being in full flood, the Committee would believe no good of McClellan when he opposed advancing the elder generals to the rank of corps commanders.  His explanation that he “wished to test them in the field,” was poohpoohed.  Could not any good Jacobin see through that!  Of course, it was but an excuse to hold back the plums until he could drop them into the itching palms of those wicked Democrats, his “pets.”  Why should not the good men and true, elder and therefore better soldiers, whose righteousness was so well attested by their political leanings, why should not they have the places of power to which their rank entitled them?

Hitherto, however, Lincoln had held out against the Committee’s demand and bad refused to compel McClellan to reorganize his army against his will.  He now observed that in the council which cast the die against the overland route, the division between the two groups of generals, what we may call the Lincoln generals and the McClellan generals, was sharply evident.  The next day he issued a general order which organized the army of the Potomac into corps, and promoted to the rank of corps commanders, those elder generals whose point of view was similar to his own.(13) Thereafter, any reference of crucial matters to a council of general officers, would mean submitting it, not to a dozen commanders of divisions with McClellan men in the majority, but to four or five commanders of corps none of whom was definitely of the McClellan faction.  Thus McClellan was virtually put under surveillance of an informal war council scrutinizing his course from the President’s point of view.  It was this reduced council of the subordinates, as will presently appear, that made the crucial decision of the campaign.

On the same day Lincoln issued another general order accepting McClellan’s plan for a flanking movement to the Virginia coast.(14) The Confederate lines at this time ran through Manassas—­the point Lincoln wished McClellan to strike.  It was to be known later that the Confederate General gave to Lincoln’s views the high endorsement of assuming that they were the inevitable views that the Northern Commander, if he knew his business, would act upon.  Therefore, he had been quietly preparing to withdraw his army to more defensible positions farther South.  By a curious coincidence, his “strategic retreat” occurred immediately after McClellan had been given authority to do what he liked.  On the ninth of March it was known at Washington that Manassas had been evacuated.  Whereupon, McClellan’s fatal lack of humor permitted him to make a great blunder.  The man who had refused to go to Manassas while the Confederates were there, marched an army to Manassas the moment he heard that they were gone—­and then marched back again.  This performance was instantly fixed upon for ridicule as McClellan’s “promenade to Manassas.”