"He is evidently a man of keen faculties, and, what is still more to the purpose, of powerful character.
"As to his integrity, the people have that intuition of it which is never deceived. Before he actually entered upon his great office, and for a considerable time afterwards, there is no reason to suppose that he adequately estimated the gigantic task about to be imposed upon him, or, at least, had any distinct idea how it was to be managed; and I presume there may have been more than one veteran politician to propose to himself to take the power out of President Lincoln's hands into his own, leaving our honest friend only the public responsibility for the good or ill success of the career. The extremely imperfect development of his statesmanly qualities at that period may have justified such designs. But the President is teachable by events, and has now spent a year in a very arduous course of education; he has a flexible mind, capable of much expansion, and convertible towards far loftier studies and activities than those of his early life; and if he came to Washington a backwoods humorist, he has already transformed himself into as good a statesman (to speak modestly) as his prime minister."
So long as a general's sword is seemingly invincible, and the uniformity of his success silences even the cavillings of envy,—that most persistent of all the unlovely emotions,—just so long he may safely count on a unanimity of public approval. But let disaster befall, and, justly or otherwise, it matters little which, the voices just now most vociferous for coronation, bellow the loudest for crucifixion! Few of our commanders in the late war had bitterer evidence of this than McClellan. Idolized while victorious, he was vituperated with corresponding violence the instant fortune showed signs of wavering in her fidelity. At this distance from those stirring times we can easily perceive that the idolatry and the abuse were alike unjust and even ridiculous; the same wisdom that pronounces it unsafe to praise a man until death has set the seal to his earthly reputation, deems it no less a folly to bestow adulation or excessive blame on a military commander before the end of his campaigns. To his brief estimate of McClellan's character and qualifications for his post of vast responsibility, our author brought an admirable coolness of judgment, and that wonderful insight into men and motives so seldom at fault. Keenly alive to the ridiculousness of the attack on Manassas, and declaring that "no rebel artillery has played upon us with such overwhelming effect," he was capable, with a fairness sufficiently amazing in any critic of those days, of doing full justice to the general's indubitable ability and patriotism. He closes his sketch of McClellan, by no means the least valuable part of the article we are considering, with this decided expression of opinion: "I shall not give up my faith in his soldiership until he is defeated, nor in his courage and integrity even then."
An odd peculiarity of Hawthorne's mind was the incertitude—I use this vile word in lack of a better at the moment—that seemed at times to invest his reasoning powers with a sort of Indian summer haziness.
This idiosyncrasy had a striking exemplification when our travellers met "a party of contrabands escaping out of the mysterious depths of Secessia."
"They were unlike the specimens of their race whom we are accustomed to see at the North, and, in my judgment, were far more agreeable.
"So rudely were they attired,—as if their garb had grown upon them spontaneously,—so picturesquely natural in manners, and wearing such a crust of primeval simplicity (which is quite polished away from the Northern black man), that they seemed a kind of creature by themselves, not altogether human, but perhaps quite as good, and akin to the fauns and rustic deities of olden times. I wonder if I shall excite anybody's wrath by saying this?
"It is no great matter at all events. I felt most kindly towards the poor fugitives, but knew not precisely what to wish in their behalf, nor in the least how to help them. For the sake of the manhood which is latent in them, I would not have turned them back; but I should have felt almost as reluctant on their own account to hasten them forward to the strangers' land; and I think my prevalent idea was that, whoever may be benefited by the results of this war, it will not be the present generation of negroes, the childhood of whose race has now gone forever, and who must henceforth fight a hard battle with the world on very unequal terms. On behalf of my own race, I am glad, and can only hope that an inscrutable Providence means good to both parties."
The whimsical feature in Hawthorne's character to which we have alluded, is thus noticed by an intimate and valued friend of the great author:—
"Nobody disliked slavery more cordially than he did; and yet the difficulty of what was to be done with the slaves weighed constantly upon his mind. He told me once that while he had been consul at Liverpool a vessel arrived there with a number of negro sailors, who had been brought from slave States, and would, of course, be enslaved on their return. He fancied that he ought to inform the men of the fact, but then he was stopped by the reflection—who was to provide for them if they became free? and, as he said with a sigh, 'While I was thinking, the vessel sailed.' So I recollect, on the old battlefield of Manassas, on which I strolled in company with Hawthorne, meeting a batch of runaway slaves—weary, footsore, wretched, and helpless beyond conception; we gave them food and wine, some small sums of money, and got them a lift upon a train going northward; but not long afterwards Hawthorne turned to me with the remark, 'I am not sure that we were doing right, after all. How can those poor beings find food and shelter away from home?'