Mr. Seward promenading the President from regiment to regiment, from camp to camp, or rather showing up the President and himself. Do they believe they can awake enthusiasm for their persons? The troops could be better occupied than to serve for the aim of a promenade for these two distinguished personalities.
Gen. Scott refuses the formation of volunteer artillery and of new cavalry regiments, and the active army, more than 20,000 men, has a very insufficient number of batteries, and between 600 and 800 cavalry. Lincoln blindly follows his boss. Seward, of course, sustains Scott, and confuses Lincoln. Lincoln, Scott, Seward and Cameron oppose offers pouring from the country. To a Mr. M----, from the State of New York, who demanded permission to form a regiment of cavalry, Mr. Lincoln angrily answered, that (patriotic) offers give more "trouble to him and the administration than do the rebels."
The debates of the English Parliament raise the ire of the people, nay, exasperate even old fogyish Anglo-manes.
Persons very familiar with the domestic relations of Gen. Scott assure me that the vacillations of the old man, and his dread of a serious warfare, result from the all-powerful influence on him of one of his daughters, a rabid secessionist. The old man ought to be among relics in the Patent office, or sent into a nursery.
The published correspondence between Lord Lyons and Lord Russell concerning the blockade furnishes curious revelations.
When the blockade was to be declared, Mr. Seward seems to have been a thorough novice in the whole matter, and in an official interview with Lord Lyons, Mr. Seward was assisted by his chief clerk, who was therefore the quintessence of the wisdom of the foreign affairs, a man not even mastering the red-tape traditions of the department, without any genuine instruction, without ideas. For this chief clerk, all that he knew of a blockade was that it was in use during the Mexican war, that it almost yearly occurred in South American waters, and every tyro knows there exists such a thing as a blockade. But that was all that this chief clerk knew. Lord Lyons asked for some special precedents or former acts of the American government. The chief, and his support, the chief clerk, ignored the existence of any. Lord Lyons went home and sent to the department American precedents and authorities. No Minister of Foreign Affairs in Europe, together with his chief clerk, could ever be caught in such a _flagrante delicto_ of ignorance. This chief clerk made Mr. Seward make _un pas de clerc_, and this at the start. As Lord Lyons took a great interest in the solution of the question of blockade, and as the chief clerk was the _oraculum_ in this question, these combined facts may give some clue to the anonymous advice sent to Lord Lyons, and mentioned in the month of April.