Mr. Lincoln is unshaken in his confidence in Hooker and Butterfield.
June 15.—By a bold and rapid manœuvre Lee has thrown his troops over the valley, over the Potomac, into Maryland, and God alone knows where Lee will stop. Lee's advance must have been already on the Potomac when the slaughter of our cavalry over the Rappahannock was planned at the various head-quarters. How splendidly Lee's movements have been arrested by that demonstration! Lee is on the Potomac, and it seems that his movements have been ignored. His armies, to be sure, have not been surrounded by a cloud, as the Jews were in their exodus from the land of bondage, but the cloud was hanging over the head-quarters in the army and in Washington.
June 16.—The North invaded—threatened, shaken to the marrow! The audacity of the rebels is stimulated by our sluggishness. If the accounts in the War Department are true, then from Fortress Monroe to the Potomac, including Baltimore and Maryland, we have about two hundred thousand men, and the rebels dare! O, the rebels! what a desperate conception, what a lightning-like execution! Dutifully re-echoing the words uttered by their masters, the partisans of the Administration console themselves by saying that "this invasion of the North will have the effect of stirring up the North from its lethargy." O, you blasphemers! worse blasphemers than ever have been stoned or burned alive! Is the North not pouring forth its blood and its treasures, and are they not all squandered by counterfeits?
June 16.—The draft is not put in motion, because for weeks and months Mr. Lincoln adjusts the appointments to be made under this law, adjusts them to the exigencies of politicians. Jeff Davis executes the draft with an iron hand. Mr. Lincoln thus gives time to the Copperheads, to the disciples of the Seymours, of the Woods, of the World, to organize a resistance. Bloodshed may come!
June 16.—This invasion of Pennsylvania ought to be investigated. Light must be brought into this dark, muddy, stinking labyrinth. Weeks ago, honest, clear-sighted, patriotic Governor Curtin asked authority to arm the militia of his State, and was snubbed in Washington. Will this new disgrace serve to strengthen the Administration? Quite possible.
June 16.—Pennsylvania invaded, the country disgraced, and our helmsmen, our Secretaries of State and of the Treasury, give banquets! O, what a stoicism! a stoicism sui generis. The homes of the farmers whose sons bleed on fields of battle, are invaded, their hearths threatened with desolation, and the helmsmen sip Champagne, paid for by the people!
June 17.—Halleckiana. Rosecrans telegraphed to head-quarters that he cannot send any troops to Grant, and that if he, Rosecrans, is to attack Bragg, he must have reinforcements. Answer: "Do what you like, on your own responsibility."
June 17.—Hooker seems to have lost his former dash. He must have known that the rebels extended from Gordonsville to Pennsylvania, and he, moving in almost a parallel direction to that line, ought to have cut it, or at least its tail.
General Ewell at Winchester. Hooker seems to doubt what he can do. The soldiers of his army can do anything ever done by any soldiers in the world—but lead them on, O Generals! Hooker has ninety-four thousand men, and, McClellan-like, waits for more; laments that he is outnumbered. A good general, having such a number, and of such troops, would never hesitate to attack an enemy numbering one hundred and twenty thousand, and the more so, as Hooker's command is massed, while Lee's is not. And I'll risk my head that Lee's whole army, all over the valley, and over Pennsylvania, and over Maryland, is smaller than Hooker's. It is the same old trick of the rebels and of their friends, to throw dust in our eyes by magnifying their numbers. The trick is always successful, because on our side it is wished to extenuate incapacity by the supposed large numbers of the rebel armies.
June 18.—The North rises. New York sends its militia. The people fails not, but how about the helmsmen?