I read in one of the New York poison-dealers, _alias_ Copperhead newspapers, that McClellanites was ruined by politicians. So-called honest, but idiotic conservatives sanctimoniously repeat that lie. It was McClellan, who, inspired by _Barlow_, by the _Herald_ and by his aristocratic West Point pro-slavery friends, introduced democratic politics into the army at a time when the army was yet in an embryo state, already in September and October, 1861. O, impudent liars! history will nail your names to the gallows, together with the name of your fetish and of his military tail.
_July 16._--In that fated, cursed council of war which allowed Lee to escape, my patriot WADSWORTH was the most decided, the most out-spoken in favor of attacking Lee. Wadsworth never fails where honor and patriotism are to be sustained. Warren with Wadsworth. So Humphries, Pleasanton and Howard. Those names ought to coruscate as the purest light of patriotism for future generations. Meade's vote is of no account. He, the commander, ought to have acted up to his vote. If only Meade had imitated _Radetzky_. In 1849 after the denunciation of the Armistice of Milan, _Radetzky_ called a council of war to decide whether the _Po_ was to be crossed and Piedmont invaded. All the best Austrian generals--_Hesse_ with them, voted against the proposition. Radetzky quietly listened, then rose and give orders to cross immediately.
The result was the battle of Novara and the temporary humiliation of the house of Savoy. That was a model for _Meade_. And this General _French_ who advised to entrench! To entrench in pursuit of a retreating enemy! This French honors West Point and engineering. The generals who voted to entrench and not to attack Lee, and Meade with them, they can never, never retrieve. Whatever be their future or eventual success it will not heal the wound given to the country by thus allowing Lee to escape. O, God! O, God!
Such _Frenches_ and others asserted that "Lee will attack before he crosses." Oh what _Marses!_ _Lee's position at Williamsport was on heights_, etc., etc., assert those braves.
When a country is hilly and undulating there will always be found one point or hill commanding the others. I shall risk my head on the fact, that around Lee's entrenchments at Williamsport, there exist other elevations which command Williamsport, and are within artillery distance. _Natura semper sibi consona._ I am sure that better positions than that selected by Lee could easily have been occupied by our troops or artillery. The same must have been the case at Hagerstown. And if the generals were afraid to fight Lee's whole army they ought to have more vigilantly watched his crossing. There was a time when a part only of the rebel army was facing us, and at least this part ought to have been attacked and crippled, if not destroyed. Sound common sense teaches it. But it seems that no will to fight Lee, or to impede his safe recrossing, no such will animated the majority of the council of war. It seems that some of the West Point nurslings are still awe-struck at the sight of their slavocratic former companions, as they were at the time of their studies at West Point.