McClellan’s activity and judgment as an army organizer naturally created great hopes that he would be equally efficient as a commander in the field.  But these hopes were grievously disappointed.  To his first great defect of estimating himself as the sole savior of the country, must at once be added the second, of his utter inability to form any reasonable judgment of the strength of the enemy in his front.  On September 8, when the Confederate army at Manassas numbered forty-one thousand, he rated it at one hundred and thirty thousand.  By the end of October that estimate had risen to one hundred and fifty thousand, to meet which he asked that his own force should be raised to an aggregate of two hundred and forty thousand, with a total of effectives of two hundred and eight thousand, and four hundred and eighty-eight guns.  He suggested that to gather this force all other points should be left on the defensive; that the Army of the Potomac held the fate of the country in its hands; that the advance should not be postponed beyond November 25; and that a single will should direct the plan of accomplishing a crushing defeat of the rebel army at Manassas.

On the first of November the President, yielding at last to General Scott’s urgent solicitation, issued the orders placing him on the retired list, and in his stead appointing General McClellan to the command of all the armies.  The administration indulged the expectation that at last “The Young Napoleon,” as the newspapers often called him, would take advantage of the fine autumn weather, and, by a bold move with his single will and his immense force, outnumbering the enemy nearly four to one, would redeem his promise to crush the army at Manassas and “save the country.”  But the November days came and went, as the October days had come and gone.  McClellan and his brilliant staff galloped unceasingly from camp to camp, and review followed review, while autumn imperceptibly gave place to the cold and storms of winter; and still there was no sign of forward movement.

Under his own growing impatience, as well as that of the public, the President, about the first of December, inquired pointedly, in a memorandum suggesting a plan of campaign, how long it would require to actually get in motion.  McClellan answered:  “By December 15,—­probably 25”; and put aside the President’s suggestion by explaining:  “I have now my mind actively turned toward another plan of campaign that I do not think at all anticipated by the enemy, nor by many of our own people.”

December 25 came, as November 25 had come, and still there was no plan, no preparation, no movement.  Then McClellan fell seriously ill.  By a spontaneous and most natural impulse, the soldiers of the various camps began the erection of huts to shelter them from snow and storm.  In a few weeks the Army of the Potomac was practically, if not by order, in winter quarters; and day after day the monotonous telegraphic phrase “All quiet on the Potomac” was read from Northern newspapers in Northern homes, until by mere iteration it degenerated from an expression of deep disappointment to a note of sarcastic criticism.