The most practised diplomatic pen in Europe could not have written a more dignified, courteous, or succinct presentation of the case; and yet, under the necessities of the moment, it was impossible to adopt this procedure.  Upon full discussion, it was decided that war with Great Britain must be avoided, and Mr. Seward wrote a despatch defending the course of Captain Wilkes up to the point where he permitted the Trent to proceed on her voyage.  It was his further duty to have brought her before a prize court.  Failing in this, he had left the capture incomplete under rules of international law, and the American government had thereby lost the right and the legal evidence to establish the contraband character of the vessel and the persons seized.  Under the circumstances, the prisoners were therefore willingly released.  Excited American feeling was grievously disappointed at the result; but American good sense readily accommodated itself both to the correctness of the law expounded by the Secretary of State, and to the public policy that averted a great international danger; particularly as this decision forced Great Britain to depart from her own and to adopt the American traditions respecting this class of neutral rights.

It has already been told how Captain George B. McClellan was suddenly raised in rank, at the very outset of the war, first to a major-generalship in the three months’ militia, then to the command of the military department of the Ohio; from that to a major-generalship in the regular army; and after his successful campaign in West Virginia was called to Washington and placed in command of the Division of the Potomac, which comprised all the troops in and around Washington, on both sides of the river.  Called thus to the capital of the nation to guard it against the results of the disastrous battle of Bull Run, and to organize a new army for extended offensive operations, the surrounding conditions naturally suggested to him that in all likelihood he would play a conspicuous part in the great drama of the Civil War.  His ambition rose eagerly to the prospect.  On the day on which he assumed command, July 27, he wrote to his wife: 

“I find myself in a new and strange position here; President, cabinet, General Scott, and all, deferring to me.  By some strange operation of magic I seem to have become the power of the land.”

And three days later: 

“They give me my way in everything, full swing and unbounded confidence....  Who would have thought, when we were married, that I should so soon be called upon to save my country?”

And still a few days afterward: 

“I shall carry this thing en grande, and crush the rebels in one campaign.”

From the giddy elevation to which such an imaginary achievement raised his dreams, there was but one higher step, and his colossal egotism immediately mounted to occupy it.  On August 9, just two weeks after his arrival in Washington, he wrote: