the Cabinet, as
is Stanton.

The people have decided not, _propter vitam vivendi perdere causas_;
but the various formulas, the schemers, the grave-diggers, and the
aspirants for the White House, think differently.

The almost daily changes made by Mr. Lincoln in the command of the
forces are the best evidences of his good-intentioned--debility.

Harmony belongs to the primordial laws of nature; it is the same for
human societies. But here no harmony exists between the purest, the
noblest, and the most patriotic portion of the people, and the
official exponent of the people's will, and of its higher and purer
aspirations. So here all jars dissonantly; all is confusion, because
avenged must be every violation of nature's law.

I cannot believe that at this deadly crisis the salvation can come
from Washington. The best man here has not his free action. And the
rest of them are the country's curse. Mr. Lincoln, with McClellan,
Seward, Blair, Halleck, and scores of such, are as able to cope with
this crisis as to stop the revolution of our planet.

_Up to this day_, from among those foremost, the only man whose hands
remain unstained with the country's, his mother's, and his brethren's
blood, the last Roman, is Stanton.

_September 7._--During last night troops marched to meet the enemy,
saluting with deafening shouts and cheers the residence of McClellan;
spit-lickers as a Kennedy, giving the sign by waving his hat. Such
shouts would cheer up the mind but for the fact that they were mostly
raised for the victory over those who demanded an investigation of the
causes of _slowness_ and insubordination,--those exclusive causes of
the defeat of Pope's army. Those shouts were thrown out as defiance to
justice, to truth, and to law. Those shouts marked the inauguration of
the _pretorian regime_. General McClellan and other generals have
forced the President to _postpone_ the investigation into the conduct
of the _slow_ and of the insubordinate generals, all three special
favorites of McClellan. General McClellan appeared before the soldiers
surrounded by his _old identical staff_, by a tross of flatterers,
and, Oh heavens! in the cortege Senator Wilson! Oh, _sancta_ not
_simplicitas_, but ---- Oh, clear-sighted Republican!

Subsequently, I learned that Senator Wilson was present for a moment,
and only by a pure accident, at that ovation.

_Laeszt Dich dem Teufel bey'm Haare packen, so hat Er Dich bey'm
Kopfe_, says Le