may be very
little difference between the _gained_ victories. To-day he is
ignorant of the movements of the enemy, and has more than 30,000 fresh
troops in hand.

As in the Peninsula, so in Maryland. Although having nearly one-third
more men than the enemy, General McClellan never forced the enemy to
engage at once its whole force, never attacked the rebels on their
whole line, and never had any positive notion about the number and the
position of the opposing forces.

The rebels had the Potomac in their rear; our army pressed them in
front, and--the rebels escaped.

I appeal to such military heroes as Hooker; I appeal to thousands of
our brave soldiers, from generals down to the rank and file, and
further I appeal to all women with hearts and brains here and in
Europe.

_September 20._--Gen. Mansfield killed at the head of his brigade. I
ask his forgiveness for all the criticism made upon him in this diary.
Last year, at the beginning of the war, Gen. Mansfield acted under the
orders of Gen. Scott. This explains all.

As in the slaughters of the Chickahominy, so in the Maryland
slaughters, _nobody hurt_ in McClellan's numerous staff. Thank Heaven!
Not only his life is charmed, but the charm extends over all who
surround him,--men and beasts.

A malediction sticks to our cause. Hooker badly, very badly wounded.
Hooker fought the greatest number of fights,--was never worsted in the
Peninsula, nor in the August disasters, and he alone has the supreme
honor of a nick-name, by the troopers' baptism: the _Fighting Joe_.
Hooker, not McClellan, ought to command the army. But no pestilential
Washington clique, none of the West-Pointers, back him, and the pets,
the pretorians, may have refused to obey his orders.

After the escape of the rebels from Manassas in March, and after the
evacuation of Yorktown, all the intriguers and traitors grouped around
the New York Herald, and the imbeciles around the New York Times,
prized high _the masterly strategy_ and its bloodless victories. Now,
in dead, by powder and disease, in crippled, etc., McClellan destroyed
about 100,000 men, and the country's honor is bleeding, the country's
cause is on the verge of a precipice.

How rare are men of civic heroism, of fearless civic courage; men of
the creed: _perisse mon nom mais que la patrie soit sauvee._

General Wadsworth feels more deeply and more painfully the disasters,
nay, the disgrace, of the country, than do almost all with