the great man! A time must come when all these great men
will be held to a terrible account, will shed tears of blood, and
their names will be scorned by coming generations, and the track to
the White House may become also the track to the Tarpeian rock.

_June 5._--I often meet Mr. Lincoln in the streets. Poor man! He
looks exhausted, care-worn, spiritless, extinct. I pity him! Mr.
Lincoln's looks are those of a man whose nights are sleepless, and
whose days are comfortless. That is the price for a greatness to
which he is not equal. Yet Mr. Lincoln, they say, wishes to be
re-elected!

_June 5._--Mr. Seward makes a speech to the volunteers of Auburn.
All the same logomachy, all the same cold patriotism, all the same
_I_, and all the same squint towards the next presidential election.

_June 6._--Lincoln cannot realize to what extent Seward is and has
been his evil spirit. Even the nearest in blood and heart to Lincoln
know it, feel it, are awe-struck by it, warn him, and he is
insensible.

_June 7._--How I sympathize with Stanton, and admire his
rude--others call it coarse--contempt of all that is said about him.
That impure, lying, McClellan-Copperhead motley crew, accuse Stanton
of all the numberless criminal mistakes committed in the conduct of
the war--committed by the generals, etc. Stanton never interferes
with Mr. Lincoln nor with Halleck in matters that exclusively relate
to pure warfare, as where and how to march the respective armies,
how and in what way to attack the enemy, etc.

Reliable patriots coincide with me, that Stanton as clearly sees
every thing to-day, as he saw it when entering on his thorny duty. I
only wonder that he holds out in such an atmosphere. Stanton's
energy is indomitable. Blair's party says that "Stanton goes off at
half-cock." It is not true; but even if true, better to go off at
half-cock than not at all. Many say that Stanton ought to retire, if
he is hampered by others in the exercise of his duties. But if he
were to retire, he could not at this moment reveal to the people the
causes of such a step, and by remaining at his post, Stanton
prevents still greater disasters and disgraces. He never asks any of
his friends to say or to write a word in his defence, or rather to
dispel the lies with which McClellanites and copperheads poison the
atmosphere all around them.

_June 8._--Alexandria fortified, rifle-pits dug, etc. The third
year of the war is the third terror upon Wash