. Will Meade be after Lee l'épée dans les reins.
Halleckiana, minus. Nobody in Washington, not even the head-quarters, has any notion or idea what means Lee has to recross the Potomac.
Halleckiana, plus. I am told that Halleck refused to telegraph to Meade Mr. Lincoln's strategical conceptions.
July 9.—Chewing and spitting paramount here, require incalculable numbers of spittoons. The lickspittles outnumber the spittoons.
July 10.—The politicians already begin to broadly play their game. I use the sacramental expressions. What a disgusting monstrosity is a thorough politician! Not even a eunuch! There is nothing in a politician to be emasculated: no mind, no heart, no manhood. In what a galere I got—not by personal contact—but by intellectually observing the worms on the body politic of my—at any rate heartily adopted—country.
July 11.—Repeatedly and repeatedly certain newspaper correspondents announce to the world that Senator Sumner exercises considerable influence on the supreme power. All things considered, I wish it may be so, but I see it is not. Sumner's influence ought to have produced some palpable results. I see none.
The international maritime complications are watched and defeated by Welles.
Drapez vous, messieurs, drapez vous—in the statesman toga, history and truth will take it off from your shoulders.
July 12.—Mr. Seward is very ardently at work—Weed marshaling Seward—to reconstruct slavery and Union, to give a very large if not a general amnesty to the rebels, to shake hands with them, in pursuance of the Mercier-Richmond programme, and to be carried into the White House on the shoulders of the grateful Union-saviours, Copperheads, and blood-stained traitors. The Herald, the World, the National Intelligencer and others of that creed will sing gloria in excelsis to Seward.