rrow, ossified brains, and with his peculiar patriotism; and he did
the same in the conduct of the war.

I am sure some day or other it will come out that this immense
fortification of Manassas is a similar humbug to the masked batteries;
and Scott was the first to aggrandize these terrible national
nightmares. Already many soldiers say that they did not see any
fortifications. Very likely only small earthworks; if so, Scott ought
to have known what was the position and the works of an enemy encamped
about thirty miles from him. If he, Scott, was ignorant, then it shows
his utter imbecility; if he knew that the fortifications were
insignificant, and did not tell it to the troops, then he is worse
than an incapable chief. Up to the present day, all the military
leaders of ancient and modern times told their troops before a battle
that the enemy is not much after all, and that the difficulties to
overcome are rather insignificant. After the battle was won,
everything became aggrandized. Here everybody, beginning with Scott,
ardently rivalled how to scare and frighten the volunteers, by stories
of the masked batteries of Manassas, with its several tiers of
fortifications, the terrible superiority of the Southerners, etc.,
etc. In Europe such behavior would be called treason.

The administration and the influential men cannot realize that they
must give up their old, stupid, musty routine. McClellan ought to be
altogether independent of Scott; be untrammelled in his activity; have
large powers; have direct action; and not refer to Scott. What is this
wheel within a wheel? Instead of it, Scott, as by concession, cuts for
McClellan a military department of six square miles. Oh, human
stupidity, how difficult thou art to lift!

Scott will paralyze McClellan as he did Lyon and Butler. Scott always
pushed on his spit-lickers, or favorites, rotten by old age. But Scott
has pushed aside such men as Wool and Col. Smith; refused the services
of many brave as Hooker and others, because they never belonged to his
flunkeys.

Send to McClellan a plan for the reorganization of the army.

1st. True mastership consists in creating an army with extant
elements, and not in clamoring for what is altogether impossible to
obtain.

2d. The idea is preposterous to try to have a large thus-called
regular army. A small number, fifteen to twenty thousand men, divided
among several hundreds of thousands of volunteers, would be as a drop
of wa