The country begins to be inundated and opinion poisoned by all kinds of the most glaring lies, invented and spread by the staffs, and the imbecile, blind partisans of McClellan. Here are some from among the lies.
In January (oh hear, oh hear!) General McClellan with 50,000 men intended to make a flying (oh hear, oh hear!) expedition to Richmond, but Lincoln and Stanton opposed it. This lie divides itself into two points. 1st lie. In January, nobody opposed General McClellan's will, and, besides, he was sick. 2d lie. If he was so pugnacious in January, why has he not made with the same number of men a flying expedition only to Centreville, right under his nose?
Emanating from the staff, such a lie is sufficient to show the military capacity of those who concocted it.
Second lie. That the expedition to Yorktown and the Peninsula strategy were forced upon McClellan. I hope that the Americans have enough memory left, and enough self-respect to recollect the truth.
Further, the above staff asserts that, when the truth will be known about the campaign, and the fightings in the Chickahominy, then justice will be done to McClellan.
Always and everywhere lost battles, bad and ignorant generalship, require explanations, justifications, and commentaries. Well-fought battles are justified on the spot, the same day, and by results. No one asks or makes comments upon the fighting of Jackson. Austerlitz, Jena, were commented on, explained, some of the chiefs were justified, but—by Austrian and Prussian commentators.
Until to-day French writers discuss, analyze, and comment upon the fatal battle of Waterloo. At Waterloo Napoleon was in the square of his heroic guards; but during the seven days' fighting on the Chickahominy, what regiment, not to say a square, saw in its midst the American Napoleon?
A thousand others, similar to the above-mentioned lies, will be or are already circulated; the mass of the people will use its common sense, and the lies must perish.
On September 7th, Gen. McClellan gave his word to the President to start to the army at 12 o'clock, but started at 4 P. M. with a long train of well-packed wagons for himself and for his staff. To be sure, Lee, Jackson, and all the other rebel chiefs together, have not such a train; if they had, they would not be to-day on the Potomac and in Maryland. Most certainly those quick-moving rebels start at least an hour earlier than they are expected to do.
September 9.—Up to this day Mr. Lincoln ought to have discovered whose advice transformed him into a standard-bearer of the policy of the New York Herald, and made him push the country to the verge of the grave; and, nevertheless, Mr. Lincoln is deaf to the voice of all true and pure patriots who point out the malefactors.