William Howard Russell’s Diary: News from the Far West.

September 16th.—It is most agreeable to be removed from all the circumstance without any of the pomp and glory of war. Although there is a tendency in the North, and, for aught I know, in the South, to consider the contest in the same light as one with a foreign enemy, the very battle-cries on both sides indicate a civil war. “The Union for ever”—”States rights “— and “Down with the Abolitionists,” cannot be considered national. McClellan takes no note of time even by its loss, which is all the more strange because he sets great store upon it in his report on the conduct of the war in the Crimea. However, he knows an army cannot be made in two months, and that the larger it is, the more time there is required to harmonize its components. The news from the Far West indicated a probability of some important operations taking place, although my first love—the army of the Potomac—must be returned to. Any way there was the great Western Prairie to be seen, and the people who have been pouring from their plains so many thousands upon the Southern States to assert the liberties of those coloured races whom they will not permit to cross their borders as freemen. Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Blair, and other Abolitionists, are actuated by similar sentiments, and seek to emancipate the slave, and remove from him the protection of his master, in order that they may drive him from the continent altogether, or force him to seek refuge in emigration.