Brilliant and enthusiastic tributes have been paid to these men for their endurance amid disease and wounds and battle; but not one word too much has been said.  It is only cruel to think of the hideous price which they had paid, and by which they had bought only the capacity to endure further perils and hardship.  Second, concerning McClellan; it was to be admitted that his predictions as to points of strategy had been fulfilled; that he had managed his retreat, or “change of base,” with skill, and had shown some qualities of high generalship; but it was also evident that he was of a temperament so unenterprising and apprehensive as to make him entirely useless in an offensive campaign.  Yet the burden of conducting a successful offense lay upon the North.  Must Mr. Lincoln, then, finally accept the opinion of those who had long since concluded that McClellan was not the man for the place?

A collateral question was:  What should be done next?  McClellan, tenacious and stubborn, was for persisting in the movement against Lee’s army and Richmond.  He admitted no other thought than that, having paused to gather reinforcements and to refresh his army, he should assume the offensive, approaching the city by the south and southwest from the James River base.  Holding this purpose, he was impolitic in sending very dolorous dispatches on July 4 and 7, intimating doubts as to his power to maintain successfully even the defensive.  Two or three days later, however, he assumed a better tone; and on July 11 and 12 he reported “all in fine spirits,” and urged that his army should be “promptly reinforced and thrown again upon Richmond.  If we have a little more than half a chance, we can take it.”  He continued throughout the month to press these views by arguments which, though overruled at the time, have since been more favorably regarded.  Whether or not they were correct is an item in the long legacy of questions left by the war to be disputed over by posterity; in time, one side or the other may desist from the discussion in weariness, but, from the nature of the case, neither can be vanquished.

Whether McClellan was right or wrong, his prestige, fresh as it still remained with his devoted troops, was utterly gone at Washington, where the political host was almost a unit against him.  The Committee on the Conduct of the War had long been bitterly denouncing him; and he had so abused the secretary of war that even the duplicity of Mr. Stanton was unequal to the strain of maintaining an appearance of good understanding.  New military influences also fell into the same scale.  General Pope, the latest “favorite,” now enjoying his few weeks of authority, endeavored to make it clear to Mr. Lincoln that to bring McClellan back from the Peninsula was the only safe and intelligent course.  Further, on July 11, President Lincoln appointed General Halleck general-in-chief.  It may be said, in passing, that the appointment turned out to be a very bad mistake; for Halleck was as dull