, declared
that at the head of his former corps, the 9th, he would himself
storm the miniature Torres Vedras. If all this is true, then
Burnside is weaker headed than I had judged him to be; but I will
not do him the injustice to say that he really intended to play a
mere farce. What, in the name of common sense, could he do with a
single corps, when the whole army was repulsed?

I am warned by a friend, that the Army of the Potomac is so infected
with McClellanism, that is to say, by presumption, intriguing, envy
and misconception of what is true generalship,--that the army must
undergo the process of strong purification, fumigation, pruning and
weeding, (and especially among the higher branches,) before it can
ever again be made truly useful and reliable.

_Dec. 22._--Burnside's report. I am sure that the great luminaries
of the press, and the declaimers, the intriguants and the imbeciles,
will be thrown into fits of ecstatic admiration of what they will
call the manly and straight-forward conduct of Burnside in assuming
the responsibility and confessing his own fault. But what else could
he do? And if he acted thus in obedience to the orders of Halleck,
then instead of manliness, his conduct is almost treasonable towards
the people, for in withholding the truth as to the orders given by
Halleck, he gives that incarnation of calamity the power to repeat
the butchery and ensure the ill success of our armies.

The report is altogether unsoldierly; it is fussy and inflated; a
full blown specimen of the pompously inane. How can Burnside venture
to say that after the repulse, during three days he expected the
enemy to leave his stronghold and attack him--Burnside? The rebels
never did anything to justify such a supposition. They are neither
idiots nor madmen, and only from a McClellan, or some bright pupils
of the McClellan school, could such imbecility, such gratuitously
ruinous playing into the hands of an enemy be expected. A commander
ought to be on the watch for any mistake that his antagonist may
commit, but he is not justified in setting that antagonist down as
an ass. For two days the army was unnecessarily kept under the guns
of the enemy, that is the truth, and I will make the truth known, no
matter who may try to conceal it. Here, for the present, I stop in
sheer and uncontrollable disgust. By and by, however, I will return
to the consideration of this report.

Oh! American people! In so very many respects,