Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1862-11-18
@oteester 4aiIg Spy
LIVING PORTRAITS.

AAS ceeihS ldIttl 1T llG C6uJT6 par
alyzed the cabinet, tied up the president, and
laid spell upon the army. What that in
tluence was, and by whom welded, it will
be the business of the future to search out
Another chapter is to be added to the histo-
ry of renowned folly and of illustrious weak
ness.
SECRETARY SEWARD.
Then, it may be, some Macaulay will leave
to us such portrait as this Chief in latent
influence was a man of IDEAS which had no
physical consequences. An optimist; not
without sagacity in merely intellectual prob
lens, but foolish in affairs. He had the
very conceit of hope. So certain was he of
the favorable tendencies of great natural
causes, that he scarcely deemed 1t needful to
exert special volitions under them. He was
wise in ideas, and foolish in things. What
ever could be settled by thinking he managed
skilfully. Bus it was his infatuation to sup
pose that all things could be managed by
thinking. He was an idealist-rich in the top
of his BRAIN lean and feeble in the bottom.
So, all matters that lay upon the earth, he
treated as if they were shadows, that came
and went, without human volition, by the
movements of the sun. His realities began
where common mems ended in the realm of
mere ideas. He was utterly devoid of the
instincts of physical forces. He could hate,
but could not fight Without wisdom in d.
rection of practical affairs, he had such acute
ness, ingenuity, and mind force, that his criti-
cisms and judgments weighed much in the
shaping of other mems practical policies. His
inordinate hopefulness lit up the future with
perpetual brightness, and led him to frequent
prophecies. And, like all uninspired proph-
cts, the failure of his predictions abated no jot
of confidence in his provision, and he still
covered old disappontments with new prom
Uses. He was at once the zealot and the cow
ard of the administration.
PRESIDENT LINCOLN.
By the side of such mind was placed a
man remarkable in not few respects. &C.
NAL, kind to fault but, above all, with strong
instincts of justice, with strong and homely
sense, and with reasoning faculty unusual
in its methods, slow and odd, yet at length
reaching broad results, and generally Sound
ones. Well verSed in local politics, but I'M
trained in national administration, he became
the president of the United States divided, at
time that required the utmost sagacity join
ed to firmness and decision. He was both
firm and facile, obstinate yet changeable. Re-
Sisting persuasionS and reasOnings with sin
gular constancy, he was liable, in certain
moods, to accept unripe advice, and to
precipitate rash action. Mistakes arising
from these causes served not so much,
through experience, to produce sagacity, as
to render him fearful of other mistakes, and
so of following any counsel. Upon such
mind the confident counsels of an optimist,
whose future was all bright, who was insensi-
Bile to physical reality, who found little diff
Guilty in the administration of mere ideas,
could not fail to be great. When, in perifous
times, president is slow from conscientious
timidity, his worst counsellor is one who, from
excess of hope, tells him there is no need of
action, and that waiting is wisdom! While
caution and conceit were maintaining feeble
ness at the centre, there might have yet been
uanuch progress had the armies of the Union
Nneen led by enterprising generals. 1t is one
OF the extraordinary events of the times that
two generals, to whose hands chiefly the cam
paign year was committed, were by nature
and sympathy fitted to command under an adj
ministration where irresolute honesty took
counsel of indolent hopefulness.
GEN. NC CLELLAN.
Gen. Mcclellan has secured for himself
place in history. But it will be by his acct
dental association with the great events,
rather than by any important influence which
he has had in producing them. He is a man
of large perceptive and moderate reflective
intellect. He is without genius or even
moderate intuition. He digs out his conclu-
sions as laboriously as ore is dug from the
mines. He received a thorough military edu-
cation. And whatever could be accomplished
by studiousness and untiring industry no man
could better accomplish than he. But he
sees nothing and knows nothing, till it is re-
duced to the level of his practical reason.
Especially he lacked sense and intuition of
human forces. The. wise use Of physical
matter makes an engineer. The wise use OF
men makes the general. Mcclellan is only
an engineer. But, such man was compe-
tent to great results had right dispositions and
sagacious political faith come to his help.
But he was possessed by an imperative eau
ton that worked sometimes toward irresOlu-
tons and sometimes toward obstinacy, but
never toward daring enterprise. His anxiety
to be fully prepared was morbid He was
never yet ready. There was always some
thing yet to be done before he deemed it wise
to venture. He heaped up preparations. He
had never enough men; never enough arms,
or clothing, or munitions. The whole east
drained toward his camp. And when,
more than any general that ever command
ed on this continent, he had at his COM
mand every resource of the nation, he was
still unready. AT length, when patience was
worn out, and the president, the cabinet, and
the whole country, clamored for activity, he
felt the possible dangers before him even
more than all the pressures of government
and country behind him, and demanded more
men and more means, complaining that he
was hampered and thwarted! A log of wood
lying upon the spring grass is mightier, by its
dead pressure against the hidden roots, than
all the laws of growth And so respectable
engineer, but inert general, lay upon the army
like spell of death, or of mOtionless en-
chantment. The same fate that gave to the
army Mcclellan on the east of the Allegha-
MES, raised up Buell. on the west. 1t is diff
ficult to say which excelled in practical tor
pidity, Buell. or Mcclellan. Whichever figure
one contemplates, it seems impossible that
another should excel HIM in laborious useless
ness. Both were Unsuitable in demands, and
both wasted immense resources without any
important advantage. If there is anything
vet to be exhibited of military insufhciency,
some new man must be imagined, created ex-
pressly for it; for every conceivable part OF
Unsuitable demand and misery retention OF
forces and means has been exhausted by the
great Oriental Vas Ilea1ig and the Occidental
US IlertiGG."
LuDIcRoUs RECEPTION AT GRAND RAPIDS
OF PARsoN BRowNLow. Brownlow
.sa,,.l,, ,,;e;tod Grand Rani1e Mirhipan. and