f the army has thus been butchered by the surpassing stupidity
of its commanders. The details of that slaughter, and of the
imbecility displayed by our officers in high command,--those details,
when published, will be horrible. The Lincoln-Seward-Halleck-influence
gave Burnside the command because he was to take care of the army. And
how Burnside has fulfilled their expectations! It seems that the best
way to take care of an army is to make it victorious.

My brave and patriotic Wadsworth has gone in the field, also his two
sons; one of them, (Tick,) was at Fredericksburgh, and his bravery
was remarkable, even among all the heroism of that most glorious and
most accursed day. How many such patriots as Wadsworth, can we boast
of? Yet the miserable Halleck had the impudence to say--"Wadsworth
may go wherever he pleases, even if he pleases to go to Hell!"

Hell itself, would be too good a place for Halleck; imbeciles are
not admitted there!

_Dec. 17._--The details are coming in. The disaster of our army is
terrible--indescribable; the heroic people bleeds, bleeds! And all
this calamity and all this suffering and humiliation, are brought on
by the stupidity of Burnside and Halleck, or both of them. The curse
of the people ought to rest for centuries upon the very names of the
authors of such frightful disaster. They are fiends, yea, worse,
even, than the very fiends themselves.

Why, even the very rabble in Constantinople would storm the seraglio
after such a massacre. But here--oh, here, it just reminds Mr.
Lincoln of a little anecdote.

_Dec. 17._--I meet with but few such as Wade, Grimes, Chandler and
other radicals in both Houses of Congress, who seem to feel all the
heart burning and bitterness of soul at this awful Fredericksburgh
disaster. The real criminals, those who ought, in the agonies of a
great shame, call upon the rocks and the mountains to fall upon them
not, blush not, sorrow not.

In many of the general public, I have no doubt that the feeling of
shame and sympathy, are blunted by these repeated military
calamities, and by Mr. Lincoln's undaunted i..........

* * * * * and men,
Have wept enough, for what? To weep,
To weep again.

_Dec. 17._--About ten days ago, Mr. Seward again sent forth to
Europe and to her Cabinets, one of his stale, and by no means
Delphic oracles, predicting the success of Burnside's campaign, and
immediately follows a bloody and disgraceful calamity! Such is
always