Empty rhetoric -- The future dark and terrible -- Wadsworth defeated -- The official bunglers blast everything they touch -- Great and holy day! McClellan gone overboard! -- The planters -- Burnside -- McClellan nominated for President -- Awful events approaching -- Dictatorship dawns on the horizon -- The catastrophe.
Inauguration day -- The message -- Scott watching at the door of the Union -- The Cabinet born -- The Seward and Chase struggle -- The New York radicals triumph -- The treason spreads -- The Cabinet pays old party debts -- The diplomats confounded -- Poor Senators! -- Sumner is like a hare tracked by hounds -- Chase in favor of recognizing the revolted States -- Blunted axes -- Blair demands action, brave fellow! -- The slave-drivers -- The month of March closes -- No foresight! no foresight!
For the first time in my life I assisted at the simplest and grandest spectacle--the inauguration of a President. Lincoln's message good, according to circumstances, but not conclusive; it is not positive; it discusses questions, but avoids to assert. May his mind not be altogether of the same kind. Events will want and demand more positiveness and action than the message contains assertions. The immense majority around me seems to be satisfied. Well, well; I wait, and prefer to judge and to admire when actions will speak.
I am sure that a great drama will be played, equal to any one known in history, and that the insurrection of the slave-drivers will not end in smoke. So I now decide to keep a diary in my own way. I scarcely know any of those men who are considered as leaders; the more interesting to observe them, to analyze their mettle, their actions. This insurrection may turn very complicated; if so, it must generate more than one revolutionary manifestation. What will be its march--what stages? Curious; perhaps it may turn out more interesting than anything since that great renovation of humanity by the great French Revolution.
The old, brave warrior, Scott, watched at the door of the Union; his shadow made the infamous rats tremble and crawl off, and so Scott transmitted to Lincoln what was and could be saved during the treachery of Buchanan.
By the most propitious accident, I assisted at the throes among which Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet was born. They were very painful, but of the highest interest for me, and I suppose for others. I participated some little therein.