sses." Oh what _Marses!_ _Lee's position at Williamsport was on
heights_, etc., etc., assert those braves.

When a country is hilly and undulating there will always be found
one point or hill commanding the others. I shall risk my head on the
fact, that around Lee's entrenchments at Williamsport, there exist
other elevations which command Williamsport, and are within
artillery distance. _Natura semper sibi consona._ I am sure that
better positions than that selected by Lee could easily have been
occupied by our troops or artillery. The same must have been the
case at Hagerstown. And if the generals were afraid to fight Lee's
whole army they ought to have more vigilantly watched his crossing.
There was a time when a part only of the rebel army was facing us,
and at least this part ought to have been attacked and crippled, if
not destroyed. Sound common sense teaches it. But it seems that no
will to fight Lee, or to impede his safe recrossing, no such will
animated the majority of the council of war. It seems that some of
the West Point nurslings are still awe-struck at the sight of their
slavocratic former companions, as they were at the time of their
studies at West Point.

I was told by an officer coming from the army that the soldiers are
exasperated. The soldiers say that the generals did not wish to
destroy Lee's army and finish the rebellion, because their "stars
were to set down." Who knows how far the soldiers are right?

_July 17._--In New York the _unterrified_ democracy went to arson
and murder, hand in hand with the immense majority of Irishry.
Meagher, Nugent, Corcoran and thousands like you, are exceptions.
The O'Connors, O'Gormans, etc., are the unterrified. For these
bloody saturnalia the wedding was consecrated by the Iro-Roman
priesthood. As the _unterrified_ Democrats pollute the sacred name
of genuine Democracy, so the Irishry stain even the Catholic
confession. The Iro-Roman Church in this country is not even a
Roman-Catholic end. This Iro-Romanism here is a mixture of cunning,
ignorance, brutality and extortion. A European Roman-Catholic at
once finds out the difference in the spirit, and even to a certain
extent, in the form. The incendiaries and murderers in the New York
riots are the nurslings and disciples of the Iro-Roman clergy and
the Iro-hierarchy.

_July 17._--Mr. Lincoln ought to dismiss every general who voted
against fighting; dismiss _Meade_ for not understanding his power as
comm