July 8, 1862

July 8, 1862:  On this date, after dusk, Pres. Lincoln arrives by steamer at Harrison’s Landing, Virginia, to confer with Gen. McClellan on the status and condition of the Army of the Potomac.  McClellan takes this opportunity to give Lincoln his “strong and frank letter” written the day before, wherein the General points out where Lincoln has gone wrong, and how the nation might be saved only by following a course of preserving the Union, conciliating the South, and ignoring the slave question.  The President reads the letter on the spot, thanks McClellan for his thoughts, and never mentions it to him again.

---The New York Times, in opposition to the new Income Tax bill, points out a number of ills that will emerge as a result of this new bureaucracy;

One of the worst provisions of the Tax bill recently passed by Congress is that under which an army of office-holders is to be appointed. Our country has heretofore been cursed with thousands of persons whose main business has been to seek place under the Government, hoping to obtain a livelihood thus, rather than by engaging in regular and legitimate occupations. . . . This evil, it appears, will be largely increased by the passage of the Tax bill, which requires a large additional force of Government officials to be appointed. . . . The injury inflicted on the country by withdrawing competent men from other occupations to fill these places, is not the only one. The people will be heavily taxed to support them, and to pay them for collecting the money due the Government. . . . It is expected that the revenue derived from internal taxes will amount to $110,000,000. The cost of collecting this sum will therefore be, if our estimate be a correct one, about three and one-half per cent of the amount collected. This, though a much smaller proportion than many expect, will amount to a large sum, as the figures above demonstrate.

So we see that some things have not changed with the US Government---indeed, have gotten only worse.

---Mary Boykin Chestnut, of South Carolina, writes in her diary of the tenor of “table-talk’ among her acquaintances:

Table-talk to-day: This war was undertaken by us to shake off the yoke of foreign invaders. So we consider our cause righteous. The Yankees, since the war has begun, have discovered it is to free the slaves that they are fighting. So their cause is noble. They also expect to make the war pay. Yankees do not undertake anything that does not pay. They think we belong to them. We have been good milk cows—milked by the tariff, or skimmed. We let them have all of our hard earnings. We bear the ban of slavery; they get the money. Cotton pays everybody who handles it, sells it, manufactures it, but rarely pays the man who  grows it. Second hand the Yankees received the wages of slavery. They grew rich. We grew poor. The receiver is as bad as the thief. That applies to us, too, for we received the savages they stole from Africa and brought to us in their slave-ships. As with the Egyptians, so it shall be with us: if they let us go, it must be across a Red Sea—but one made red by blood.

---On this date, Gen. Benjamin Butler in New Orleans authorizes the raising of Louisiana troops into regiments to serve in the Union army, provided the recruits takes a loyalty oath.