McClellan’s progress up the Peninsula was slow.  He had not informed himself correctly as to the geography; he found the enemy not so unprepared as he had supposed; he wasted, it is agreed, a month in regular approaches to their thinly-manned fortifications at Yorktown, when he might have carried them by assault.  He was soon confronted by Joseph Johnston, and he seems both to have exaggerated Johnston’s numbers again and to have been unprepared for his movements.  The Administration does not seem to have spared any effort to support him.  In addition to the 100,000 troops he took with him, 40,000 altogether were before long despatched to him.  He was operating in a very difficult country, but he was opposed at first by not half his own number.  Lincoln, in friendly letters, urged upon him that delay enabled the enemy to strengthen himself both in numbers and in fortifications.  The War Department did its best for him.  The whole of his incessant complaints on this score are rendered unconvincing by the language of his private letters about that “sink of iniquity, Washington,” “those treacherous hounds,” the civil authorities, who were at least honest and intelligent men, and the “Abolitionists and other scoundrels,” who, he supposed, wished the destruction of his army.  The criticism in Congress of himself and his generals was no doubt free, but so, as Lincoln reminded him, was the criticism of Lincoln himself.  Justly or not, there were complaints of his relations with corps commanders.  Lincoln gave no weight to them, but wrote him a manly and a kindly warning.  The points of controversy which McClellan bequeathed to writers on the Civil War are innumerable, but no one can read his correspondence at this stage without concluding that he was almost impossible to deal with, and that the whole of his evidence in his own case was vitiated by a sheer hallucination that people wished him to fail.  He had been nearly two months in the Peninsula when he was attacked at a disadvantage by Johnston, but defeated him on May 31 and June 1 in a battle which gave confidence and prestige to the Northern side, but which he did not follow up.  A part of his army pursued the enemy to within four miles of Richmond, and it has been contended that if he had acted with energy he could at this time have taken that city.  His delay, to whatever it was due, gave the enemy time to strengthen himself greatly both in men and in fortifications.  The capable Johnston was severely wounded in the battle, and was replaced by the inspired Lee.  According to McClellan’s own account, which English writers have followed, his movements had been greatly embarrassed by the false hope given him that McDowell was now to march overland and join him.  His statement that he was influenced by this is refuted by his own letters at the time.  McClellan, however, suffered a great disappointment.  The front of Washington was now clear of the enemy and Lincoln had determined to send McDowell when he was induced to keep him back by a diversion in the war which he had not expected, and which indeed McClellan had advised him not to expect.