tt in his whole life.

Scott's fatal influence palsied, stiffened, and poisoned every noble
or higher impulse, and every aspiration of the people. Scott
diligently sowed the first seeds of antagonism between volunteers and
regulars, and diligently nursed them. Around his person in the War
Department, and in the army, General Scott kept and maintained
officers, who, already before the inauguration, declared, and daily
asserted, that if it comes to a war, few officers of the army will
unite with the North and remain loyal to the Union.

He never forgot to be a Virginian, and was filled with all a
Virginian's conceit. To the last hour he warded off blows aimed at
Virginia. To this hour he never believed in a serious war, and now
_requiescat in pace_ until the curse of coming generations.

McClellan is invested with all the powers of Scott. McClellan has more
on his shoulders than any man--a Napoleon not excepted--can stand; and
with his very limited capacity McClellan must necessarily break under
it. Now McClellan will be still more idolized. He is already a kind of
dictator, as Lincoln, Seward, etc., turn around him.

In a conversation with Cameron, I warned him against bestowing such
powers on McClellan. "What shall we do?" was Cameron's answer;
"neither the President nor I know anything about military affairs."
Well, it is true; but McClellan is scarcely an apprentice.

Again the intermittent fear, or fever, of foreign intervention. How
absurd! Americans belittle themselves talking and thinking about it.
The European powers will not, and cannot. That is my creed and my
answer; but some of our agents, diplomats, and statesmen, try to made
capital for themselves from this fever which they evoke to establish
before the public that their skill preserves the country from foreign
intervention. Bosh!

All the good and useful produced in the life and in the economy of
nations, all the just and the right in their institutions, all the ups
and downs, misfortunes and disasters befalling them, all this was, is,
and forever will be the result of logical deductions from
pre-existing dates and facts. And here almost everybody forgets the
yesterday.

A revolution imposes obligations. A revolution makes imperative the
development and the practical application of those social principles
which are its basis.

The American Revolution of 1776 proclaimed self-government, equality
before all, happiness of all, etc.; it is therefore