After the transfer of the Army of the Potomac to the Peninsula there was great impatience at the delays in the expected advance on Richmond.  The President shared this impatience, and his despatches to McClellan took an urgent and imperative though always friendly tone.  April 9 he wrote:  “Your despatches, complaining that you are not properly sustained, while they do not offend me, do pain me very much.  I suppose the whole force which has gone forward for you is with you by this time.  And, if so, I think it is the precise time for you to strike a blow.  By delay, the enemy will relatively gain upon you—­that is, he will gain faster by fortifications and reinforcements than you can by reinforcements alone.  And once more let me tell you, it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow....  I beg to assure you that I have never written to 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.”

While Lincoln was thus imperative toward McClellan, he would not permit him to be unjustly criticized.  Considerable ill-feeling having been developed between McClellan and Secretary Stanton, which was made worse by certain meddlesome persons in Washington, the President took occasion, at a public meeting, to express his views in these frank and manly words:  “There has been a very wide-spread attempt to have a quarrel between General McClellan and the Secretary of War.  Now, I occupy a position that enables me to observe that these two gentlemen are not nearly so deep in the quarrel as some pretending to be their friends.  General McClellan’s attitude is such that, in the very selfishness of his nature, he cannot but wish to be successful, as I hope he will be; and the Secretary of War is in precisely the same situation.  If the military commanders in the field cannot be successful, not only the Secretary of War but myself, for the time being the master of them both, cannot but be failures.  I know General McClellan wishes to be successful, and I know he does not wish it any more than the Secretary of War wishes it for him, and both of them together no more than I wish it.  Sometimes we have a dispute about how many men General McClellan has had, and those who would disparage him say he has had a very large number, and those who would disparage the Secretary of War insist that General McClellan has had a very small number.  The basis for this is, there is always a wide difference, and on this occasion perhaps a wider one than usual, between the grand total on McClellan’s rolls and the men actually fit for duty; and those who would disparage him talk of the grand total on paper, and those who would disparage the Secretary of War talk of those at present fit for duty.  General McClellan has sometimes asked for things that the Secretary of War did not give him.  General McClellan is not to blame for asking what he wanted and needed, and the Secretary of War is not to blame for not giving when he had none to give.”