Much indignation has of late been visited upon
Pope, by both the
Yankee and Confederate press, while, in general, they both seem to spare
McClellan.
We do not see that there is anything to choose between them.
The
Yankees abuse
Pope because be was unsuccessful So was
McClellan.
We abuse
Pope because he instigated his troops to plunder and destroy the country through which he passed.
If
McClellan did not do the same thing.
at least he took no pains to prevent it. The country be tween
Richmond and
Old Point is as they roughly desolated as the country between the
Potomac and the
Rapidan.
We laugh at
Pope for his lying bulletin.
and the
Yankees are enraged with him on the same account.
Yet he did not tell more or greater has than
McClellan.
If
Pope claimed a victory at
Cedar Run and
Manassas, let it be recollected that
McClellan claimed a victory in every one of the battles in which he was ignominiously defeated in front of Richmond His ‘"strategic movement and his’ ‘"change of base,"’ by which he designated his headlong flight from Mechanicville to
Berkeley, have become the laughing stock of the world
Pope was undoubtedly a great braggart.
He boasted that his headquarters were in his ended; that he had never seen anything but the backs of his enemies, and that he left his rear to take care of itself.
But surely
McClellan's Paradies upon the bulletins of
Napoleon after the little skirmishes at
Rich Mountain, his address to his troops at
Washington, in which he said that hereafter there was to be no retrograde movement; his threat to ‘"press
Johnston to the wall;"’ his declaration.
while he was cowering under the protection of his gunboats at
Berkeley, that he was determined to take
Richmond still; his grant of permission to his troops to record their own shame by ing on their colors the names of the battles in which they had fled like sheep before the
Confederates--surely, we say, all there entitle him to be considered, at least, the equal of
Pope in the art of bragging.
The difference between the two men we take to be this:
Pope is an open.
unblushing, bare-faced scoundrel, who is proud of being such, and openly boasts of it.
McClellan is equally a scoundrel, but he is a smooth tongued, hypocritical scoundrel, who smiles in your face, and addresses you with honeyed words while he is plundering you. Of the two we hold
McClellan to be the worst, for he is a hypocrite in addition to his other demerits.
