Halleckiana. This great, unequalled great man declared that "it were better even to send McClellan to Kentucky, or to the West, than to send there Fremont, as Fremont would at once free the niggers."
The admirers of poor argument, of spread-eagleism, and of ignorant quotations stolen from history, make a fuss about Mr. Seward's State papers. The good in these papers is where Mr. Seward, in his confused phraseology, re-echoes the will, the decision of the people, no longer to be humbugged by England's perversion of international laws and of the rights and duties of neutrals; the will of the people sooner or later to take England to account. (I hope it will be done, and no English goods will ever pollute the American soil. It will be the best vengeance.) The repudiation of any mediation is in the marrow of the people, and Seward's muddy arguments only perverted and weakened it. In Europe, the substance of Seward's dispatch, is considered the passage where Seward's highfalutin logomachy offers to the rebels their vacant seats in the Congress.
March 26.—Had we generals, the rebel army in Virginia ought to have been dispersed and destroyed after the first Bull Run:
A. McClellan.—Any day in November and December, 1861.
B. McClellan.—Any day in January and February, 1862, at Centerville, Manassas.
C. McClellan.—At Yorktown, and when the rebels retreated to Richmond.
D. McClellan.—After the battle of Fair Oaks, Richmond easily could and ought to have been taken. (See Hurlbut, Hooker, Kearney and Heintzelman.)
E. McClellan.—Richmond could have been taken before the fatal change of base. (See January, Fitz John Porter.)
F. But for the wailings of McClellan and his stick-in-the-mud do-nothing strategy, McDowell, Banks and Fremont would have marched to Richmond from north, north-west, and west, when we already reached Stanton, and could take Gordonsville.
G. General Pope and General McDowell, the McClellan pretorians, at the August 1862, fights between the Rappahannock and the Potomac.