ballast to a neutral port to load there, afterwards to run the
blockade, Coffey proves it to be treason and criminality. The
document is clear, logical, precise and not wordy: not in the style
of the State Department logomachy. Why, O why cannot such younger
men be at the head! Emancipation would have been carried out,
slavery destroyed, the Union restored, rebels crushed, and the
French murderers and imperial lackeys would cut very respectful
capers to please a great people.

_August 8: L. B._--I shudder as I pass in review what little is done
at such an enormous expenditure of human limbs and of human life,
not to speak of squandered time, labor and money.

It seems that the prevailing rule is to reach the smallest results
at the greatest possible cost. General Scott, Seward and Lincoln
early laid down that rule. McClellan, that quintessence of all
unsoldierlike capacities, faithfully continued what was already
inaugurated. Halleck almost perfected it; and so it became a chronic
disease of the leading spirits in the Administration, Stanton and
Welles excepted. That sacrilegious, murderous method and rule, at
times was forcibly violated by Grant, by Rosecrans, by Banks, by the
glorious Farragut, by Admiral Porter. The would-be statesmen either
see nothing or do not wish to see what ill-disposed minds could
consider to be an almost premeditated slaughter.

I know too well that every initiation is with sacrifice or blood. It
is a law of progress, absolute, not made by man, but cut out for him
by fate or providence. In a stream of his mother's life-blood man
enters this world; by the blood of the Redeemer the Christian
becomes initiated to another, called a better world. Sacrifice and
blood prevail throughout the eons of the initiation of human
societies and religions. Through sacrifice and blood the Reformation
became a redeemer. Great results are reached at great cost. I am an
atom in a generation which, to assert her deep, earnest
convictions, never caved in before blood and sacrifice; a generation
that has labored and still labors, spreads seed and begins to
harvest; a generation which regrets nothing, and cheerfully takes
the responsibility of its actions. And with all this, the men of
convictions and of undaunted revolutionary courage in Europe,
bestowed and bestow more care upon any unnecessary sacrifice of
human life than I witness here. By heavens! Marat, Saint Just,
Robespierre, could be considered lambs whe