to escape capture or
destruction. As if one army of a hundred thousand men could encounter
another of the same number of as good troops and annihilate it! Military
men do not claim or expect this; but the McClellan destroyers do, the
doughty knights of purchasable newspaper quills; the formidable warriors
from the brothels of politics, men of much warlike experience against
honesty and honor, of profound attainments in ignorance, who have the
maxims of Napoleon, whose spirit they as little understand as they do
most things, to quote, to prove all things; but who, unfortunately, have
much influence in the country and with the Government, and so over the
army. It is very pleasant for these people, no doubt, at safe distances
from guns, in the enjoyment of a lucrative office, or of a fraudulently
obtained government contract, surrounded by the luxuries of their own
firesides, where mud and flooding storms, and utter weariness never
penetrate, to discourse of battles and how campaigns should be conducted
and armies of the enemy destroyed. But it should be enough, perhaps, to
say that men here, or elsewhere, who have knowledge enough of military
affairs to entitle them to express an opinion on such matters, and
accurate information enough to realize the nature and the means of this
desired destruction of Lee's army before it crossed the Potomac into
Virginia, will be most likely to vindicate the Pennsylvania campaign of
Gen. Meade, and to see that he accomplished all that could have been
reasonably expected of any general of any army. Complaint has been, and
is, made specially against Meade, that he did not attack Lee near
Williamsport before he had time to withdraw across the river. These were
the facts concerning this matter:

The 13th of July was the earliest day when such an attack, if
practicable at all, could have been made. The time before this, since
the battle, had been spent in moving the army from the vicinity of the
field, finding something of the enemy and concentrating before him. On
that day the army was concentrated and in order of battle near the
turnpike that leads from Sharpsburg to Hagerstown, Md., the right
resting at or near the latter place, the left near Jones' crossroads,
some six miles in the direction of Sharpsburg, and in the following
order from left to right: the 12th corps, the 2d, the 5th, the 6th, the
1st, the 11th; the 3d being in reserve behind the 2d. The mean distance
to the Potomac was