on_ advocated and always advocates fighting, and
Stanton furnishes the generals and commanders with all means and
resources at the country's and the department's disposition. If many
respectable men are to be trusted, _Stanton_ never interferes with
intrinsic military operations, never orders or insinuates, or
dictates to the commanders of our armies where and in what way they
are to get at the enemy and to fight him. As far as I know Stanton
keeps aloof from strategy.

Stanton _is insincere and untruthful_, say his enemies. Granted. I
never found a man in power to be otherwise in personal questions or
relations. It is almost impossible for the power-holders to be
sincere and truthful.

Trust in thy sword,
Rather than prince's (president's) word;
Trust in fortuna's sinister,
Rather than prince's minister.

But _Stanton_ is truthful and sincere to the cause, and that is all
that I want from him. Stanton's alleged _malice_ against McClellan
had the noblest and the most patriotic sources, which, of course,
could not be understood or appreciated by Stanton's revilers.

The organs of treason and of infamy refer always to McClellan. _O
race, knitted of the devils excrements mixed with his saliva_, [see
Talleyrand about Thiers] your treason is only equal to your
impudence and ignorance. If in February, 1862, Stanton had not urged
McClellan to move, probably the Potomac Army would have spent all
the year in its tents before Washington. McClellan's henchmen and
minions thrusted and still thrust the grossest lies down the throat
of a certain public, eager to gulp slander as sugar plums.
McClellan's stupidity at Yorktown and in the Chickahominy is
vindicated by his crew with the following counter accusation: that
all disasters have been generated because McDowell with his twenty
thousand men did not join McClellan. If McClellan had in him the
soldiership of a non-commissioned officer, on his knees he ought to
implore his crew not to expose him in this way. When a general has
in hand about one hundred and ten thousand men, as McClellan had on
entering the peninsula, and accomplishes nothing, then it is a proof
that he, the general, is wholly unable and ignorant how to handle
large masses. If McClellan could not manage one hundred thousand
men, still less would he have been able to manage the twenty
thousand more of McDowell's corps.

The stupidity of attempting to invest Richmond is beyond words, and
for such an op