Daily Ohio Statesman

General McClellan, the people have been assured from time to time by dispatches emanating from Washington under the sanction of the Government, has the confidence of the President, General Halleck and the War Department. The President said, in his speech at the great war meeting in Washington on the 6th inst., that he believed McClellan to be "an able and a brave man." The fact that he is retained in his high command is a sufficient answer to all impeachments of his skill, courage or loyalty.

What then shall be said of papers that give currency to a report that General McClellan not only protects the property of a "notorious rebel," but gives him a pass to go and come through our lines, even going to Richmond, for aught that is known to the contrary, and which a "notorious rebel" would be very apt to do under such circumstances? This report is given, too, without a word of contradiction or even an intimation that it may be a lie. Here is a direct impeachment of the loyalty of General McClellan, and its publication gives "aid and comfort to the enemy," if anything can.

The country is told that "under such management" as that of General McClellan's, "it need not be surprised to hear very soon of disaster through treachery, made easy by our commanders," and it is confidently predicted that "Ball's Bluff will be repeated on a large scale."

The Government is reinforcing General McClellan and raising troops for the express purpose of strengthening him in his position. No man who enlists in the army knows how soon he may be ordered to the James river or wherever McClellan's forces may be. To insinuate, much more to publish an article pointing McClellan out by name as disloyal, and as likely through treachery to repeat on a grand scale the Ball's Bluff slaughter, is to discourage and prevent enlistments in the most direct and efficacious mode that could be devised.