Lee's army escapes through Chester Gap, and thus we have not cut the rebels from Richmond, and now they are ahead of us. Again out-manœuvred! and nobody's fault, only the campaign prolonged ad infinitum. Perhaps it is in the programme!
July 28.—Philadelphia. The petty, narrow, school conceit imbibed in the West Point nursery, is the stumbling-block barring everywhere the expansion of a healthy and vigorous activity. I listened to the heaviest absurdities and fogyism on military affairs oracularly preached by one of the great West Pointers on duty here.
July 31.—Long Branch. Away from personal contact, even from the view of politicians, of plotters, of lickspittles. How refreshing, how invigorating, how soothing!
Mr. Seward, with a due tail, visits Fortress Monroe. What for? Is it to organize some underground road to reunion on the Mercier-Seward-Richmond programme?
One well-informed writes me that the last programme of Lincoln, Halleck and Meade is, that the army of the Potomac is to keep Lee at bay, but not to attack. If true, how well designed to give time to Lee to do what he likes, to reorganize, to send away his troops where he may please, to call them back—in one word to be fully at his ease on our account. Will this country ever escape the tutorship of sham science?
July 31.—Long Branch. Seward's concession policy towards France bears fruit in Mexico. Of course the Decembriseur outwitted the Weed-Albany-Auburn politician statesman. But it is not the ignorant foreign policy which strengthened and strengthens the French policy in Mexico. It is the blunders, the tergiversations, the gropings, and the crimes of our internal domestic policy, which, protracting the war, allows the French conspirator to murder the Mexicans.
July 31. L. B.—So the Decembriseur amuses himself in creating an Imperial throne in Mexico for some European princely idiot or intriguer. All right. I have confidence in the Mexicans. The future Emperor, even if established for some time on the cushion of treason propped by French bayonets, that manikin before short or long will be Iturbidised. Further: I have confidence in the French people. The upper crust is pestilential. Bonapartists, lickspittles, lackeys and incarnations of all imaginary corruptions compose that upper crust. But I would bet a fortune, had I one, that in the course of the next five years, the Decembriseur and his Prince Imperial will be visible at Barnum's, and that some shoddy grandee from 5th Avenue, will issue cards inviting to meet the Empress Eugénie.
AUGUST, 1863.
Stanton — Twenty Thousand — Canadians — Peterhoff — Coffey — Initiation — Electioneering — Reports — Grant — McClellan — Belligerent Rights — Menagerie — Watson — Jury — Democrats — Bristles — "Where is Stanton?" — "Fight the monster" — Chasiana — Luminaries — Ballistic — Political Economy, etc., etc., etc.
August 2. Long Branch.—The organs of all shades and of all gradations of ill-wishers to the cause of the North, and to that of Emancipation, the secret friends of Jeff Davis, and the open supporters of McClellan are untiring in their open, slanderous, treacherous accusations of Stanton; others spread sanctimoniously perfidious suggestions against the Secretary of War, and so does the National Intelligencer, this foremost Whig-Conservative, double or treble-faced organ. Stanton is called to account for all mishaps, mismanagement, disasters and disgraces which befall our armies between the Rio Grande and the Potomac. Such accusations, to a certain degree, could be justified if the Secretary of War were clothed with the same powers, and therefore with the same responsibilities as is the case in European governments.