Adam Gurowski

“ Our thus called leaders think first of their little selves, whose aggrandizement the public events are to secure, and the public cause is to square itself with their individual schemes.
Such is the policy of almost all those at the helm here. Not one among them is to be found deserving the name of a statesman, endowed with a great devotion, and with a great power, for the service of a great and noble aim. From the solemn hour that the fatherland honorably chains him to its service, the genuine statesman exists no more for himself, but for his country alone. ”

“ I doubt if at any time, and in the life of any great or small people, there existed such a galaxy of civil and military rulers, chiefs, and leaders, stripped of nobler manhood, as are the great men here. The blush of honor never burned their cheeks! O, the low politicians! Some persons doubt Stanton's sincerity in his dealings with individuals. I am not a judge thereof; but were it so, it can easily be forgiven if he only remains sincere and true to the cause.
One is amazed and even aghast at the impudence of the McClellan and West Point cliques. ”

“ Jefferson Davis, Lee, Jackson, and all the generals down to the last Southern bush-whacker, incarnate the violent and hideous passion of slavery, now all-powerful throughout the South. Here, Lincoln, Seward, McClellan, Blair, Halleck, etc., incarnate the negation of the purest and noblest aspirations of the North. Stanton alone is inspired by a national patriotic idea. No unity, no harmony between the people and the leaders; this discord must generate disasters.
All over the country the lie is spread that the army demanded the reappointment of McClellan. ”

“ The proclamation is written in the meanest and the most dry routine style; not a word to evoke a generous thrill, not a word reflecting the warm and lofty comprehension and feelings of the immense majority of the people on this question of emancipation. Nothing for humanity, nothing to humanity. Whoever drew it, be he Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Seward, it is clear that the writer was not in it either with his heart or with his soul; it is clear that it was done under moral duress, under the throttling pressure of events. How differently Stanton would have spoken! ”

“ Hang yourselves, oh rhetors!
July 4th.—The gloomiest since the birth of this republic. Never was the country so low, and after such sacrifices of blood, of time, and of money; and all this slaughtered to that Juggernaut of strategy, and to the ignoble motley of his supporters.
Oh you widows, bereaved mothers, sisters, and sweethearts, cry for vengeance! Cry for vengeance, you shadows of the dead of the malaria, or fallen in the defence of your country's honor. Stupidity has stabbed in the back more deadly wounds than did the enemy in front. ”

“ Nations, communities, societies, institutions, stand and fall with that principle, whatever it be, whereof they are the incarnation; so teaches us history. Woe to these freemen if they will recede from the principle; if they abandon human rights; if they do not crush human bondage, this sum of all infamies. Certainly the question paramount to all is, to save and preserve pure self-government in principle and in its direct application. But although the question of slavery seems to be incidental and subordinate to the former, virtually the question of slavery is twin to the former. ”

“ It is to approach the enemy's army by parallels and by trenches. He will not take or scare the enemy, but he will immortalize his name far above the immortality of all not great generals.
Night and day ambulances are conveying the sick and wounded here, and large numbers, thousands upon thousands, going north. One must cry tears of blood to witness such destruction, such a sacrifice of the noblest people on the shrine of utter military incapacity. And the traitors, the imbeciles, and the intriguers sing hallelujah to McClellan, and daily throw their slime at Stanton. ”

“ The War Department, as says Potter, bristles with secessionists, and with them the old, rotten, respectable relics, preserved by General Scott, depress and nip in the bud all the young, patriotic, and genuine capacities.
As the sea corrodes the rocks against which it impinges, so egotism, narrow-mindedness, and immorality (p. 086) corrode the best human institutions. For humanity's sake, Americans, beware!
Always the clouds of harpies around the White House and the Departments,—such a generous ferment in the people, and such impurities coming to the surface! ”

“ Lincoln's councils, Mr. Stanton alone has the vigor, the purity, and the simplicity of a man of deep convictions. Stanton alone unites the clear, broad comprehension of the exigencies of the national question with unyielding action. He is the statesman so long searched for by me. He, once a friend of McClellan, was not deterred thereby from condemning that do-nothing strategy, so ruinous and so dishonorable. Stanton is a Democrat, and therefore not intrinsically, perhaps not even relatively, an anti-slavery man, but he hesitates not now to destroy slavery for the preservation of the Union. ”

“ September 7.—During last night troops marched to meet the enemy, saluting with deafening shouts and cheers the residence of McClellan; spit-lickers as a Kennedy, giving the sign by waving his hat. Such shouts would cheer up the mind but for the fact that they were mostly raised for the victory over those who demanded an investigation of the causes of slowness and insubordination,—those exclusive causes of the defeat of Pope's army. Those shouts were thrown out as defiance to justice, to truth, and to law. Those shouts marked the inauguration of the pretorian regime. ”

“ I do not believe the foreign powers to be forgetful of their interest; they know better their interests than the Americans.
The Congress adjourned, abandoning, with a confidence unparalleled in history, the affairs of the country in the hands of the not over far-sighted administration. The majority of the Congress are good, and fully and nobly represent the pure, clear and sure aspirations, instincts, nay, the clear-sightedness of the people. ”

