it the Constitution, the Statute, is it the
incarnate four years formula which seals Stanton's heart and brains?
or is Stanton eaten up by the rats in the Cabinet?

_January 10._--The messages of the loyal Governors, not copperheads,
(as is Seymour of N. Y.) above all, the message of Andrew of
Massachusetts, throw a ray of hope and promise over this dark, cold,
unpatriotic confusion so eminent here in Washington. This confusion,
this groping, double-dealing and helplessness can be only cured by a
wonder, or else all will be lost. The wonder is daily perpetrated by
the all enduring, all-sacrificing people.

Those criminals who ought to have been shot, or, at the mildest,
cashiered for the slaughter at Fredericksburgh, the engineers,
mock-Jominis, the sham soldiers: all these Washington engineers of
that recent butchery, assert now, that, after all, the possession of
Fredericksburgh was immaterial; that Lee would have then selected a
better position. All this is thrown to the public to palliate the
crime of the Washington military conclave, and to weaken and
invalidate Hooker's evidence before the War Committee. It must be
admitted that if Hooker--having fifty thousand in hand, and one
hundred thousand in his rear, had seized the Fredericksburgh
heights, he would not have allowed Lee to so easily select a
position and to fortify it. Nay, I suppose, that not only Hooker,
but even a Halleck, a Cullum or a Meigs would have prevented Lee
from settling in any comfortable position. However, I might be
mistaken. Corinth, Corinth, for Halleck. Those great nightcaps here
have so original and so new military conceptions, their general
comprehension of warfare so widely differs from science, experience,
and from common sense, that, holding Fredericksburgh they might have
invited Lee to select whatever he wanted as a strong position.

I learn that Halleck is at work to translate some French military
book. What an inimitable narrow-minded pedant. If Halleck had
brains, he could not have an hour leisure for translation. But in
such way he humbugs Mr. Lincoln, who looks on Halleck as the
quintessence of military knowledge and genius. A man who can
translate a French book must be a genius. Is it not so, Lincoln? And
thus Halleck translates a book instead of taking care that the
pontoons be sent in time; and Halleck prepared sheets for the press,
and our soldiers to be massacred.

Burnside prepares a movement; Franklin, to undermine