North Shore, Sunday, 3d August, ’62.
It is not easy to say who is responsible for this extremity.
I do not blame any one man; the difficulty is ultimately in the nation, but a
good deal must be shouldered by those who so attacked McClellan that he became
the centre of party combinations. I think that he must soon retire from his
command, for the faith of his own army is leaving him. Yet I think that history
will record that he was a faithful and devoted citizen and soldier, and that,
if he was unequal to his task and did not know it, it was an ignorance he
shared with the most accomplished of our military men, and with the mass of the
people.
The country seems to me to be making up its mind whether it
will own itself beaten. But I do not lose heart, although in events there is
little to encourage. I cannot believe that a people which has shown itself so
singularly ready to learn what to do and how to think will fail in this crisis.
If the government continues to move as fast as the nation, all is saved. I
don't know whether I think it will or not.
SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p.
156-7
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