at this; he would, he once said, “hold General McClellan’s stirrup for him if he will only win us victories.”  But he called no more at McClellan’s, and a curious abruptness in some of his orders later marks his unsuccessful effort to deal with McClellan in another way.  The slightly ridiculous light in which the story shows Lincoln would not obscure to any soldier the full gravity of such an incident.  It was not merely foolish to treat a kind superior rudely; a general who thus drew down a curtain between his own mind and that of the Government evidently went a very long way to ensure failure in war.

Lincoln had failed to move McClellan early in December.  For part of that month and January McClellan was very ill.  Consultations were held with other generals, including McDowell, who could not be given the chief command because the troops did not trust him.  McDowell and the rest were in agreement with Lincoln.  Then McClellan suddenly recovered and was present at a renewed consultation.  He snubbed McDowell; the inadequacy of his force to meet, in fact, less than a third of its number was “so plain that a blind man could see it”; he was severely and abruptly tackled as to his own plans by Secretary Chase; Lincoln intervened to shield him, got from him a distinct statement that he had in his mind a definite time for moving, and adjourned the meeting.  Stanton, one of the friends to whom McClellan had confided his grievances, was now at the War Department and was at one with the Joint Committee of Congress in his impatience that McClellan should move.  At last, on January 27, Lincoln published a “General War Order” that a forward movement was to be made by the army of the Potomac and the Western armies on February 22.  It seems a blundering step, but it roused McClellan.  For a time he even thought of acting as Lincoln wished; he would move straight against Johnston, and “in ten days,” he told Chase on February 13, “I shall be in Richmond.”  But he quickly returned to the plan which he seems to have been forming before but which he only now revealed to the Government, and it was a plan which involved further delay.  When February 22 passed and nothing was done, the Joint Committee were indignant that Lincoln still stood by McClellan.  But McClellan now was proposing definite action; apart from the difficulty of finding a better man, there was the fact that McClellan had made his army and was beloved by it; above all, Lincoln had not lost all the belief he had formed at first in McClellan’s capacity; he believed that “if he could once get McClellan started” he would do well.  Professional criticism, alive to McClellan’s military faults, has justified Lincoln in this, and it was for something other than professional failure that Lincoln at last removed him.