The dirt Digger
Gen. McClellan, alias the ‘"Young
Napoleon,"’ has given it to be understood that he in tends to take
Richmond as he has taken other places, with the spade, and not with the musket.
He has muskets enough, but he prefers the spade.
Let him sit down and dig dirt, and there is sure to be a universal evacuation.
We don't pretend to question the effectiveness of this process, but humbly suggest that it scarcely resembles the which set down and dug dirt nowhere except with the hoofs of cavalry and with cannon balls.
Napoleon was the fastest,
McClellan the a lowest of
Generals.
But, even admitting that to dig dirt is an efficient means of crushing the Southern Confederacy, we submit that the
General who adopts that system, and the followers, upon whose muskets he is afraid to depend, should cease to ape the character and ect of military men. They are simply scientific dirt- diggers.
To call them soldiers is a profanation of that chivalric and generous name.
They may be great at making excavations for railroads and canals, but it is quite ridiculous to dress them up and march them about as soldiers.
They rarely use their arms except to defend their ditches, and half of them might as well be equipped with spades as muskets.
What mar glory is there in overcoming an enemy by digging dirt?
Suppose that
McClellan should adopt the device of bringing with his army vast quantities of codfish; and placing it to the windward of every Southern town he wished to capture, and the people should thereby be compelled to evacuate — would that be considered a great military achievement — such an one as a soldier would be proud of?
An army of dirt diggers, sheathed in coats of mail, may consider themselves equal to the soldiers
Bonaparte led into
Italy, and their leader a second
Napoleon, but history and the world will write them down pretenders and humbugs.
They boast that they have two to one against us.--Why don't they come out and fight us like men?
