The correspondence of Northern papers from
Washington represents a division in the councils of the enemy.
On the surface there appears entire unanimity for the prosecution of the war on the largest scale; but under the surface a conflict is said to be waging of an irrepressible nature.
The contending factions are said to be headed respectively by
Seward and
Greeley;
Seward being sick of the wars and appalled at the results locming in the perspective;
Greeley being full of the nigger and advocating its prosecution, at all cents, unto the liberation of the slaves.
Though neither of these philosophers can be said to be wise in his generation, each of them has a sort of wisdom in his way.
Greeley is for giving the war an object which will attract to it the sympathics of mankind.
Waged for the purpose avowed by
Lincoln in his Message, that is to say, merely for upholding and preserving the
Federal Government, it is no more nor less than a war of subjugation; and in wars of this sort the sympathics of mankind are always enlisted in behalf of those sought to be crushed.
Greeley sees this evident tendency of the public feeling in behalf of the
South, and wishes to correct it by his invariable expedient of the nigger.
Without Uncle Tom, the
Northern end of the scale of justice must kick the beam; and
Greeley is for throwing in the tremendous avoirdupois of negro emancipation.
There is much method in the madness of this truculent fanatic.
He knows, too, that the war cannot be made popular with recruits without the allurements of ‘"booty and beauty,"’ and he knows that
freeing the slave will excuse and cover a multitude of atrocities in the eye of the easily-gulled world.
He would treat the
Southern slaveholder as a monster in human shape; he would hold him up to the world as deserving any fate that the most barbarous soldiery could inflict upon him; and he would thus secure a license for those atrocities by the permission of which he would popularize enlistments at the
North.
Greeley, in short, is all fanaticism with only the cunning needful to effectuate his political aims.
Seward, on the contrary, is all cunning without any fanaticism.
He cares no more for the negro than for the horse or the mule, except so far as it may serve his turn as a politician.
He looks at this war as a politician; and having a strong mind and clear perception, he sees nothing but ruin before him. He has sagacity enough to know that the
South cannot be subjugated; and that the war he is waging must sooner or later prove a failure.
He well understands what fate must then overtake the politicians who had a part in it. Defeat, disgrace, heavy taxes, enormous debt, commercial ruin, national disappointment and remorse — these will be millstones that will sink their authors into the depths of perdition, below the reach of the hand of resurrection.
In the whole course of the affair, he has taken care of his record as a friend and advocate of peace.
With his friends
Weed he was earliest in the field for conciliation.
It was with him that the Submissionists of the Virginia Convention held their secret negotiations, while they ought to have been placing the
State in a condition of defence.
He is known to have been in favor of withdrawing the troops from
Fort Sumter.
But for the pressure of abolition opinion at the
North, he would have averted war and consented to peaceful secession, if he could not have compromised the difficulties that troubled the country.
Trusting for a moment to the popularity of the war, he embarked in it. He was the only man in
America who could have prevented it; but was too cowardly and selfish to lift his arm to stay it. The pressure of opinion is still too strong to admit of conciliatory measures.
He must go on with the war; but he has taken care to throw out a demand for troops and funds, which is calculated greatly to depress that ardor of the populace which has thrust him unwillingly into so much trouble.
His call for four hundred thousand men and four hundred millions of dollars, must have been intended for this sort of effect at the
North.
It is certainly not too large a demand for the purpose to be subserved.
But in every point of view was it injudicious for a sincere friend of the war to make it. It will do the cause of the south more good than a battle, and the cause at the
North more harm than many defeats.
Stingy of both, the
Yankee is much less chary of his blood than of his dollars.
He will risk life and souled for gain.
To tell him that this war is to cost him four hundred millions of dollars is to pronounce anathema, maranatha upon it and all its authors.
Seward was against it and
Greeley for it; and
Seward has struck
Greeley a very hard blow in the Message.
It is noteworthy that
Secretary Chase, in his Report to Congress, pays no attention to the huge demand of the Message for men and money.
Chase is known to have been an original war man, and he palpably snubs the demand of the Message.
The silence of the fiscal officer of the
Cabinet on so important a recommendation, is significant.
It shows that
Chase and
Seward are not in accord, and that
Lincoln is too much of an imbecile to exact for his own recommendations the combined support of his Cabinet.
Chase would seem to be on the side of
Greeley and the bloody
Blairs.
War usually unites the contending factions of a party.
This war of
Lincoln seems to have failed of this result.
Before the curtains they are all furiously zealous for the war; behind the curtains they have daggers for each other.