“ This is the more painful for me to record, as most of the foreign officers in our service, and who are experienced and good judges, most positively assert the superior fighting qualities of the Union volunteers over the rebels. Our troops are better fed, clad and armed, but over our army hovers the thick mist of strategy and indecision; the rebels are led not by anaconda strategians, but by fighting generals, desperate, and thus externally heroic; energy inspires their councils, their administration, and their military leaders. ”

“ Men of honor, of word, and of truth, and who are on intimate footing with Mr. Lincoln, repeatedly assured me that, in his conversation, the President judges and appreciates Gen. McClellan as he is judged and appreciated by those whom his crew call his enemies. With all this, Mr. Lincoln, through thin and thick, supports McClellan and maintains him in command. Such a double-dealing in the chief of a noble people! Seemingly Mr. Seward and Mr. Blair always exercise the most powerful influence. Both wished that the army remain in the malarias of the James river. ”

“ The President calls on the country for 75,000 men; telegram has spoken, and they rise, they arm, they come. I am not deceived in my faith in the North; the excitement, the wrath, is terrible. Party lines burn, dissolved by the excitement. Now the people is in fusion as bronze; if Lincoln and the leaders have mettle in themselves, then they can cast such arms, moral, material, and legislative, as will destroy at once this rebellion. ”

“ The country, the people demands an attack on Virginia, on Richmond, and Baltimore; the country, better than the military authorities, understands the political and military necessities; the people has the consciousness that if fighting is done instantly, it will be done cheaply and thoroughly by a move of its finger. The administration can double the number (p. 040) of men under arms, but hesitates. What slow coaches, and what ignorance of human nature and of human events. The knowing ones, the wiseacres, will be the ruin of this country. They poison the sound reason of the people. ”

“ Seward is free from that coarse, semi-barbarous know-nothingism which rules paramount, not the genuine people, but the would-be something, the half-civilized gentlemen. Above all, know-nothingism pervades all around Scott, who is himself its grand master, and it nestles there par excellence in more than one way. It is, however, to be seen how far this pure American-Scott military wisdom is something real, transcendent. ”

“ The people, the masses, sacrifice their blood, their time, their fortune. What sacrifice the official leaders and pilots? All is net gain for them. Thousands and thousands of families will be impoverished for life, nay, for generations. It is those nameless heroes on the fields of battle who alone uphold the honor of the American name, as it is the people at large who have the true statesmanship, and not the appointed guardsmen. ”

“ It is a curious fact that such commanders as Halleck, etc., sit in cities and fight through those under them; and there are ignoble flatterers trying to attribute these victories to McClellan, and to his strategy. As if battles could be commanded by telegraph at one thousand miles' distance. It is worse than imbecility, it is idiotism and strategy.
Stanton calls himself a man of one idea. How he overtops in the Cabinet those myrmidons with their many petty notions! One idea, but a great and noble one, makes the great men, or the men for great events. ”

“ At any rate, I shall try to expose Seward. Arrive que pourra. But for him the sacred cause would have been victorious, and now—horror! horror!
The pro-Romanist clergy is more furiously and savagely pro-slavery than are the Rhetts, the Yanceys, in the South; the poor Africo-Americans are, if not the truest Christians in this country, at any rate their Christianity is sublime when compared with the pro-Romanism.
O, for civic intrepidity, or all is lost! High-minded, intrepid, self-forgetful civism and abnegation alone can avert the catastrophe. Such is the mass of the people—but its leaders! ”

“ What are doing in Europe all these various agents of Mr. Seward, and paid by Uncle Sam? all these Weeds, Sandfords, Hughes, Bigelows, and whoever else may be there? They cannot find means in their brains to better direct, inform, or influence the European press. Almost all the articles in our favor are only defensive and explanatory; the offensive is altogether carried by the secesh press in England and in France. But to deal offensive blows, our agents would be obliged to stand firm on human principles, and show up all the dastardly corruption of slavery, of slaveholders, and of rebels. ”

“ For the first time since the armaments, I enjoyed a genuine military view. McClellan, surrounded as a general ought to be, went to see the army. It looks martial. The city, likewise, has a more martial look than it had all the time under Scott. It seems that a young, strong hand holds the ribbons. God grant that McClellan may preserve his western vigor and activity, and may not become softened and dissolved by these Washington evaporations. If he does, if he follows the routine, he will become as impotent as others before him. ”

“ Democracy, the true, the noble, that which constitutes the signification of America in the progress of our race—democracy will not be destroyed. All the inveterate enemies here and in Europe, all (p. 039) who already joyously sing the funeral songs of democracy, all of them will become disgraced. Democracy will emerge more pure, more powerful, more rational; destroyed will be the most infamous oligarchy ever known in history; oligarchy issued neither from the sword, nor the gown, nor the shop, but wombed, generated, cemented, and sustained by traffic in man. ”

“ These regiments want only a small touch of military organization.
Weeks run, troops increase, and not the first step made to organize them into an army, to form brigades, not to say divisions; not yet two regiments manœuvring together. What a strange idea the military chief or chiefs, or department, or somebody, must have of what it is to organize an army. Not the first letter made. Can it be ignorance of this elementary knowledge with which is familiar every corporal in Europe? When will they start, when begin to mould an army? ”