Sunday, October 9, 2011

October 9th.—A cold, gloomy day. I am laid up with the fever and ague, which visit the banks of the Potomac in autumn. It annoyed me the more because General McClellan is making a reconnaissance to-day towards Lewinsville, with 10,000 men. A gentleman from the War Department visited me to-day, and gave me scanty hopes of procuring any assistance from the authorities in taking the field. Civility costs nothing, and certainly if it did United States officials would require high salaries, but they often content themselves with fair words.

There are some things about our neighbours which we may never hope to understand. To-day, for instance, a respectable person, high in office, having been good enough to invite me to his house, added, “You shall see Mrs. A., sir. She is a very pretty and agreeable young lady, and will prove nice society for you,” meaning his wife.

Mr. N. P. Willis was good enough to call on me, and in the course of conversation said, “I hear McClellan tells you everything. When you went away West I was very near going after you, as I suspected you heard something.” Mr. Willis could have had no grounds for this remark, for very certainly it has no foundation in fact. Truth to tell, General McClellan seemed, the last time I saw him, a little alarmed by a paragraph in a New York paper, from the Washington correspondent, in which it was invidiously stated, “General McClellan, attended by Mr. Russell, correspondent of the London Times, visited the camps to-day. All passes to civilians and others were revoked.” There was not the smallest ground for the statement on the day in question, but I am resolved not to contradict anything which is said about me, but the General could not well do so; and one of the favourite devices of the Washington correspondent to fill up his columns, is to write something about me, to state I have been refused passes, or have got them, or whatever else he likes to say.

Calling on the General the other night at his usual time of return, I was told by the orderly, who was closing the door, “The General’s gone to bed tired, and can see no one. He sent the same message to the President, who came inquiring after him ten minutes ago.”

This poor President! He is to be pitied; surrounded by such scenes, and trying with all his might to understand strategy, naval warfare, big guns, the movements of troops, military maps, reconnaissances, occupations, interior and exterior lines, and all the technical details of the art of slaying. He runs from one house to another, armed with plans, papers, reports, recommendations, sometimes good humoured, never angry, occasionally dejected, and always a little fussy. The other night, as I was sitting in the parlour at headquarters, with an English friend who had come to see his old acquaintance the General, walked in a tall man with a navvy’s cap, and an ill-made shooting suit, from the pockets of which protruded paper and bundles. “Well,” said he to Brigadier Van Vliet, who rose to receive him, “is George in?”

“Yes, sir. He’s come back, but is lying down, very much fatigued. I’ll send up, sir, and inform him you wish to see him.”

“Oh, no; I can wait. I think I’ll take supper with him. Well, and what are you now,—I forget your name—are you a major, or a colonel, or a general?” “Whatever you like to make me, sir.”

Seeing that General McClellan would be occupied, I walked out with my friend, who asked me when I got into the street why I stood up when that tall fellow came into the room. “Because it was the President.” “The President of what?” “Of the United States.” “Oh! come, now you’re humbugging me. Let me have another look at him.” He came back more incredulous than ever, but when I assured him I was quite serious, he exclaimed, “I give up the United States after this.”

But for all that, there have been many more courtly presidents who, in a similar crisis, would have displayed less capacity, honesty, and plain dealing than Abraham Lincoln.