The New York Times attacks Capt. Dahlgren, of the Navy Yard. It is in the nature of the "little villain" to bespatter men of such devotion, patriotism, and eminent capacity as is Captain Dahlgren.
Thurlow Weed calls the Tribune "infernal," because it wishes a serious war, and thus prevents the raising of a Union party in the South, so flippantly looked for by him and Mr. Seward, his pupil. I see the time coming when all these gentlemen of the concessions, of the not-hurting policy,—when all these conservative seekers for the Union party will try, Pilatus-like, to wash their hands of the innocent blood; but you shall try, and not succeed, to whitewash your stained hands; you have less excuses on your side than had the Roman proconsul on his side.
When Mr. Mercier was in Richmond, some of the rebel leaders and generals told him that they believed not their senses on learning that McClellan was going to Yorktown; that he never could have selected a better place for them, and that they were sure of his destruction on the Peninsula.
Perhaps McClellan wished to try his hand and rehearse the siege of Sebastopol.
If McClellan's ignorance of military history were not so well established, he would know that since Archimedes, down to Todleben, more genius was displayed in the defence than in the attack of any place. The making of approaches, parallels, etc., is an affair of engineering school routine. Napoleon took Toulon rather as an artillerist, who, having, calculated the reach of projectiles, put his battery on a spot wherefrom he shelled Toulon. Napoleon took Mantua by destroying the Austrian army which hastened to the relief of the fortress. But the great American strategian knows better, and satisfies (as said above) the rebels.
The New York Herald, the New York Times, and other staunch supporters of McClellan, again and again trumpet that the rebels fear McClellan, that they consider him to be the ablest general opposed to them. The rebels are smart, and so is their ally, the New York Herald. As for the Times, it is only a flunkeying "little villain."
McDowell, Banks, Fremont have about 70,000 men; the last two are nearly at the head of the Shenandoah valley; they could unite with McDowell, and march and take Richmond. They beg to be ordered to do it, and so wishes Stanton; but, fatally befogged by McClellan, by McClellan's clique in the councils, or by strategians, Lincoln emphatically forbids any junction, any movement; the President forbids McDowell to take Fredericksburg, or to throw a bridge across the river. And thus McClellan prevents any glorious military operation; is losing in the mud a hundred men daily by disease, and Mr. Lincoln—still infatuated. But infatuation is the disease of small and weak brains.
Rothschild in Paris, and very likely the Rothschilds in London, are for the North. But if the Rothschilds show that they well understand and respect the Old Testament, whose spirit is anti-slavery, they show they understand better the true Christian spirit than do the Christians. The Rothschilds show themselves more thoroughly of our century than are such Michel Chevaliers, or such impure Roebucks, and all the supporters of free trade in human flesh.
McClellan's supporters, and such strategians as Blair and Seward, assert that McClellan's plan was ruined by not sending McDowell to Gloucester; that then the whole rebel army would have been caught in a trap. That silly plan to go to the Peninsula is defended in a still more silly way.
By McDowell's going to Gloucester, Washington would have been wholly at the mercy of an army of thirty to forty thousand men; the celebrated defences of Washington, this result of the united wisdom of Scott and McClellan, facilitating to the rebel army a raid on Washington.