any terms.

The above splendid conception was, and still is, peddled among the
army and among the nation by the admirers of, and the devotees of,
anaconda strategy.

The expedition was to land at the mouth of the Tappahannock, a small
port, or rather a creek, used for shipping of a small quantity of
tobacco. As the port or creek has only some small attempts at wharves,
the landing of such an enormous army, with parks of artillery, with
cavalry, pontoons, and material for constructing bridges,--the landing
would not have been executed in weeks, if in months; but the projector
of the plan, perfectly losing the notion of time, calculated for ten
days. From that port the _flying_ expedition was to march directly on
Richmond through a country having only common field and dirt roads,
and this in a season when all roads generally are in an impassable
condition, through a country intersected by marshy streams, principal
among them the Matapony and the Pamunkey--to march towards Richmond
and the Chickahominy marshes. It seems that Chickahominy exercised an
attractive, Armida-like charm on the great strategian. An army loaded
with such immense trains would have sufficiently destroyed all the
roads, and rendered them impassable for itself; and the _flying_
expedition would at once have been transformed into an expedition
sticking in the mud, similar to that subsequent in the peninsula. The
enemy was in possession of Fredericksburg and of the railroad to
Hanover Court House on one flank, and of all the best roads north of
and through Chickahominy marshes on the other flank. The _flying_
expedition would have had for base Tappahannock and a dirt road. O
strategy! O stuff!

The much-persecuted General McDowell exposed the worse than crudity of
the brilliant conception. By doing this, McDowell saved the country,
the administration, and the strategian from immense losses and from a
nameless shame. It is due to the people that the administration lay
before the public the scheme and the refutation. A look on the map of
Virginia must convince even the simplest mind of the brilliancy of
this conception.

During all this time spent in such masterly operations, the rebel army
in Manassas was to quietly look on, to wait, and not move, not
retreat on Richmond. Early in March, at once the rebel army, always
undisturbed, quietly disappeared from Manassas; and this is the best
evidence of the depth of that brilliant combination, peddled und