September 3: L. B.—State Conventions, and the old party-hacks under arms. Will not the younger generation rise in its might, break the chains of this intellectual subserviency, scatter the hacks to the winds, take the lead, enlighten the masses, find out new, not used-up men, brains and hearts, for the sacred duty of serving the people. To witness so much intelligence, knowledge, ardor, elasticity, clear-sightedness as animate the American youth, to witness all this subdued, curbed by the hacks!—O, youth, awake!
It is the most sacred duty of the younger generation, to rescue the country from the hands of the old politicians of every kind; to call to political paramount activity the better and purer agencies. It is a task as emphatically, nay, even more, urgent and meritorious than emancipation of the Africo-Americans.
September 4: L. B.—In their official or unofficial quality, numerous Americans amorously dabble in International questions and laws. How much the rights of war, etc., have been discussed; how many letters, signed, anonymous, official and unofficial, have been published—and very little, if any light thrown on these questions. What a cruel fate of a future historian, who, if conscientious, will be obliged to read all these darkness-spreading lucubrations!
September 5: L. B.—Mr. Lincoln's letter to the Illinois Convention stirs up the whole country. It is a very, very good manifesto,—had it not a terrible YESTERDAY. It is a heavy bid for re-election and may secure it. The Americans forget the yesterday, and Mr. Lincoln's yesterday! ... is full of shiftings, hesitations, mistakes which draw out the people's life-blood. The people will forget that a man of energy and of firm purpose in the White House, such a man would have at once clearly seen his way, and then a year ago rebellion and slavery would have been crushed.
A man of energy would not have had for his familiar demons, the Scotts, the Sewards, the Blairs, the border-state politicians, the Weeds, etc.
September 5: L. B.—The siege of Charleston tire en longueur; it has cost thousand of lives and millions upon millions, and will still cost more. And it is already forgotten that when nearly two years ago Sherman and Dupont took Port Royal, Charleston and Savannah were defenceless; it is forgotten that Sherman asked for orders to siege the two cities, but such were not given from Washington, because Mr. Lincoln-Seward (literally) was afraid to get possession of the focuses of rebellion, and General McClellan, with one hundred and fifty thousand men in Washington, could not bear the idea that the rebels should be disturbed either in Centerville or in their chivalric homes in South Carolina. It is forgotten that civil and military leaders and chiefs then and there refused to deal a death blow to the rebellion.
And as I am en train to recall to memory what is already forgotten, and what the Illinois letter intends to wholly erase from the people's memory; I go on.
In the first days and months after the explosion of the rebellion, Mr. Lincoln was as innocent of any wish to emancipate the slaves, as could be a Seward, or a Yancey, or McClellan, or a Magruder or a Wise or a Halleck. All this is forgotten. It is forgotten that General Butler is the earliest initiator of emancipation, and that to him exclusively belongs the word and the fact of an emancipated contraband. It is forgotten that when Butler began to emancipate the contrabands, the big men in the Administration, Lincoln, General Scott, and Seward, became almost frantic against Butler for thus introducing the "nigger" into the struggle. The fate of Fremont is forgotten. Fremont was ahead of the times. Fremont emancipated when Lincoln-Seward-Scott-Blair, etc., heartily wished to save and preserve slavery. Down went Fremont.
Early in the summer of 1861 General Fremont wished to do what was now accomplished by the, until yet, sans pareil Grant—that is, to clear the Mississippi at a time when neither Island No. 10, nor Vicksburgh, nor Port Hudson nor any other port was fortified. But the plan displeased and frightened the powers in Washington. Fremont was never to be pardoned for having shown farsightedness when the great men deliberately blindfolded themselves. Fremont might not be a Napoleon, not a captain; Fremont committed military mistakes,—other generals commit military crimes.
The angel of justice very easily will white-wash Fremont from military responsibility for the unnecessary waste of human life; and with all his various faults Fremont's aspirations are patriotic and lofty, and he is by far a better and nobler man than all his revilers put together. But all this seems to be forgotten.