The renegades
The great military idol of the
North,
McClellan, may yet have reason to regret that he did not follow his original secession proclivities.
Like
Commodore Farragus and
Captain Porter, of the New Orleans squadron, and
Captain Beil, the
flag captain who was so ready to bombard the women and children of the
Crescent City; like
Rosecrans, and many other Federal officers who might be named,
McClellan was an original Secessionist.
There are thousands of men, now defending their hearths and homes against these same renegades, who were Union men when these leaders of the invasion were actually encouraging the
South to secede!
And now they have drawn the sword and are plunging it into the bosoms of all who have refused to be as cringing and recreant as themselves.
Not a few of these
Dugald Dalgettys of the land and water, who go for pay and provant, and for nothing else, were desirous at one time to serve under the
Confederate flag; but the
North bid higher for them than the
South, and so we have to know them as enemies, instead of friends.
McClellan himself, we are credibly informed, once wrote a letter to a distinguished Southern officer, expressing his desire to take service in the
Southern army; and but for the tempting bait held out to him by Lincolndom, would now be defending, instead of at tacking,
Richmond.
However, we would not exchange his services in his present capacity for any he could have rendered as a Confederate officer.
He could have added little to a military galaxy composed of such stars of the first magnitude — such genuine stars, not mere glittering humbugs — as
Johnston,
Beauregard,
Magruder,
Smith, and a score of other old comrades of
McClellan, who are proving themselves every day his masters in the art of war. In his present position he is involving the
Washington Government in a load of debt which bids fair to cripple it for the next century, and every day is adding millions to the load.
We regard
McClellan, with his slow, tortoise like movements, as equal to an army of fifty thousand well-equipped soldiers on the
Southern side.
