men; the last two are
nearly at the head of the Shenandoah valley; they could unite with
McDowell, and march and take Richmond. They beg to be ordered to do
it, and so wishes Stanton; but, fatally befogged by McClellan, by
McClellan's clique in the councils, or by strategians, Lincoln
emphatically forbids any junction, any movement; the President forbids
McDowell to take Fredericksburg, or to throw a bridge across the
river. And thus McClellan prevents any glorious military operation; is
losing in the mud a hundred men daily by disease, and Mr.
Lincoln--still infatuated. But infatuation is the disease of small and
weak brains.

Rothschild in Paris, and very likely the Rothschilds in London, are
for the North. But if the Rothschilds show that they well understand
and respect the Old Testament, whose spirit is anti-slavery, they show
they understand better the true Christian spirit than do the
Christians. The Rothschilds show themselves more thoroughly of our
century than are such Michel Chevaliers, or such impure Roebucks, and
all the supporters of free trade in human flesh.

McClellan's supporters, and such strategians as Blair and Seward,
assert that McClellan's plan was ruined by not sending McDowell to
Gloucester; that then the whole rebel army would have been caught in a
trap. That silly plan to go to the Peninsula is defended in a still
more silly way.

By McDowell's going to Gloucester, Washington would have been wholly
at the mercy of an army of thirty to forty thousand men; the
celebrated defences of Washington, this result of the united wisdom of
Scott and McClellan, facilitating to the rebel army a raid on
Washington.

Further; McClellan, in concocting and _maturing_ his thus called
plans, probably believes that the rebels will do just the thing which,
in his calculations, he wishes them to do; and such erroneous
suppositions are the sole basis of his _plans_. But the rebels
repeatedly showed themselves by far too smart for his _Napoleonic_
brains; and besides, not much wit to the rebel generals was necessary
to see through and through what the great Napoleon was about, by
ordering McDowell to Gloucester. Of course, the rebel generals would
not have had the politeness towards McClellan to sheepishly accede to
his wishes, and go into the trap. The whole plan was worse than
childish, and I am glad to learn that several generals showed brains
to condemn it. The whole plan was up to the comprehension of
Mc