THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
who were foremost among the steadfast friends of the Union, gave peculiar weight to his advice. In surrendering the captured Confederate emissaries, the administration had to face a popular clamor of unusual fierceness. Nobody did, nobody could do as much as Sumner to calm the waves of popular excitement. He had the reputation of a radical, an extremist, a man whose conscience of right and honor would stand unbending against all the powers of the world. When such a man stepped forth to proclaim that, according to his sense of right and justice, the administration had done that which it was in duty bound to do, every patriot, every friend of liberty, even the extremest, might see reason to be satisfied. This Sumner did on the floor of the Senate, so convincingly, so proudly, that the last adverse voices were silenced, and the portentous “Trent” affair passed peaceably over, not only without producing a war with England, but also without affecting the relations between the administration and the people.
But the danger of foreign interference was by no means over, for Louis Napoleon, having embarked in his hazardous Mexican enterprise, left no means untried to inveigle England into a policy helpful to the rebellion. Nor was our home situation at all reassuring. We had indeed won considerable advantages on the Western field of military operations. The capture of Forts Henry and Donelson by General Grant had opened to our forces the waterways into the heart of Tennessee, and created much exultation among our people. The political huckstering and administrative incapacity of Simon Cameron in the War Department had been succeeded by the fiery energy of Stanton. But the Army of the Potomac lay inactive in front of Washington, like an inert mass, under command of General McClellan, the luster of whose early laurels won by his successes in West Virginia was sad warning in the
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