As in the mediæval epoch, and some time thereafter,
anatomists and physiologists experimented on the living villeins, that is, on
peasantry, serfs, and called this process experientia in
anima vili, so this naïve administration experiments in civil and
in military matters on the people's life-blood.
McClellan, stirred up by the fools and peacocks around him,
has sent to the War Department a project of a showy uniform for himself and his
staff. It would be to laugh at, if it were not insane. McClellan very likely
read not what he signed.
The army is in sufficient rig and organization to take the
field; but nevertheless McClellan has not yet made a single movement
imperatively prescribed by the simplest tactics, and by the simplest common
sense, when the enemy is in front. Not a single serious reconnoissance to
ascertain the real force of the enemy, to pierce through the curtain behind
which the rebels
hide their real forces. It must be conceded to the rebel generals that they
show great skill in humbugging us. Whenever we try to make a step we are met by
a seemingly strong force (tenfold increased by rumors spread by the
secessionists among us, and gulped by our stupidity), which makes us suppose a
deep front, and a still deeper body behind. And there is the humbug, I am sure.
If, on such an extensive line as the rebels occupy, the main body should
correspond to what they show in front, then the rebel force must muster several
hundreds of thousands. Such large numbers they have not, and I am sure that
four-fifths of their whole force constitutes their vanguard, and behind it the
main body is chaff. The rebels treat us as if we were children.
McClellan fortifies Washington; Fremont, St. Louis; Anderson
asks for engineers to fortify some spots in Kentucky. This is all a defensive
warfare, and not so will the rebel region be conquered. We lose time, and time
serves the rebels, as it increases their moral force. Every day of their
existence shows their intrinsic vitality.
The theory of starving the rebels out is got up by
imbeciles, wholly ignorant of such matters; wholly ignorant of human nature;
wholly ignorant of the degree of energy, and of abnegation, which criminals can
display when firmly decided upon their purpose. This absurdity comes from the
celebrated anaconda Mississippi-Atlantic strategy.
Oh! When in Poland, in 1831, the military chiefs
concentrated all the forces in the fortifications of Warsaw, all was gone. Oh
for a dashing general, for a dashing purpose, in the councils of the White
House! The constitutional advisers are deaf to the voice of the people, who
know more about it than do all the departments and the military wiseacres. The
people look up to find as big brains and hearts as are theirs, and hitherto the
people have looked up in vain. The radical senators, as a King, a Trumbull, a
Wade, Wilson, Chandler, Hale, etc., the true Republicans in the last session of
Congress — further, men as Wadsworth and the like, are the true exponents of
the character, of the clear insight, of the soundness of the people.
McClellan, and even the administration, seem not to realize
that pure military considerations cannot fulfil the imperative demands of the
political situation.
October 6th. — I met McClellan; had with him a
protracted conversation, and could look well into him. I do not attach any
value to physiognomies, and consider phrenology, craniology, and their kindred,
to be rather humbugs; but, nevertheless, I was struck with the soft,
insignificant inexpressiveness of his eyes and features. My enthusiasm for him,
my faith, is wholly extinct. All that he said to me and to others present was
altogether unmilitary and inexperienced. It made me sick at heart to hear him,
and to think that he is to decide over the destinies and the blood of the
people. And he already an idol, incensed, worshipped, before he did
anything whatever. McClellan may have individual courage, so has almost every
animal; but he has not the decision and the courage of a military leader and
captain. He has no real confidence in the troops; has scarcely any idea how
battles are fought; has no confidence in and no notion of the use of the
bayonet. I told him that, notwithstanding his opinion, I would take his worst
brigade of infantry, and after a fortnight's drill challenge and whip any of
the best rebel brigades.
