Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 — Reading Companion

A Pole in Washington: The Diarist's Perspective

Gurowski brings a European radical's sensibility to the American crisis. He had spent a life "in the tempests and among the breakers of our times," and his diary bristles with references to Napoleon, Souvoroff, and De Maistre. He compares McClellan unfavorably to Souvoroff, who "always at once stormed fortresses" rather than besieging them, and he dismisses McClellan's staff for studying "international law, strategy, tactics" from French and German writers as a sign of "sham-knowledge." Gurowski's own loyalties are clear: he admires Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, whom he credits with ordering the Western victories, and he despises the "rats" in the cabinet who undermine Stanton. His Polish background and exile experience give him a distinctive vantage point, one that sees the Civil War as a struggle between true civilization and the "caricatures and monsters" of slaveholding society.

The War of Words: Gurowski's Targets

Gurowski's diary is a catalogue of contempt. He calls McClellan a "turtle" who "will stick in the marshes" and accuses him of squandering "the best blood, the best men, the best generation." He mocks the "great strategian" and his aids who translate military texts, suggesting that such "hastily scraped and undigested sham-knowledge" only confuses McClellan's "not Napoleonic brains." Seward is dismissed as "Alberoni-Seward," a reference to the Italian cardinal and diplomat, and the cabinet is described as a nest of "intriguers and imbeciles." Even Lincoln is not spared: Gurowski charges that the president, along with Seward and Blair, will be "taken to a terrible account" by Congress and history. The diary's language is often violent—"the crime in full blast!"—and its judgments are absolute, leaving little room for nuance.

Race and Emancipation: A Radical Voice

Gurowski's views on race and slavery are among the most striking features of the diary. He refers to enslaved people as "the Africo-Americans" and declares that the more he sees of "this doomed people," the more convinced he becomes of "their intrinsic superiority over all their white revilers." He predicts that, once emancipated, they will become "quiet, orderly, laborious, intelligent, and free cultivators," while slaveholders—both rebel and loyal—are "shams as citizens" and "monsters of civilization." This language is notably more radical than that of many Northern contemporaries, and it aligns Gurowski with the abolitionist fringe. He also criticizes men like Davis and Wickliffe who "roar against the African race," and he praises Fremont's emancipation efforts. The diary thus offers a window into the fierce debates over race and policy that raged within the Union.

Readers should approach this diary as a primary source of opinion, not a balanced history. Gurowski's entries are dated but often skip days or weeks, and his judgments are shaped by his own political exile and radicalism. The diary is best read alongside other Civil War accounts to gauge its biases. Its value lies in the raw, unfiltered voice it captures—a voice that saw the war as a moral crusade and was furious at those who, in his view, conducted it with timidity and incompetence.

That Polish count’s diary, with its bristling impatience for McClellan and grudging respect for Stanton, always felt like sitting beside a man who saw the war’s machinery rather than its parade. It pairs quietly with Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Volume 1 — A Reader’s Guide, whose plainspoken pages share that same unromantic honesty—two voices, different vantage points, nodding at the same hard truth.