American nepotism puts to shame the one practised in Europe. All around here they keep offices in pairs, father and son. So McClellan has a father in-law as chief of the staff, a brother as aid, and then various relations, clerks, etc., etc., and the same in some other branches of the administration.
The Merrimac affair. Terrible evidence how active and daring are the rebels, and we sleepy, slow, and self-satisfied. By applying the formula of induction from effect to cause, the disaster occasioned by the Merrimac, and any further havoc to be made by this iron vessel,—all this is to be credited to McClellan.
If Norfolk had been taken months ago, then the rebels could not have constructed the Merrimac. Norfolk could have been easily taken any day during the last six months, but for strategy and the maturing of great plans! These are the sacramental words more current now than ever. Oh good-natured American people! how little is necessary to humbug thee!
Oh shame! oh malediction! The rebels left Centreville,—which turns out to be scarcely a breastwork, with wooden guns,—and they slipped off from Manassas.
When McClellan got the news of the evacuation, he gravely considered where to lean his right or left flanks, and after the consideration, two days after the enemy wholly completed the evacuation, McClellan moves at the head of 80,000 men—to storm the wooden guns of Centreville. Two hours after the news of the evacuation reached the headquarters, Gen. Wadsworth asked permission to follow with his brigade, during the night, the retreating enemy. But it was not strategy, not a matured plan. If Gen. Wadsworth had been in command of the army, not one of the rats from Manassas would have escaped. The reasons are, that Gen. Wadsworth has a quick, clear, and wide-encompassing conception of events and things, a clear insight, and many other inborn qualities of mind and intellect.
The Congress has a large number of very respectable capacities, and altogether sufficient for the emergencies, and the Congress would do more good but for the impediments thrown in its way by the double-dealing policy prevailing in Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet and administration. The majority in Congress represent well the spirit of self-government. It is a pity that Congress cannot crush or purify the administration.
All that passes here is maddening, and I am very grateful to my father and mother for having endowed me with a frame which resists the blows.
The pursuit of the enemy abandoned, the basis of operations changed. The rats had the best of Stanton. Utinam sim falsus propheta, but if Stanton's influence is no more all-powerful, then there is an end to the short period of successes. Mr. Lincoln's council wanted to be animated by a pure and powerful spirit. Stanton was the man, but he is not a match for impure intriguers. Also McClellan goes to Fortress Monroe, to Yorktown, to the rivers. This plan reveals an utter military imbecility, and its plausibility can only catch ——.
1st. Common sense shows that the rebels ought to be cut off from their resources, that is, from railroads, and from communication with the revolted States in the interior, and to be precipitated into the ocean. To accomplish it our troops ought to have marched by land to Richmond, and pushed the enemy towards the ocean. Now McClellan pushes the rebels from the extremity towards the centre, towards the focus of their basis,—exactly what they want.
I am sure that McClellan is allured to this strategy by the success of the gunboats on the Mississippi. He wishes that the gunboats may take Richmond, and he have the credit of it.