Some time ago it was reported that McClellan considered this
war had become a duel of artillery. Fools wondered and applauded. I then
protested against putting such an absurdity in McClellan's mouth; now I must
believe it. To be sure, every battle is in part a duel of artillery, but ends
or is decided by charges of infantry or cavalry. Cannonading alone never constituted
and decided a battle. No position can be taken by cannonading alone, and shells
alone do not always force an enemy to abandon a position. Napoleon, an
artillerist par excellence, considered campaigns and battles
to be something more than duels of artillery. The great battle of Borodino, and
all others, were decided when batteries were stormed and taken. Eylau was a
battle of charges by cavalry and by infantry, besides a terrible cannonading,
etc., etc. McClellan spoke with pride of the fortifications of Washington, and
pointed to one of the forts as having a greater profile than had the
world-renowned Malakoff. What a confusion of notions, what a
misappreciation of relative conditions!
I cannot express my sad, mournful feelings, during this
conversation with McClellan. We spoke about the necessity of dividing his large
army into corps. McClellan took from the table an Army Almanac, and pointed to
the names of generals to whom he intended to give the command of corps. He
feels the urgency of the case, and said that Gen. Scott prevented him from
doing it; but as soon as he, McClellan, shall be free to act, the division will
be made. So General Scott is everywhere to defend senile routine against
progress, and the experience of modern times.
The rebels deserve, to the end of time, many curses from
outraged humanity. By their treason they forced upon the free institutions of
the North the necessity of curtailing personal liberty and other rights; to
make use of depotism for the sake of selfdefence.
The enemy concentrates and shortens his lines, and McClellan
dares not even tread on the enemy's heels. Instead of forcing the enemy to do
what we want, and upturn his schemes, McClellan seemingly does the bidding of
Beauregard. We advance as much as Beauregard allows us to do. New tactics, to
be sure, but at any rate not Napoleonic.
The fighting in the West and some small successes here are
obtained by rough levies; and those imbecile, regular martinets surrounding
McClellan still nurse his distrust in the volunteers. All the wealth,
energy, intellect of the country, is concentrated in the hands of McClellan,
and he uses it to throw up entrenchments. The partisans of McClellan point to
his highly scientific preparations his science. He may have some little of it,
but half-science is worse than thorough ignorance. Oh! for one dare-devil in
the Lyon, or in the old-fashioned Yankee style. McClellan is neither a
Napoleon, nor a Cabrera, nor a Garibaldi.
Mason and Slidell escaped to Havana on their way to Europe,
as commissioners of the rebels. According to all international definitions, we
have the full right to seize them in any neutral vessel, they being political
contrabands of war going on a publicly avowed errand hostile to their true
government. Mason and Slidell are not common passengers, nor are they political
refugees invoking the protection of any neutral flag. They are travelling
commissioners of war, of bloodshed and rebellion; and it is all the same in
whatever seaport they embark. And if the vessel conveying them goes from
America to Europe, or vice versa, Mr. Seward can let them be
seized when they have left Havana, provided he finds it expedient.
We lose time, and time is all in favor of the rebels. Every
day consolidates their existence — so to speak, crystallizes them. Further —
many so-called Union men in the South, who, at the start, opposed secession, by
and by will get accustomed to it. Secession daily takes deeper root, and
will so by degrees
become un fait accompli. Mr. Adams, in his official
relations with the English government, speaks of the rebel pirates as of lawful
privateers. Mr. Seward admonished him for it. Bravo!
It is so difficult, not to say impossible, to meet an
American who concatenates a long series of effects and causes, or who
understands that to explain an isolated fact or phenomenon the chain must be
ascended and a general law invoked. Could they do it, various bunglings would
be avoided, and much of the people's sacrifices husbanded, instead of being
squandered, as it is done now.
Fremont going overboard! His fall will be the triumph of the
pro-slavery party, headed by the New York Herald, and supported by military old
fogies, by martinets, and by double and triple political and intellectual
know-nothings. Pity that Fremont had no brilliant military capacity. Then his fall
could not have taken place.
Mr. Seward is too much ruled by his imagination, and too
hastily discounts the future. But imagination ruins a statesman. Mr. Seward
must lose credit at home and abroad for having prophesied, and having his
prophecies end in smoke. When Hatteras was taken (Gen. Scott protested against
the expedition), Mr. S. assured me that it was the beginning of the end. A
diplomat here made the observation that no minister of a European parliamentary
government could remain in power after having been continually contradicted by
facts.
