rebels to retreat from
Winchester, and otherwise damage them far more than _will_ or can do
such McClellans, Hallecks, and all this c----e.

One of the greatest misfortunes for the American people is to have
considered as statesmen the rhetors, the petty politicians, and the
speech-makers. Now, those rhetors, petty politicians, and
speech-makers are at the helm, are in the Senate, and--ruin the
country.

The optimists and the subservients still console themselves and
confuse the people by asserting that Mr. Lincoln will yet _come out_
as a man and a statesman. Previous to such a happy change the
country's honor and the country's political and material vitality will
_run out_.

More than a year ago Mr. Seward said to the Prince Salm and to me,
that this war ought to be fought out by foreigners; that the Americans
fought the revolutionary war, but now they are devoted to peaceful
pursuits; and that it is the duty of Europeans to save this refuge
from the thraldoms in the old world.

Now, I see that Mr. Seward was right, although in a sense different
from that in which he uttered the above sentence.

The Irish excepted, all the other foreign-born Americans, but
preeminently the Germans, are more in communion with the lofty, pure,
and humane element in the thus called American principle, are
therefore more in communion with the creed of the immense majority of
Americans, than are they, the present dabblers in politics, the
would-be leaders, (civil and military,) the would-be statesmen, all of
whom are eaten up by the admixture into what is vital and perennial in
the signification of America, of all that in itself is local, muddy,
petty, accidental, and transient.

_Oct. 23._--The recent publication of General Scott's letter, and of a
writing to President Buchanan, confirms my opinion that "the highest
military authority in the land" faltered after March 4, 1861, and
inaugurated that defensive warfare wherein we _stick_ on the Potomac
until this day.

Pseudo-liberal right-honorable Gladstone asserts that Jeff. Davis "has
made the South a nation;" then Abraham Lincoln, with W. H. Seward and
G. B. McClellan, have destroyed a noble and generous nation.

England may now recognize the South, France may join in it, but other
great European powers, as Russia, Spain, Prussia, Austria, will not
follow in such a wake. The recognition will not materially improve the
condition of the rebels, nor raise the blockade. But as soo