August 24. L. B.—I very strongly and urgently advised Gen. Wadsworth to resign. No one in the country has fulfilled more nobly his civic and patriotic duty. I urged upon his mind that when the war is finished, the cause of right, of justice, the interests of a genuine self-government will require true men to rescue the people from the hands of the politicians. Vainly I remonstrated. Wadsworth prefers to remain in the service, and to fight the monster.
August 24. L. B.—Chasiana. The New York leaders of the Chase scheme make all possible efforts and platitudes to conciliate Weed and win him over. What dregs all around!
The immaculate Chase! to look for support to a Weed! To Weed-Seward, who for twenty-five years fanned the anti-slavery flame! Seward, whom the anti-slavery wave elevated where he is, and who now kicks and spits upon the men most ardent in the cause of emancipation! O dregs! O dregs!
August 24: L. B.—The question of confiscation drags itself slowly on, and soon it may resound in the courts of the whole country. If confiscation is ever stringently executed, it will generate law-suits ad libitum and ad infinitum. From the first day when the banner of rebellion was unfolded, each State became an outlaw in its relations with the Union. Such a rebel State has not a legal existence, and any legal act whatever between individual members—or rather, politically, sovereigns in and of the State—such acts are valueless in relation to the lawful sovereign, as is the Union.
The Confiscation Act is based on a wrong principle—the right to confiscate the whole rebel property in America. This right is derived from the public law. A conqueror of a country becomes ipso facto the proprietor of all that belonged to the conquered sovereign and what is called public property, as domains, taxes, revenues, public institutions, etc. The rebels claim to be sovereigns—that is each freeman in each respective State is a respective sovereign. The area of such revolted State, with all the lands, cultivated or uncultivated, with the farms, and all industrial, mercantile or mining establishments whatever, is the property of the sovereign, or of the sovereigns. Property of a, or of many sovereigns, is in its whole nature a public property, and as such, ipso facto, is liable to be confiscated by the conqueror.
August 24: L. B.—The massacre at Lawrence, Kansas, must exclusively be credited to those who appointed for that region a pro-slavery military commander. But the power-holders are not troubled by more or less blood, by more or less victims of their incapacity and double-dealing!
August 25: L. B.—Any future historian must beware not to seek light in the newspapers of this epoch. The so-called good press throws no light on events; that press is not in the hands of statesmen or of thinkers, or of ardent students of human events, or of men having for their aim any pursuits of science or knowledge. The luminaries of the press are no beacons for the people during this bloody and deadly tempest! For the sake of what is called political capital, the most simple fact often becomes distorted and upturned by this political, short-sighted, and selfishly envious press.
August 26: L. B.—All things considered, the inflation of the currency and the rise in gold has proved to be beneficial to the country. The agricultural interest, above all, in the West, was particularly sustained thereby. Wheat and grain would have fallen to prices ruinous for the farmers. When the gold fell, the farmer felt it by the reduction of the price of his produce. The agriculturist, the backbone and marrow of the country, spends less money for manufactured products than he netted clear profits by the rise in gold. If the farmer sold now his wheat for six shillings, without inflation the price might have been four shillings, and then the farmer would have been bankrupt, unable to pay the taxes. The inflation saved the greatest interest in the country. And thus agriculture and industry flourish, the country is not ruined, is not bankrupt, as the European wiseacres took great pleasure in foreboding that it would be. So much for absolute laws of political economy.
August 27: L. B.—The New York Republican papers insinuate that a Mr. Evarts, who was sent to Europe by Mr. Seward, has given assurances to European governments that slavery will be abolished. If such declaration was needed, why not make it through the regular representatives of the country, as are Mr. Adams and Mr. Dayton? Mr. Seward is incorrigible. I am curious to know where he learned this original mode of diplomatizing. Such unofficial, confidential, semi-confidential agents confuse European governments. They inspire very little, if any respect for our statesmanship, and are offensive to our regularly appointed ministers. What must the crown lawyers in England have thought of Mr. Evart's great mastery of international laws?
August 30.—Our military powers in Washington, led on and inspired by Halleck, cannot put an end to guerrillas, or rather to those highwaymen who rob, so to speak, at the military gates of Washington. Lieber-Halleck-Hitchcock's treatise frightened not the guerrillas, but most assuredly the gallows will do it. Everywhere else the like banditti would be summarily treated; and these would-be guerrillas here are evidences of the uttermost social dissolution. They are no soldiers, no guerrillas, and deserve no mercy.