In a personal point of view this short letter is pregnant with interest and suggestion.  The writer’s sad face, eloquent of the charge and burden of one of the most awful destinies of human-kind, rises before us as we read the expression of his modest self-distrust amid the strange duties of military affairs.  But closely following this comes the intimation that in due time “orders” will come.  Such was the quiet, unflinching way in which Lincoln always faced every test, apparently with a tranquil and assured faith that, whatever might seem his lack of fitting preparation, his best would be adequate to the occasion.  The habit has led many to fancy that he believed himself divinely chosen, and therefore sure of infallible guidance; but it is observable far back, almost from the beginning of his life; it was a trait of mind and character, nothing else.  The letter closes with a broad general theory concerning the war, wrought out by that careful process of thinking whereby he was wont to make his way to the big, simple, and fundamental truth.  The whole is worth holding in memory through the narrative of the coming weeks.

The conference of January 13 developed a serious difference of opinion as to the plan of campaign, whenever a campaign should be entered upon.  The President’s notion, already shadowed forth in his memorandum of December, was to move directly upon the rebel army at Centreville and Manassas and to press it back upon Richmond, with the purpose of capturing that city.  But McClellan presented as his project a movement by Urbana and West Point, using the York River as a base of supplies.  General McDowell and Secretary Chase favored the President’s plan; General Franklin and Postmaster Blair thought better of McClellan’s.  The President had a strong fancy for his own scheme, because by it the Union army was kept between the enemy and Washington; and therefore the supreme point of importance, the safety of the national capital, was insured.  The discussion, which was thus opened and which remained long unsettled, had, among other ill effects, that of sustaining the vexatious delay.  While the anti-McClellan faction—­for the matter was becoming one of factions[163]—­grew louder in denunciation of his inaction, and fastened upon him the contemptuous nickname of “the Virginia creeper,” the friends of the general retorted that the President, meddling in what he did not understand, would not let the military commander manage the war.

Nevertheless Mr. Lincoln, dispassionate and fair-minded as usual, allowed neither their personal difference of opinion nor this abusive outcry to inveigle into his mind any prejudice against McClellan.  The Southerner who, in February, 1861, predicted that Lincoln “would do his own thinking,” read character well.  Lincoln was now doing precisely this thing, in his silent, thorough, independent way, neither provoked by McClellan’s cavalier assumption of superior knowledge, nor alarmed by the danger of offending