“I beg to assure you that I have never written you or spoken to you in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as, in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can.  But you must act.”

McClellan, in consternation and almost despair at the repeated pruning of his force, now begged for at least a part of McDowell’s corps, which, he said on April 10, was “indispensable;” “the fate of our cause depends upon it.”  Accordingly Franklin’s division was sent to him; and then, after all this palaver, he kept it a fortnight on shipboard, until Yorktown was evacuated!

On May 1 the President, tortured by the political gadflies in Washington, and suffering painfully from the weariness of hope so long deferred, telegraphed:  “Is anything to be done?” A pitiful time of it Mr. Lincoln was having, and it called for a patient fortitude surpassing imagination.  Yet one little bit of fruit was at this moment ripe for the plucking!  After about four weeks of wearisome labor the general had brought matters to that condition which was so grateful to his cautious soul.  At the beginning of May he had reduced success to a certainty, so that he expected to open fire on May 5, and to make short work of the rebel stronghold.  But it so happened that another soldier also had at the same time finished his task.  General Magruder had delayed the Union army to the latest possible hour, he had saved a whole valuable month; and now, quite cheerfully and triumphantly, in the night betwixt May 3 and May 4, he quietly slipped away.  As it had happened at Manassas, so now again the Federals marched unopposed into deserted intrenchments; and a second time the enemy had so managed it that their retreat seemed rather to cast a slur upon Union strategy than to bring prestige to the Union arms.

McClellan at once continued his advance, with more or less fighting, the rebels steadily drawing back without offering battle on a large scale, though there was a sharp engagement at Williamsburg.  He had not even the smaller number of men which he had originally named as his requirement, and he continued pertinaciously to demand liberal reinforcements.  The President, grievously harassed by these importunate appeals, declared to McClellan that he was forwarding every man that he could, while to friends nearer at hand he complained that sending troops to McClellan was like shoveling fleas across a barnyard; most of them didn’t get there!  At last he made up his mind to send the remainder of McDowell’s corps; not because he had changed his mind about covering Washington, but because the situation had become such that he expected to arrange this matter by other resources.