The clique accuses the volunteers; but the clique, the engineers in power have disorganized, morally and materially, and disgraced the Army of the Potomac. They did this from the day of the encampments around Washington, in the fall of 1861, down to the day of Fredericksburgh. Fredericksburgh was altogether prepared by engineers; at Fredericksburgh the engineer Franklin did not even mount his horse when his soldiers were misled and miscommanded—by himself.
—Stragglers are generated by generals. Besides, to explain straggling, I quote from a genuine book on genuine military science, published in Berlin in 1862, by Captain Boehn, the most eminent professor at the military school in Potsdam: "The greatest losses, during a war, inflicted on an army are by maladies and by straggling. Such losses are five times greater than those of killed and wounded; and an intelligent administration takes preparatory measures to meet the losses and to compensate them. Such measures of foresight consist in organizing depots for battalions, which depots ought to equal one sixth of the number of the active army." O, Halleck, where are the depots?
—"In any ordinary campaign, excepting a winter campaign, the losses amount (as established by experience) to one half in infantry, one fourth in cavalry, and to one third in artillery." (Do you know any thing about it, O, Halleck?)
Let the people be warned, and they may understand the location of the cause generating further disasters. If the Army of the Potomac shall win glory, it will win it notwithstanding the West Point clique of engineers. The disasters have root in the White House, where the advice of such a Halleck prevails.
—I know very well that the formation of the volunteers in respective States and by the Governors of such States raises a great difficulty in organizing and preparing reserves. But talent and genius reveal themselves by overpowering difficulties considered to be insurmountable. And Halleck is a man both of genius and talent.
Taking into account the patriotism, the devotion of the governors of the respective states, [not à la Copperhead Seymour], it would have been possible, nay, even easy to organize some kind of reserves. O, Halleck, O, fogies!
January 17.—Mr. Lincoln loads on his shoulders all kinds of responsibilities, more so than even Jackson would have dared to take. Admirable if generated by the boldness of self-consciousness, of faith, and of convictions. True men measure the danger—and the means in their grasp to meet the emergency; others play unconsciously with events, as do children with explosive and death-dealing matters.
January 17.—General and astronomer Mitchel's death may be credited to Halleck. Halleck and Buell's envy—if not worse—paralysed Mitchel and Turtschin's activity in the West. Mitchel and Turtschin were too quick, that is, too patriotic. In early summer, 1862, they were sure to take Chattanooga, a genuine strategic point, one of those principal knots and nurseries in the life of the secesh. How imprudent! Chattanooga is still in the hands of the rebels, and if we ever take it, it will cost streams of blood and millions of money. Down with Mitchel and Turtschin. Mitchel's excrementa were more valuable than are Halleck's heavy, but not expanding, brains. Mitchel revealed at once all the qualities of an eminent, if not of a great general. Quickness of mind, fertility of resources. An astronomer, a mathematician, Mitchel's mind was familiar with broad combinations. Such a mind penetrated space, calculated means and chances, balanced forces and probabilities. Not to compare, however, is it to be borne in mind that Napoleon was a mathematician in the fullest sense, and not an engineer, not a translator.
January 18.—Mr. Lincoln's letter to McClellan when the hero of the Copperheads was in search of mud in the Peninsula. The letter rings as sound common sense; it shows, however, that common sense debarred of strong will remains unproductive of good. Mr. Lincoln commonly shows strong will, in the wrong place.
——ein Theil von jener Krafft,
Die stehts das Guthe will, und stehts das Boese schaff.