The Rebel army was demoralized, as a retreating army always is; no doubt exists concerning a partial, at least, disorganization of the rebels. But Lee and his generals understood how to make a bold show, and a bold, menacing front, with what was not yet disorganized, and our generals caved in, in the council.
This July 19th is heavy, dark and gloomy.... I wish it were all over.
July 19.—Thurlow Weed puffs Stanton and patronises him. O, God! It is a terrible blow to Stanton. How, now, can one have confidence in Stanton's manhood. Are contracts at the bottom of the puff, or is it only one of Weed's tricks to defile and to ruin Stanton?
July 20.—It is almost humiliating to witness how mongrels and pigmies attempt to rob the people of their due glory, how they attempt to absorb to their own credit what the pitiless pressure of events forced upon them. All of them limped after events as lame ducks in mud; not one foresaw any thing, not one understood the to-day. Neither emancipation nor the transformation of slave into free states, are of your special, individual work, O, great men; but you strut now.
Mirmidons, race féconde, enfin nous commandons.
Some say that the generals who let Lee off, intended not to humiliate their former chief and pet McClellan.
July 20.—Cavalry wanted. Stables and corrals filled with horses, but no saddles. No saddles in this most industrious country! No brains in the Quartermasters or in those to whom it belongs. And perhaps no will, and perhaps no honesty. No saddles! Oh! I am sure it is nobody's fault; no workmen are to be found, and no leather, and no men to look after the country's good. That is the rub.
July 20.—Captain Collins, commanding a United States man-of-war, captures an English blockade-runner near an isolated shoal somewhere in the vicinity of Bermuda. England asserts that the shoal is a shore, and that the maritime league is violated. Mr. Seward at once yields, Neptune defends as he always does, the rights of the national Tritons, and of the national flag. The supreme power sides with Seward, and an order is given to reprimand Collins or something like it: it is done, and the prize-court decides that Captain Collins has made a lawful capture. I hope Collins will be consoled, and light his segar with the reprimand.
The future historian will duly ponder and establish Mr. Seward's claims to the salvage of the country.
July 20.—From all that I learn, Meade has a better and larger army than Lee; oh, may only Meade establish that he has the biggest brains of the two.