in legality. A commander of an army
operating separately has the exercise of full powers of war.

The Blairs are not to be accused; I read the letter from F. Blair to
his brother. It is the letter of a patriot, but not of an intriguer.
Fremont establishes an absurd rule concerning the breach of military
discipline, and shows by it his ignorance and narrow-mindedness. So
Fremont, and other bungling martinets, assert that nobody has the
right to criticise the actions of his commander.

Fremont is ignorant of history, and those around him who put in his
head such absurd notions are a pack of mean and servile spit-lickers.
An officer ought to obey orders without hesitation, and if he does not
he is to be court-martialed and shot. But it is perfectly allowable to
criticise them; it is in human nature--it was, is, and will be done in
all armies; see in Curtius and other historians of Alexander of
Macedon. It was continually done under Napoleon. In Russia, in 1812,
the criticism made by almost all the officers forced Alexander I. to
leave the army, and to put Kutousoff over Barclay. In the last Italian
campaign Austrian officers criticised loudly Giulay, their commander,
etc., etc.

Conspiracy to destroy Fremont on account of his slave proclamation.
The conspirators are the Missouri slaveholders: Senator Brodhead, old
Bates, Scott, McClellan, and their staffs. Some jealousy against him
in the Cabinet, but Seward rather on Fremont's side.

McClellan makes his father-in-law, a man of _very_ secondary capacity,
the chief of the staff of the army. It seems that McClellan ignores
what a highly responsible position it is, and what a special and
transcendent capacity must be that of a chief of the staff--the more
so when of an army of several hundreds of thousands. I do not look for
a Berthier, a Gneisenau, a Diebitsch, or Gortschakoff, but a Marcy
will not do.

Colonel Lebedeef, from the staff of the Emperor Alexander II., and
professor in the School of the Staff at St. Petersburg, saw here
everything, spoke with our generals, and his conclusion is that in
military capacity McDowell is by far superior to McClellan. Strange,
if true, and foreboding no good.

Mr. Lincoln begins to call a demagogue any one who does not admire all
the doings of his administration. Are we already so far?

McClellan under fatal influences of the rampant pro-slavery men, and
of partisans of the South, as is a Barlow. All the former associations
o