Such comparisons, advanced with positiveness by the highest authority, puzzled Mr. Lincoln.  They seemed very strange, yet he could not disprove them, and was therefore obliged to face the perplexing choice which was mercilessly set before him:  “either to go into winter quarters, or to assume the offensive with forces greatly inferior in number” to what was “desirable and necessary.”  “If political considerations render the first course unadvisable, the second alone remains.”  The general’s most cheering admission was that, by stripping all other armies down to the lowest numbers absolutely necessary for a strict defensive, and by concentrating all the forces of the nation and all the attention of the government upon “the vital point” in Virginia, it might yet be possible for this “main army, whose destiny it [was] to decide the controversy,... to move with a reasonable prospect of success before the winter is fairly upon us.”  A direct assertion of impossibility, provocative of denial or discussion, would have been less disheartening.

In passing, it may be remarked that McClellan’s prevision that the ultimate arbitrament of the struggle must occur in Virginia was correct.  But in another point he was wrong, and unfortunately this was of more immediate consequence, because it corroborated him in his purpose to delay till he could make success a certainty.  He hoped that when he moved, he should be able to win one or two overwhelming victories, to capture Richmond, and to crush the rebellion in a few weeks.  It was a brilliant and captivating programme,[153] but impracticable and undesirable.  Even had the Southerners been quelled by so great a disaster,—­which was not likely,—­they would not have been thoroughly conquered, nor would slavery have been disposed of, and both these events were indispensable to a definitive peace between the two sections.  Whether the President shared this notion of his general is not evident.  Apparently he was not putting his mind upon theories reaching into the future so much as he was devoting his whole thought to dealing with the urgent problems of the present.  If this was the case, he was pursuing the wise and sound course.  In the situation, it was more desirable to fight a great battle at the earliest possible moment than to await a great victory many months hence.

It is commonplace wisdom that it is foolish for a civilian to undertake the direction of a war.  Yet our Constitution ordains that “the President shall be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States.”  It is not supposable that the delegates who suggested this function, or the people who ordained it, anticipated that presidents generally would be men skilled in military science.  Therefore Mr. Lincoln could not escape the obligation on the ground of unfitness for the duty which was imperatively placed upon him.  It might be true