April 6 he sent this telegram:  “You now have over 100,000 troops with you....  I think you better break the enemy’s line from Yorktown to Warwick River at once.”  An entry in McClellan’s “Own Story,” under date of April 8, comments upon this message and illustrates the unfortunate feeling of the writer towards his official superior:  “I have raised an awful row about McDowell’s corps.  The President very coolly telegraphed me yesterday that he thought I had better break the enemy’s lines at once!  I was much tempted to reply that he had better come and do it himself.”  Thus is made evident the lamentable relationship between the President, who could place no confidence in the enterprise and judgment of the military commander, and the general, who had only sneers for the President’s incapacity to comprehend warfare.  It so happened, however, that the professional man’s sarcasm was grossly out of place, and the civilian’s proposal was shrewdly right, as events soon plainly proved.  In fact what Mr. Lincoln urged was precisely what General Johnston anticipated and feared would be done, because he knew well that if it were done it would be of fatal effect against the Confederates.  But, on the other hand, even after the clear proof had gone against him, McClellan was abundantly supplied with excuses, and the vexation of the whole affair was made the greater by the fact that these excuses really seemed to be good.  His excuses always were both so numerous and so satisfactory, that many reasonably minded persons knew not whether they had a right to feel so angry towards him as they certainly could not help doing.  The present instance was directly in point.  General Keyes reported to him that no part of the enemy’s line could “be taken by assault without an enormous waste of life;” and General Barnard, chief engineer of the army, thought it uncertain whether they could be carried at all.  Loss of life and uncertainty of result were two things so abhorred by McClellan in warfare, that he now failed to give due weight to the consideration that the design of the Confederates in interposing an obstacle at this point was solely to delay him as much as possible, whereas much of the merit of his own plan of campaign lay in rapid execution at the outset.  The result was, of course, that he did not break any line, nor try to, but instead thereof “presented plausible reasons” out of his inexhaustible reservoir of such commodities.  It was unfortunate that the naval cooeperation, which McClellan had expected,[9] could not be had at this juncture; for by it the Yorktown problem would have been easily solved without either line-breaking or reason-giving.