Now, Mr. Seward devised these collateral missions to Europe.
He very little knows the habit and temper of European cabinets if he believes
that such collateral confidential agents can do any good. The European cabinets
distrust such irresponsible agents, who, in their turn, weaken the influence
and the standing of the genuine diplomatic agents. Mr. S., early in the year,
boasted to abolish, even in Europe, the system of passports, and soon
afterwards introduced it at home. So his imagination carries him to overhaul
the world. He proposes to European powers a united expedition to Japan, and we
cannot prevent at home the running of the blockade, and are ourselves blockaded
on the Potomac. All such schemes are offsprings of an ambitious imagination.
But the worst is, that every such outburst of his imagination Mr. Seward at
once transforms into a dogma, and spreads it with all his might. I pity him
when I look towards the end of his political career. He writes well, and has
put down the insolent English dispatch concerning the habeas corpus and
the arrests of dubious, if not treacherous, Englishmen. Perhaps Seward imagines
himself to be a Cardinal Richelieu, with Lincoln for Louis XIII. (provided he
knows as much history), or may be he has the ambition to be considered a
Talleyrand or Metternich of diplomacy. But if any, he has some very, very faint
similarity with Alberoni. He easily outwits here men around him; most are
politicians as he; but he never can outwit the statesmen of Europe. Besides,
diplomacy, above all that of great powers, is conceived largely and
carried on a grand scale; the present diplomacy has outgrown what is commonly
called (but fallaciously) Talleyrandism and Metternichism.
McClellan and the party which fears to make a bold advance
on the enemy make so much fuss about the country being cut up and wooded; it
proves only that they have no brains and no fertility of expedients. This
country is not more cut up than is the Caucasus, and the woods are no great,
endless, primitive forests. They are rather groves. In the Caucasus the
Russians continually attack great and dense forests; they fire in them several
round shots, then grape, and then storm them with the bayonet; and the
Circassians are no worse soldiers than are the Southrons.
European papers talk much of mediation, of a peaceful
arrangement, of compromise. By intuition of the future the Northern people know
very well the utter impossibility of such an arrangement. A peace could not
stand; any such peace will establish the military superiority of the arrogant,
reckless, piratical South. The South would teem with hundreds of thousands of
men ready for any piratical, fillibustering raid, enterprise, or excursion, of
which the free States north and west would become the principal theatres. Such
a marauding community as the South would become, in case of success, will be
unexampled in history. The Cylician pirates, the Barbary robbers, nay, the Tartars
of the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, were virtuous and civilized in
comparison with what would be an independent, man-stealing, and man-whipping
Southern agglomeration of lawless men. The free States could have no security,
even if all the thus called gentlemen and men
of honor were to sign a treaty or a compromise. The Southern pestilential
influence would poison not only the North, but this whole hemisphere. The
history of the past has nothing to be compared with organized, legal piracy, as
would become the thus-called Southern chivalry on land and on sea; and soon
European maritime powers would be obliged to make costly expeditions for the
sake of extirpating, crushing, uprooting the nest of pirates, which then will embrace
about twelve millions, — every Southern gentleman being a
pirate at heart.
This is what the Northern people know by experience and by
intuition, and what makes the people so uneasy about the inertia of the
administration.
Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Seward, Gen. Scott, and other great men,
are soured against the people and public opinion for distrusting, or rather for
criticising their little display of statesmanlike activity. How unjust! As a
general rule, of all human sentiments, confidence is the most scrutinizing one.
If confidence is bestowed, it wants to perfectly know
the why. But from the outset of this war the American people gave
and give to everybody full, unsuspecting confidence, without asking the why,
without even scrutinizing the actions which were to justify the
claim.
Up to this day Secesh is the positive pole; the Union is the
negative, — it is the blow recipient. When, oh, when will come the opposite?
When will we deal blows? Not under McClellan, I suspect.
SOURCE: Adam Gurowski, Diary from March 4, 1861, to
November 12, 1862, pp. 104-114
