alry, and most of the
artillery without horses, and he in front.

The more I scrutinize the President's thus called emancipation
proclamation, the more cunning and less good will and sincerity I find
therein. I hope I am mistaken. But the proclamation is only an act of
the military power,--is evoked by military necessity,--and not a
civil, social, humane act of justice and equity.

The only good to be derived from this proclamation is, that for the
first time the word _freedom_, and a general comprehension of
"emancipation," appear in an official act under the sanction of the
formula, and are inaugurated into the official, the constitutional
life of the nation. In itself it is therefore a great event for a
people so strictly attached to legality and to formulas.

I do not recollect to have read in the history of any great, or even
of a small captain,--above all of such a one when between thirty-four
and thirty-six years old,--that he followed the army under his command
in a travelling carriage and six, when the field of operations
extended from fifty to seventy miles. Three cheers for McClellan, for
his carriage and six!

HOW THE GREAT CAPTAIN WAS TO CATCH THE WHOLE REBEL ARMY IN
MANASSAS, IN FEBRUARY AND MARCH, A. D. 1862.

It was to have been done by a brilliant and unsurpassable stroke of
combined strategy, tactics, manoeuvres, marches, and swimmings; also
on land and water. (O, hear! O, hear!)

As every body knows, the rebels were encamped in the so _fearful_
strongholds of Centreville and Manassas, all the time fooling the
commander-in-chief of the federal army in relation to their _immense_
numbers. To attack the rebels in front, or to surround them by the
Occoquan and Brentsville, would have been a too--simple operation; by
a special, an immense, space-embracing anaconda strategy, the rebel
army was to be cut off from the whole of rebeldom, and forced to
surrender _en masse_ to the inventor of (the not yet patented, I hope)
bloodless victories. To accomplish such an immense result, a fleet of
transports was already ordered to be gathered at Annapolis. On them in
ten or fifteen days (O, hear!) an army of fifty to sixty thousand,
most completely equipped, was to be embarked, plus forty thousand in
Washington, all this to sail under the personal command of the
general-in-chief, and sail towards Richmond. Richmond taken, the rebel
army at Manassas would have been cut off, and obliged to surrender on