Hunter has
not men enough to do it; it is therefore folly and crime to order,
or to allow, the attack of the defenses of Charleston.

_April 18._--Mr. Seward has not at all given up his firm decision to
violate the national statutes and the international rules, by
insisting upon the restoration to England of the mails of that
Anglo-Piratic vessel, the Peterhoff. A mail on a blockade-runner
enjoys no immunity, since regular mail steamers, or at least mail
agents and carriers are established by England. Even previously,
neutral private vessels could not always claim the immunity for the
mail, when they are caught in an unlawful trade. But, of course, the
State Department knows better.

In the case of the ship Labuan, an English blockade-runner, Mr.
Seward, backed by Mr. Lincoln, ordered the judge how to decide,
ordered the judge to give up the prize, and Mr. Seward urged the
English agents not to lose time in prosecuting American captors for
costs and damages. The Labuan was a good prize, but Mr. Seward is
the incarnation of wisdom and of justice!

_April 20._--The not quite heavenly trio--Lincoln, Seward and
Halleck--maintain, and find imbeciles and lickspittles enough to
believe them, that they, the trio, could not as yet, act decidedly
in the Emancipation question, they being in this, as in other
questions, too far in advance of the people. What blasphemy! Those
_lumina mundi_ believe that the people will forget their records. To
be sure, the Americans, good-natured as they are, easily forget the
misdeeds of _yesterday_, but this _yesterday_ shall be somehow
recalled to their memory.

If all the West Pointers were like Grant, Rosecrans, Hooker, Barnard
and thousands of them throughout all grades, then West Point would
be a blessing for the country. Unhappily, hitherto, the small, bad
clique of West Point engineers No. one, exercised a preponderating
influence on the conduct of the war, and thus West Point became in
disrespect, nay, in horror. I believe that the good West Pointers
are more numerous than the altogether bad ones, but they often mar
their best qualities by a certain, not altogether admirable, _esprit
du corps_.

_April 20._--The generation crowding on this fogyish one will sit in
court of justice over the evil-doers, over the helpless, over the
egotists who are to-day at work. That generation will begin the
assizes during the lifetime of these great leaders in Administration,
in politics, in war.