It is said that Turtschininoff is all in all in General Mitchell's command. Turtschininoff is a genuine and distinguished officer of the staff, and educated in that speciality so wholly unknown to West-Pointers. Several among the foreigners in the army are thoroughly educated officers of the staff, and would be of great use if employed in the proper place. But envy and know-nothingism are doubly in their way. Besides, the foreign officers have no tenderness for the Southern cause and Southern chivalry, and would be in the cause with their whole heart.
By the insinuations of an anonymous correspondent in the Tribune, Mr. Seward tries to re-establish his anti-slavery reputation. But how is it that foreign diplomats, that the purest of his former political friends, consider him to be now the savior of what he once persecuted in his speeches?
At every step this noble people vindicates and asserts the vitality of self-government, continually jeopardized by the inexhaustible errors of the policy followed by the master-spirits in the administration. European doctors, prophets, vindictive enemies like the London Times, the Saturday Review, etc., and the French journals of the police, all of them are daily—nay, hourly—baffled in their expectations—paper money and no bankruptcy, no inflation, bonds equal to gold, etc., etc. And all this, not because there is any great or even small statesman or financier at the head of the administration, but because the people at large have confidence in themselves, in their own energies; because they have the determination to succeed, and not to be bankrupt; not to discredit their own decisions. All these phenomena, so new in the history of nations, are incomprehensible to European wiseacres; they are too much for the hatred and dulness of the Europeans in France, England, and for that of the many Europeans here.
Yorktown evacuated!—under the nose of an army of 160,000 men, and within the distance of a rifle shot!—evacuated quietly, of course, during several days. One cannot abstain from saying Bravo! to the rebel generals. Their high capacity forces the mind to an involuntary applause. Traitors, intriguers, and imbeciles applaud, extol the results of the bloodless strategy. McClellan is used by the rebels only to be fooled by them. It must be so. It is one proof more of the transcendent capacity of the strategian, and, above all, of the capacity and efficiency of the chief of the staff of the great army. Such an operation as that of Yorktown, anywhere else, would be considered as the highest disgrace; here, glorifications of strategy. McClellan's bulletins from Yorktown describe the rebel fortifications as being almost impregnable. Of course impregnable! but only to him.
Battle at Williamsburg; and McClellan and his so perfect staff altogether ignorant of the whole bloody but honorable affair as fought against terrible odds by Heintzelman and Hooker; but the great Napoleon's bulletin mentions a real—Oh hear! hear the great Mars!—charge with the bayonet, made at the other extremity of Williamsburg, and in which from twenty to forty men were killed!
Heintzelman's and Hooker's personal conduct, and that of their troops, was heroic beyond name. McClellan ignored the battle; ignored what was going on, and, as it is said, gave orders to Sumner not to support Heintzelman.
McClellan telegraphs that the enemy far outnumbers him (fears count doubly), but that he will do his utmost and his best. This Napoleon of the New York Herald's manufacture in everything is the reverse of all the leaders and captains known in history: all of them, when before the battle they addressed their soldiers, represented the enemy as inferior and contemptible; after the battle was won, the enemy was extolled.
From the first of his addresses to this his last dispatch from Williamsburg, McClellan always speaks of the terrible enemy whom he is to encounter; and in this last dispatch he tries to frighten not only his army, but the whole country. During the night the terrible enemy evacuated Williamsburg; McClellan breathes more free, takes fresh courage, and his bulletin estimates the enemy's forces at 50,000.
The track of truth begins to be lost. By comparing dates, bulletins, and notes, it results that at the precise minute when McClellan telegraphed his wail concerning the large numbers of the enemy and the formidable fortifications of Williamsburg, the rebels were evacuating them, pressed and expelled therefrom by Hooker, Kearney, and Heintzelman. Oh Napoleon! Oh spirits not only of Berthier and of Gneisenau, but of the most insignificant chiefs of staffs, admire your caricature at the head of the army commanded by this freshly-backed Napoleon!
A foreign diplomat was in McClellan's tent before Yorktown, on the eve of the day when the rebels wholly evacuated it. One of McClellan's aids suggested to the general that the comparative silence of the rebel artillery might forebode evacuation. "Impossible!" answered the New York Herald's Napoleon. "I know everything that passes in their camp, and I have them fast." (I have these details from the above-mentioned diplomat.) In the same minute, when the strategian spoke in this way, at least half of the rebel army had already withdrawn from Yorktown. Comments thereupon are superfluous.