Intervention — The cursed fields of the Chickahominy — Titanic fightings, but no generalship — McClellan the first to reach James river — The Orleans leave — July 4th, the gloomiest since the birth of the republic — Not reinforcements, but brains, wanted; and brains not transferable! — The people run to the rescue — Rebel tactics — Lincoln does not sacrifice Stanton — McClellan not the greatest culprit — Stanton a true statesman — The President goes to James river — The Union as it was, a throttling nightmare! — A man needed! — Confiscation bill signed — Congress adjourned — Mr. Dicey — Halleck, the American Carnot — Lincoln tries to neutralize the confiscation bill — Guerillas spread like locusts, [233]
AUGUST, 1862.
Emancipation — The President's hand falls back — Weed sent for — Gen. Wadsworth — The new levies — The Africo-Americans not called for — Let every Northern man be shot rather! — End of the Peninsula campaign — Fifty or sixty thousand dead — Who is responsible? — The army saved — Lincoln and McClellan — The President and the Africo-Americans — An Eden in Chiriqui — Greeley — The old lion begins to awake — Mr. Lincoln tells stories — The rebels take the offensive — European opinion — McClellan's army landed — Roebuck — Halleck — Butler's mistakes — Hunter recalled — Terrible fighting at Manassas — Pope cuts his way through — Reinforcements slow incoming — McClellan reduced in command, [245]
SEPTEMBER, 1862.
Consummatum est! — Will the outraged people avenge itself? — McClellan satisfies the President — After a year! — The truth will be throttled — Public opinion in Europe begins to abandon us — The country marching to its tomb — Hooker, Kearney, Heintzelman, Sigel, brave and true men — Supremacy of mind over matter — Stanton the last Roman — Inauguration of the pretorian regime — Pope accuses three generals — Investigation prevented by McClellan — McDowell sacrificed — The country inundated with lies — The demoralized army declares for McClellan — The pretorians will soon finish with liberty — Wilkes sent to the West Indian waters — Russia — Mediation — Invasion of Maryland — Strange story about Stanton — Richmond never invested — McClellan in search of the enemy — Thirty miles in six days — The telegrams — Wadsworth — Capitulation of Harper's Ferry — Five days' fighting — Brave Hooker wounded — No results — No reports from McClellan — Tactics of the Maryland campaign — Nobody hurt in the staff — Charmed lives — Wadsworth, Judge Conway, Wade, Boutwell, Andrew — This most intelligent people become the laughing-stock of the world! — The proclamation of emancipation — Seward to the Paisley Association — Future complications — If Hooker had not been wounded! — The military situation — Sigel persecuted by West Point — Three cheers for the carriage and six! — How the great captain was to catch the rebel army — Interview with the Chicago deputation — Winter quarters — The conspiracy against Sigel — Numbers of the rebel army — Letters of marque, [258]
OCTOBER, 1862.
Costly infatuation — The do-nothing strategy — Cavalry on lame horses — Bayonet charges — Antietam — Effect of the Proclamation — Disasters in the West — The Abolitionists not originally hostile to McClellan — Helplessness in the War Department — Devotedness of the people — McClellan and the proclamation — Wilkes — Colonel Key — Routine engineers — Rebel raid into Pennsylvania — Stanton's sincerity — Oh, unfighting strategians — The administration a success — De gustibus — Stuart's raid — West Point — St. Domingo — The President's letter to McClellan — Broad church — The elections — The Republican party gone — The remedy at the polls — McClellan wants to be relieved — Mediation — Compromise — The rhetors — The optimists — The foreigners — Scott and Buchanan — Gladstone — Foreign opinion and action — Both the extremes to be put down — Spain — Fremont's campaign against Jackson — Seward's circular — General Scott's gift — "Oh, could I go to a camp!" — McClellan crosses the Potomac — Prays for rain — Fevers decimate the regiments — Martindale and Fitz John Porter — The political balance to be preserved — New regiments — O poor country! [288]
NOVEMBER, 1862.
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, [311]