Adam Gurowski

“ January 9.—The worshippers of slavery, that is, the Democrats, of the Seymour's, Wood's, and the World's church, call the war waged for the defence of human rights, for civilization and for maintaining the genuine rational self-government, they call it an unholy war. In some respects the Copperheads are right. The holy war loses its holiness in the hands of Lincoln, Seward, Halleck, and their disciples and followers, because those leaders violate all the laws of logic and of reason, this holy of holies. At times I would prefer peace than see devoted men so recklessly murdered by such.... ”

“ Happy it was for the army, and happy for the country that at Fredericksburgh, our heroic soldiers (p. 047) gave far other and nobler proofs of more than human courage and fortitude than the mere crossing and recrossing of a river.
The Tribune is either in its dotage, or still worse. Burnside's unsoldierly blundering is compared to the great victorious splendors of Asperm, Esslingen, Wagram, and the tyrant-crushing three days of immortal Waterloo! The Tribune lauds the crossing and the recrossing of the river, as an act of superhuman bravery ”

“ March 1.—Unprecedented is the fact in the history of constitutionally-governed nations, that the patriots of a political party in power, that its most devoted and ardent men, as a question of life or death, are forced to support and defend an Administration which they placed at the helm, and whose many, many acts they disapprove.
The soldiers in the hospitals die the death of confessors to the great cause. And the hair turns not white on the heads of those whose policy, helplessness, and ignorance, crowd the hospitals with the people's best children. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A man who has a profound faith in his convictions has coruscations, fierce flashes of that second-sight for the signs of the times. The mere trimming and selfish politician is ever ready to swim with the stream which he had neither strength nor skill to breast; he never ventures to take the initiative. In issuing the proclamation, Mr. Lincoln gives legal sanction, form, and record to what the storm of events and the loud cry of the best of the people have long demanded and now inexorably dictate. ”

“ The dying Congress can no more reconquer its abdicated power. This noble and patriotic majority—many of them, are not re-elected, thanks to Lincoln-Seward—provide the incarnate formula with all imaginable legal, constitutional powers, more than twice sufficient to save the country. Could only the brains and hands entrusted with laws, be able to execute them! Oh for a legal, constitutional, statute Cromwell, ready to behead treason, rebellion, slavocracy and slavo-sympathy, as the great Oliver beheaded and crushed the poisonous weeds of his time. ”

“ The soldiers of his army can do anything ever done by any soldiers in the world—but lead them on, O Generals! Hooker has ninety-four thousand men, and, McClellan-like, waits for more; laments that he is outnumbered. A good general, having such a number, and of such troops, would never hesitate to attack an enemy numbering one hundred and twenty thousand, and the more so, as Hooker's command is massed, while Lee's is not. And I'll risk my head that Lee's whole army, all over the valley, and over Pennsylvania, and over Maryland, is smaller than Hooker's. ”

“ This is the noble initiation and solution fulfilled by the Republican party. To destroy slavery and the political defenders and props of slavery, was the mission that was fatally thrown or entrusted by inexorable destiny to the Republican party. With the destruction of slavery, disappears from the political life of America the Northern man with Southern principles; those very dregs of dregs of all times and of all political bodies and societies. Slavery is destroyed both virtually and de facto, new issues are looming, new solutions will be given, and new men will bear the new word. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This confusion, this groping, double-dealing and helplessness can be only cured by a wonder, or else all will be lost. The wonder is daily perpetrated by the all enduring, all-sacrificing people.
Those criminals who ought to have been shot, or, at the mildest, cashiered for the slaughter at Fredericksburgh, the engineers, mock-Jominis, the sham soldiers: all these Washington engineers of that recent butchery, assert now, that, after all, the possession of Fredericksburgh was immaterial; that Lee would have then selected a better position. ”

“ A part of the Democratic masses were, and still are kept in as brutal political ignorance and depravity as are the poor whites in the South, under whatever name one may record them. Now, or never, is the time for the unwashed to find out that during their alliance with the Southern traitors, all genuine manhood, all that ennobles, elevates the man and warms his heart, was poisoned or violently torn from them—that brutality is not liberty, and finally, that the Northern leaders have been or are more abject than abjectness itself. ”

“ February 1.—The task which this great American people has on its hands is one utterly unexampled in the history of the world. While in the midst of a great civil war, and struggling as it were in very death-throes, to emancipate and organize four millions of men, most of whom, up to this very day, have by deliberate legislation been kept in ignorance and savagery. Thoroughly to comprehend the immensity of such a task, we must also reflect that the men to whom that task is intrusted are anything rather than intellectual giants. ”

“ September 19.—Hurrah for Lincoln, who hurries the organization of Africo-American regiments! Oh yes! he hurries them; festina lente. And how many regiments have been organized in Norfolk, which ought to have been established as the central point to attract and to organize contrabands? Is not Virginia the first in the slave States for the number of slaves? In the hands of a clear-sighted man, Norfolk ought to have been used as a glue to which the slaves would have wandered from all parts of Virginia, and even from North Carolina. ”

