But every one knows that here the war machinery is very complicated, because wheels turn within wheels. The Secretary of War is not alone to answer and he is not exclusively responsible for the appointment of good, middling, or wholly bad generals and commanders. Every one knows it. Stanton may have all the possible shortcomings and faults with which his enemies so richly clothe him; one thing is certain, that Stanton advocated and always advocates fighting, and Stanton furnishes the generals and commanders with all means and resources at the country's and the department's disposition. If many respectable men are to be trusted, Stanton never interferes with intrinsic military operations, never orders or insinuates, or dictates to the commanders of our armies where and in what way they are to get at the enemy and to fight him. As far as I know Stanton keeps aloof from strategy.
Stanton is insincere and untruthful, say his enemies. Granted. I never found a man in power to be otherwise in personal questions or relations. It is almost impossible for the power-holders to be sincere and truthful.
Trust in thy sword,
Rather than prince's (president's) word;
Trust in fortuna's sinister,
Rather than prince's minister.
But Stanton is truthful and sincere to the cause, and that is all that I want from him. Stanton's alleged malice against McClellan had the noblest and the most patriotic sources, which, of course, could not be understood or appreciated by Stanton's revilers.
The organs of treason and of infamy refer always to McClellan. O race, knitted of the devils excrements mixed with his saliva, [see Talleyrand about Thiers] your treason is only equal to your impudence and ignorance. If in February, 1862, Stanton had not urged McClellan to move, probably the Potomac Army would have spent all the year in its tents before Washington. McClellan's henchmen and minions thrusted and still thrust the grossest lies down the throat of a certain public, eager to gulp slander as sugar plums. McClellan's stupidity at Yorktown and in the Chickahominy is vindicated by his crew with the following counter accusation: that all disasters have been generated because McDowell with his twenty thousand men did not join McClellan. If McClellan had in him the soldiership of a non-commissioned officer, on his knees he ought to implore his crew not to expose him in this way. When a general has in hand about one hundred and ten thousand men, as McClellan had on entering the peninsula, and accomplishes nothing, then it is a proof that he, the general, is wholly unable and ignorant how to handle large masses. If McClellan could not manage one hundred thousand men, still less would he have been able to manage the twenty thousand more of McDowell's corps.
The stupidity of attempting to invest Richmond is beyond words, and for such an operation several hundred thousand men would have been necessary. [Spoke of it in Vol. I.] If twenty thousand men arrive not at a certain day or hour when a battle is raging, most surely this failure may occasion a defeat—Grouchy at Waterloo—but in McClellan's Chickahominy operations, twenty thousand men more would have served only still more plainly to expose his incapacity, and to be a prey to fevers and diseases.
The bulk of the rebel army in Richmond was always less numerous than McClellan's; the rebels always understood to have more troops than had McClellan when they attacked him. During that whole cursed and ignominious (for McClellan) Chickahominy campaign, McClellan never fought at once more of his men than about thirty thousand. It was not the absence of twenty thousand men that prevented a commander of one hundred thousand from engaging more of his troops, and for quickly supporting such corps as were attacked by the enemy.
August 3: L. B.—The Colonists, that is, the appendixes of England, as the Canadians, the Nova Scotians, and of any other colonial dignity and name, together with their great statesmen, certain Howes and Johnsons, etc. etc. etc. agitate; they are in trances like little fish out of water. They find it so pleasant to seize an occasion to look like something great. Poor frogs! trying to blow themselves into leviathans. Their whelpish snarling at the North reminds one of little curs snarling at a mastiff. How can these colonists imagine that a royal prince of England could reside among something which is as indefinite as are colonists—something neither fish nor flesh.
August 3.—The Evening Post contains a letter on the difference between the behavior of Union men in Missouri during the treasonable riots in St. Louis in the Spring of 1861, and the conduct of the Union men in New York during the recent riots. But the Saint Louis patriot is silent—has forgotten the immortal Lyons who saved that city and its patriots, who saved Missouri. (General Scott insisted upon courtmartialing Lyons.)
Also, have you already forgotten the foremost among heroes and patriots, and whose loss is more telling now than it was in 1861. Forgotten one of the purest and noblest victims of Washington blindness, of General Scott's unmilitary policy and conduct. Forgotten the true son of the people? But O Lyons! thy name will be venerated by coming generations.