idably make heaps of mistakes, which may endanger the cause, and
for which, at any rate, the people is terribly to pay. The loss in men
and material will be very considerable before the administration will
get on the right track. It is painful to think, nay, to be sure of it.
Then the European anti-Union politicians and diplomats will credit the
disasters to the inefficiency of self-government. The diplomats,
accustomed to the rapid, energetic action of a supreme or of a
centralized power, laugh at the trepidation of ours. But the fault is
not in the principle of self-government, but in the accident which
brought to the helm such an amount of inexperience. Monarchy with a
feeble head is even in a worse predicament. Louis XV., the Spanish and
Neapolitan Bourbons, Gustavus IV., &c., are thereof the historical
evidences.

May the shock of events bring out new lights from the people! One day
the administration is to take the initiative, that is, the offensive,
then it recedes from it. No one understands the organization and
handling of such large bodies. They are to make their apprenticeship,
if only it may not to be too dearly paid. But they cannot escape the
action of that so positive law in nature, in history, and, above all,
absolute in war.

Wrote to Charles Sumner, suggesting that the ice magnates send here
from Boston ice for hospitals.

The war now waged against the free States is one made by the most
hideous _sauvagerie_ against a most perfectioned and progressive
civilization. History records not a similar event. It is a hideous
phenomenon, disgracing our race, and it is so, look on it from
whatever side you will.

A new man from the people, like Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts,
acts promptly, decisively; feels and speaks ardently, and not as the
rhetors. Andrew is the incarnation of the Massachusetts, nay, of the
genuine American people. I must become acquainted with Andrew.
Thousands of others like Andrew exist in all the States. Can anybody
be a more noble incarnation of the American people than J. S.
Wadsworth? I become acquainted with numerous men whom I honor as the
true American men. So Boutwell, of Massachusetts, Curtis Noyes,
Senator Wade, Trumbull, Walcott, from Ohio, Senator King, Chandler,
and many, many true patriots. Senator Wilson, my old friend, is up to
the mark; a man of the people, but too mercurial.

Captain or Major Lyon in St. Louis, the first initiator or revelator
of what is the ab