“ In the West, everything is action, operation and victory. Grant, Rosecrans, Banks, their officers and soldiers honor the American name; even good Burnside acts and succeeds;—but here the Army of the Potomac is observing and watching Lee's brow! McClellan's spirit seems still to permeate these blessed generals, and then Halleckiana, and then God knows what. The fear of losing won laurels probably palsies the brains of the commanders; at any rate it is certain that the inactivity of the Potomac army throws unsurpassed splendor on the annals of this war. ”

“ Death-knell to slavery and to the slaveocracy. The foulest relic of the past will at length be destroyed. The new era has a glorious dawn; it rises in the glories of sacrifices made by a generous and inspired people. Yes! The new era rises above darkness, selfishness, and imbecility. The shades of the slaughtered are now at length propitiated; their slaughter is at least in part atoned for; and outraged humanity is, at least in part, avenged! Let rebels and conservatives remain hardened in crime; a just and condign vengeance shall overtake them. ”

“ The Times joins in the outcry against the radicals. It is Seward-Weed's watchword. It is the watchword of the Herald. It is the watchword of the most thickly coppered Copperheads. Genuine, pure convictions and principles are always radical. Christianity could not have been established were not the first Christians most absolute radicals. ”

“ When the people's vote confers the highest trust to one rather below than in the level, and still less one above the level, then even the most intelligent people in the world, being thus misdirected, misconducted, confused, in a very short time become almost enervated, and, so to speak, loses its self-possession, and its sense of duty and of right becomes shaken, its intellectual light dimmed. ”

“ English diplomacy was always foremost in meddling, and above all it has been so during this whole century. The English diplomat is not yet born, who will not meddle or intrigue with all kinds of parties, either in a nation, in a body politic, in a cabinet or at court.
When a nation, a dynasty, a government becomes entangled in domestic troubles, the first thing they have to do is to politely bow out of the country all the foreign diplomacy and diplomats, be these diplomats hostile, indifferent, or even friendly. ”

“ April 2.—Official, lordish, Toryish England, plays treason and infamy right and left. The English money lenders to rebels, the genuine owners of rebel piratical ships, are anxious to destroy the American commerce and to establish over the South an English monopoly. All this because odiunt dum metuant the Yankee. You tories, you enemies of freedom, your time of reckoning will come, and it will come at the hands of your own people. You fear the example of America for your oppressions, for your rent-rolls. ”

“ Did my utmost to explain to them that warfare to-day is not empiricism, but science, and that empiricism is only better when sham-science has the upper hand. Hooker's staff was worse than sham-science, and was not even empiricism.
I explained that such evils, although very deeply rooted, can, nevertheless, be remedied. An energetic government can, and ought to look for and find, the remedy. The army, as it is, contains good materials for every branch of organization; it is the duty of the government to discover them and give them adequate functions. ”

“ October 4.—The probable majority in the next Congress is the great object of present calculation and speculation. The Administration seems to be of the opinion, that a small republican majority will do as well, because it will be more compact and more easily to be played upon. God save the country from a majority twistable by the Administration! If the majority is small, then it may be unable to drag such dead-weight as was the Administration directed by its master spirit. ”

“ Lincoln dreads to be surrounded with stern, earnest, ardent, patriotic advisers. Such men would not listen to stories!
January 11.—The thus-called metropolitan press is in the hands of old politicians, old hacks—and no new forces or intellects pierce through. It is a phenomenon. In any whatever country in Europe, at every convulsion the press bristles with new, fresh intellects. Here, the old nightcaps have the monopoly. Farther: those respectable fossils reside at a distance from the focus of affairs, are not directly in contact with events and men, and are in no communion with them. ”

“ It may come that the western armies and generals will bring the civil war to an end, the Potomac army all the time marching and countermarching between the Potomac and the Rappahannock. And such a splendid army, such heroic soldiers and officers, to be sacrificed to the ignorant stubbornness of sham military science! ”

“ February 7.—The Sanitary Commission, with all its branches and subdivisions, is among the noblest manifestations of what can be done by a free people, and how private enterprise of intelligent, patriotic and unselfish men can confer benefit. Nor must the praise of that great work be limited to men. Warm-hearted gentlewomen also have done their share in it. The Sanitary Commission is one of the best out-croppings of self-government, and does honor to the people, and softens and ameliorates the warlike roughness of the times. ”

“ Never has a nation or an honest political body whatever, shown to any mortal a confidence similar to that shown to Mr. Lincoln. Never in antiquity, in the days of Athens' and Rome's purest patriotism and civic virtue, has the people invested its best men with a trust so boundless as did the last Congress give to Mr. Lincoln. ”