upon selecting defensive positions, and combine how to
strengthen them by art. So an engineer is rather disabled from
embracing a whole battle-field, with its endless casualties and space.
Engineers are the incarnation of a defensive warfare; all others, as
artillerists, infantry, and cavalry, are for dashing into the
unknown--into the space; and thus these specialities virtually
represent the offensive warfare.

When will they begin to see through McClellan, and find out that he is
not the man? Perhaps too late, and then the nation will sorely feel
it.

Mr. Seward almost idolizes McClellan. Poor homage that; but it does
mischief by reason of its influence on the public opinion.

DECEMBER, 1861.

The message -- Emancipation -- State papers published -- Curtis
Noyes -- Greeley not fit for Senator -- Generalship all on the
rebel side -- The South and the North -- The sensationists -- The
new idol will cost the people their life-blood! -- The Blairs --
Poor Lincoln! -- The Trent affair -- Scott home again -- The war
investigation committee -- Mr. Mercier.

McClellan is now all-powerful, and refuses to divide the army into
corps. Thus much for his brains and for his consistency.

The message--a disquisition upon labor and capital; hesitancy about
slavery. The President wishes to be pushed on by public opinion. But
public opinion is safe, and expects from the official leader a decided
step onwards. The message gives no solution, suggests none, accounts
not for the lost time--foreshadows not a vigorous, energetic effort to
crush the rebellion; foreshadows not a vigorous, offensive war. The
message is an honest paper, but says not much.

The question of emancipation is not clear even in the heads of the
leading emancipationists; not one thinks to give freeholds to the
emancipated. It is the only way to make them useful to themselves and
to the community. Freedom without land is humbug, and the fools speak
of exportation of the four millions of slaves, depriving thus the
country of laborers, which a century of emigration cannot fill again.
All these fools ought to be sent to a lunatic asylum.

To export the emancipated would be equivalent to devastation of the
South, to its transformation into a wilderness. Small freeholds for
the emancipated can be cut out of the plantations of rebels, or out of
the public lands of each State--lands forfeited by the rebellion.

State papers pub