I cannot believe that at this deadly crisis the salvation can come from Washington. The best man here has not his free action. And the rest of them are the country's curse. Mr. Lincoln, with McClellan, Seward, Blair, Halleck, and scores of such, are as able to cope with this crisis as to stop the revolution of our planet.
_Up to this day_, from among those foremost, the only man whose hands remain unstained with the country's, his mother's, and his brethren's blood, the last Roman, is Stanton.
_September 7._--During last night troops marched to meet the enemy, saluting with deafening shouts and cheers the residence of McClellan; spit-lickers as a Kennedy, giving the sign by waving his hat. Such shouts would cheer up the mind but for the fact that they were mostly raised for the victory over those who demanded an investigation of the causes of _slowness_ and insubordination,--those exclusive causes of the defeat of Pope's army. Those shouts were thrown out as defiance to justice, to truth, and to law. Those shouts marked the inauguration of the _pretorian regime_. General McClellan and other generals have forced the President to _postpone_ the investigation into the conduct of the _slow_ and of the insubordinate generals, all three special favorites of McClellan. General McClellan appeared before the soldiers surrounded by his _old identical staff_, by a tross of flatterers, and, Oh heavens! in the cortege Senator Wilson! Oh, _sancta_ not _simplicitas_, but ---- Oh, clear-sighted Republican!
Subsequently, I learned that Senator Wilson was present for a moment, and only by a pure accident, at that ovation.
_Laeszt Dich dem Teufel bey'm Haare packen, so hat Er Dich bey'm Kopfe_, says Lessing, and so it may become here with this first success of the pretorians, or even worse than pretorians; these here are Yanitschars of a Sultan.
Pope and his army accuse three generals of insubordination and mutiny on the field of battle. McClellan prevents investigation; the brutal rule of Yanitschars is inaugurated, thanks to you, Messrs. Seward and Blair.
McDowell sacrificed to the Yanitschars; he is the scapegoat and the victim to popular fallacy, to the imbecility of the press, and, above all, to the intriguers and to the conspiracy of the mutinous pets of McClellan. Weeks and weeks ago, I foretold to McDowell that such would be his fate, and that only in after-times history will be just towards him.