truly great people!
Far, very far beyond my poor powers of expression are the great love
and veneration with which ever and always I look upon you. But allow
me, pray allow me to use the frank familiarity of a true friend, so
far as just plainly to tell you, that even I, your sincere friend,
should love you none the less, and certainly should hold you in all
the greater reverence, were you not quite so ultra-favorable in
judgment of your civil and military rulers and pastors and masters
and nincompoops generally!

Further back in this diary, I termed Mr. Secretary Chase a _passive
patriot_. _Peccavi._ And here let me write down my recantation!
Chase exerted himself for the retaining of Seward in the cabinet,
and it was by Chase alone that the efforts of the patriots to expel
Seward, were baffled. And yet, from the first day of the official
assemblage of this cabinet down to the day of the meeting of the
present session of Congress, Chase was more vigorously vicious than
any other living man in daily, hourly, _all the time_, denunciation
of Seward,--of course, behind Seward's back! Several insoluble
problems, no doubt, there are; but there is not one thing, physical
or not physical, which so completely defies any comprehension and
baffles my most persistent inquiry, as just this.

How, unless Chase has drank of the waters of Lethe, how can he
possibly look, now, in the face of, for instance, Fessenden of
Maine, to whom he has said so many bitter things against the now
belauded "Secretary Seward!" Bah! Chase most certainly must have a
forty-or-fifty-diplomatist power of commanding--literally and not
slangishly be it spoken!--his _cheek_, if, without burning blushes
he can look in the face of Fessenden, Sumner or any honest man and
say,--"I admire and I support Secretary Seward!" God! If all who,
during the last two years, have come into contact with Chase, would
but come forward and speak out! In that case, thousands would stand
forth, a "cloud of witnesses," to confirm this statement. Chase!
Faugh! I hereby brand him, and leave him to the bitter judgment of
all men who can conscientiously claim to be even _half honest_.

In merest and barest justice to Seward, greatly as I disapprove of
his general course, I must here note the fact that he is by no means
addicted to evil speaking about any one. Not that this reticence
proceeds from scrupulous feeling or a proud stern spirit. Seward,
however, never speaks evil of any