It is, or will be forgotten, what a bloody trail over the North is left, and has been imprinted by the half measures, the indecisions, and the vascillations of the Administration.
The medley composed of politicians, jobbers, contractors, and newspapers, already scream "Hosanna," and attempt to spatter with lies and dust the road to the White House, and thus to prepare the way. And the medley already shakes hands, and enemies kiss each other, because if their elect succeeds, there will be peace over, and pickings for all the world. But the justice of history will overtake them all, and the better, younger generation will crush them to atoms.
September 6. L. B.—Wilkes' Spirit of the Times maintains its paramount, independent position in the American press. I cannot detect any shadow of a politician in its columns. It is all over independent and patriotic. The Spirit fights the miscreants.
"Principles not men," is an axiom, but the axiom must be well understood and applied, and it has its limitations. Are bad, worthless, insincere, selfish men to be the agencies and the factors of great and lofty principles? Is such a thing possible? Is the example of Judas forgotten? O, you Bible-reading people, can Judases and rotten consciences carry out good principles? The press that teaches and preaches principles not men, that never dares to attack bad men in its own ranks, such a press betrays the confidence of the people, and degrades below expression the elevated and noble position which the press ought to occupy in the development of the progress of human society.
September 6.—Computing together and comparing the mental and intellectual characteristics, the manifestations and utterances of passions in the Africo American and in the Irish of the Iro-Roman nursery, the anthropologist, the psychologist and the philosopher must give the palm to the Africo-American. And nevertheless Doctors of Divinity and many truly religious men plead in favor of slavery, that is, of brute force. I ask all such to meditate the words of Professor J. W. Draper, in his great and profound History of the Intellectual Development of Europe: That brute force must give way to intellect, and that even the meanest human being has rights in the sight of God.
September 10: New York.—Head-quarters of all kinds of politicians, of schemers, of perpetrators of treasonable attempts, of falsifiers, of poisoners of the people's mind. The rendezvous of those who devour the vitals of the country—who, as contractors, jobbers, brokers, stock and gold speculators, agioteurs, etc. are the most ardent patriots, and wish that the war may be indefinitely continued. In the columns of the Herald the future historian will find the best information concerning all that—not-blessed race. The race deserves to be recorded and scavenged in the Herald.
And nevertheless New York contains the most pure and the most devoted patriots. New York and New Yorkers have been foremost in coming to the rescue when the matricide rebels dealt their first blow. From New York came the best and the most energetic urgings on the gasping and vascillating Administration.
The New Yorkers originated the Sanitary Commission, for which I can find no words of sufficiently warm praise. New York contains many young, fresh, elevated and noble minds and intellects. Why, O why do some of them disappear in the muddy part of the great city, and others are overawed and overleaped by the hacks and by the politicians, or the so-called wire-pullers.
September 10. New York.—It is the place to ascertain the manœuvres of political schemers. Those who know, most emphatically assure me of the existence of the following Sewardiana.
1. Seward has given up in despair all dreams of finding people to back him for the next Presidency.