Stanton excepted, I again think of the dictum of Professor Steffens, and every day believe it more.
Mr. Blair worse and worse; is more hot in support of McClellan, more determined to upset Stanton, and I heard him demand the return of a poor fugitive slave woman to some of Blair's Maryland friends.
Every day I am confirmed in my creed that whoever had slavery for mammy is never serious in the effort to destroy it. Whatever such men as Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Blair will do against slavery, will never be radical by their own choice or conviction, but will be done reluctantly, and when under the unavoidable pressure of events.
Mr. Seward restive and bitter against all who criticise. Mr. Seward assumes that everybody does his best, and ought therefore to be applauded. But Mr. Seward forgets the proverb about hell being paved with good intentions. In this terrible emergency the people want men who really do the best, and not those who only try and intend to do it.
McClellan had the full sway so long—appointed so many, perhaps more than sixty, brigadier generals—that it is not astonishing when those appointees prefer rather not to see for themselves, but blindly "hurrah" for their creator.
Victories in the West, triumphantly establishing the superiority of our soldiers in open battle-fields, and the superiority of all generals who are distant from any contact with Washington, as Pope, Grant, Curtis, Mitchell, Sigel, and others. The brave navy,—this pure democratic element which assures the greatest results, and makes the less laudatory noise. The navy is admirable; the navy is the purest and most glorious child of the people.
The destruction of the rebellion saves the future generations of the Southern whites. Secession would for centuries have bred and raised only formidable social hyenas.
McClellan subsided in mud before Yorktown. Any other, only even half-way, military capacity commanding such forces would have made a lunch of Yorktown. But our troops are to dig, perhaps their graves, to the full satisfaction of Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Blair.
McClellan telegraphs for more men, and he has more already than he can put in action, and more than he has room for. He subsides in digging. The rebels will again fool him as they fooled him in Manassas. If McClellan could know anything, then he would know this—that nothing is so destructive to an army as sieges, as diggings, and camps, and nothing more disciplines and re-invigorates men, makes them true soldiers, than does marching and fighting. Poor Stanton! how he must suffer to be overruled by imbeciles and intriguers. McClellan telegraphing for reinforcements plainly shows how unmilitary are his brains. He and a great many here believe that the greater the mass of troops, the surer the victory. History mostly teaches the contrary; but speak to American wiseacres about history! He, McClellan, and others on his side, ignore the difficulty of handling or swinging an army of 100,000 men.
A good general, confident in his troops, will not hesitate to fight two to three. But McClellan feels at ease when he can, at the least, have two to one. In Manassas he had three to one, and conquered—wooden guns! We will see what he will conquer before Yorktown.