At last the growing coolness of McClellan went so far that an event occurred which Hay indignantly set down in his diary:  “I wish here to record what I consider a portent of evil to come.  The President, Governor Seward and I went over to McClellan’s house tonight.  The servant at the door said the General was at the wedding of Colonel Wheaton at General Buell’s and would soon return.  We went in and after we had waited about an hour, McClellan came in, and without paying particular attention to the porter who told him the President was waiting to see him, went up-stairs, passing the door of the room where the President and the Secretary of State were seated.  They waited about half an hour, and sent once more a servant to tell the General they were there; and the answer came that the General had gone to bed.

“I merely record this unparalleled insolence of epaulettes without comment It is the first indication I have yet seen of the threatened supremacy of the military authorities.  Coming home, I spoke to the President about the matter, but he seemed not to have noticed it specially, saying it were better at this time not to be making points of etiquette and personal dignity."(5)

Did ever a subordinate, even a general, administer to a superior a more astounding snub?  To Lincoln in his selfless temper, it was Only a detail in his problem of getting the army into action.  What room for personal affronts however gross in a mood like his?  To be sure he ceased going to McClellan’s house, and thereafter summoned McClellan to come to him, but no change appeared in the tone of his intercourse with the General.  “I will hold McClellan’s horse,” said he, “if he will win me victories."(6)

All this while, the two were debating plans of campaign and McClellan was revealing-as we now see, though no one saw it at the time-the deep dread of responsibility that was destined to paralyze him as an active general.  He was never ready.  Always, there must be more preparation, more men, more this, more that.

In January, 1862, Lincoln, grown desperate because of hope deferred, made the first move of a sort that was to be lamentably frequent the next six months.  He went over the head of the Commanding General, and, in order to force a result, evoked a power not recognized in the military scheme of things.  By this time the popular adulation of McClellan was giving place to a general imitation of the growling of the Jacobins, now well organized in the terrible Committee and growing each day more and more hostile to the Administration.  Lincoln had besought McClellan to take into account the seriousness of this rising tide of opposition.(7) His arguments made no impression.  McClellan would not recognize the political side of war.  At last, partly to allay the popular clamor, partly to force McClellan into a corner, Lincoln published to the country a military program.  He publicly instructed the Commanding General to put all his forces in movement on all fronts, on Washington’s birthday.(8)