an will find in those statutes the best light
by which to comprehend and to appreciate the prevailing temper of
the people.

_April 27._--Rhetors and some abolitionists of the small church--not
Wendell Phillips--still are satisfied with mistakes and disasters,
because _otherwise slavery would not have been destroyed_. If they
have a heart, it is a clump of ice, and their brains are common
jelly. With men at the head who would have had faith and a lofty
consciousness of their task, the rebellion and slavery could have
been both crushed in the year 1861, or any time in 1862. Any one but
an idiot ought to have seen at the start, that as the rebels fight
to maintain slavery, in striking slavery you strike at the rebels.
The blood spilt because of the narrow-mindedness of the leaders,
that blood will cry to heaven, whatever be the absolution granted by
the rhetors and by the small church.

_April 27._--Mr. Seward went on a visit to the army, dragging with
him some diplomats. The army was not to forget the existence of the
Secretary of State, this foremost Union-saviour, and the candidate
for the next Presidency. Others say that Seward ran away to dodge
the Peterhoff case.

_April 27._--How the politicians of the _Times_ and of the
_Chronicle_ lustily attack--NOW--McClellan. If I am well informed,
it was the editor of the _Chronicle_, himself a leading politician,
and influential in both Houses, who instigated Lovejoy, Member of
Congress, to move resolutions in favor of McClellan for the battle
at Williamsburgh, where McClellan did what he could to have his own
army destroyed.

_April 28._--Mr. Seward elaborated for the President a paper in the
Peterhoff case--and, _horribile dictu_, as I am told--even the
President found the argument, or whatever else it was, very, very
light. The President sent for the chief clerk to explain to him the
unintelligible document--and more darkness prevailed. Bravo, Mr.
Seward! your name and your place in the history of the times are
firmly nailed!

_April 28._--The time will come, and even I may yet witness it, when
these deep wounds struck by the rebellion will be healed; when even
the scars of blows dealt to the people by such Lincolns, Sewards,
McClellans, Hallecks, the other _minor gens_, will be invisible--and
this great people, steeled by events, will be more powerful than it
ever was. Then the Monroe doctrine will be applied in all its
sternness and rigor, and from pole to pole