but unmistakably
proved themselves completely in the dark as to the difference
between the personal staff of the commander of an army, and the
Staff of that Army itself. And all this in a country of the most
rapid movement and progress, and amongst a people which
unhesitatingly adopts and adapts to its own needs and welfare almost
every novelty from almost every part of the world. The great fault
committed by the People is its too great respect for false
authorities and false prophets.

The so-called honest Conservatives have exercised and still continue
to exercise a most fatal influence on public affairs, and especially
on what is called the domestic policy. These same "honest
Conservatives" are more dangerous than the out-spoken Copperheads;
more dangerous, perhaps, than all the friends of slavery and foes
of the Union combined. These "honest Conservatives" have contrived
to surround themselves with a halo of honesty and respectability.
But they as cordially hate and dread every vivid light and vigorous
progress as the traitors themselves do. Those Conservatives opposed
every vigorous measure. They spoke tenderly of the "misguided
brethren" in the South, and took their own servile and blundering,
though quite possibly sincere fancies, for actual and tangible
facts. The honest Conservatives will support whatever is slow,
double-dealing, and, therefore, conservative. The honest
Conservatives took McClellan to their honest hearts, and not one of
them has any clear notion of military affairs, and still less can
any of them fathom the awful depth of McClellan's military
criminality. I repeat what I said in the first volume of my Diary:
McClellan and his tail fell, not on account of their Democratism, or
their pro-slavery creed, but because McClellan repeatedly displayed
all the worst qualities of a thoroughly unsoldierly commander. No
one would have uttered a word of censure if McClellan with his
hundred and eighty thousand men had surrounded the thirty to forty
thousand rebels in Centreville and Manassas in the winter of 1861-2,
and taken some nobler trophies than camp manure and maple guns! The
honest Conservatives attack and hate Stanton, yet not one of them
has any notion whatever of Stanton's action towards McClellan.
Stanton would have been the first to raise McClellan sky-high if
McClellan had preferred to fight instead of reposing in his bed in
Washington, and then in various muds. Such is your knowledge of thi