The man to whom they had trusted all their hopes was young for so great a command.  I think that, at this time, (October, 1861,) General McClellan was not yet thirty-five.  He had served, early in life, in the Mexican war, having come originally from Pennsylvania, and having been educated at the military college at West Point.  During our war with Russia he was sent to the Crimea by his own government, in conjunction with two other officers of the United States army, that they might learn all that was to be learned there as to military tactics, and report especially as to the manner in which fortifications were made and attacked.  I have been informed that a very able report was sent in by them to the government on their return, and that this was drawn up by McClellan.  But in America a man is not only a soldier, or always a soldier, nor is he always a clergyman if once a clergyman:  he takes a spell at anything suitable that may be going.  And in this way McClellan was, for some years, engaged on the Central Illinois Railway, and was for a considerable time the head manager of that concern.  We all know with what suddenness he rose to the highest command in the army immediately after the defeat at Bull’s Run.

I have endeavored to describe what were the feelings of the West in the autumn of 1861 with regard to the war.  The excitement and eagerness there were very great, and they were perhaps as great in the North.  But in the North the matter seemed to me to be regarded from a different point of view.  As a rule, the men of the North are not abolitionists.  It is quite certain that they were not so before secession began.  They hate slavery as we in England hate it; but they are aware, as also are we, that the disposition of four million of black men and women forms a question which cannot be solved by the chivalry of any modern Orlando.  The property invested in these four million slaves forms the entire wealth of the South.  If they could be wafted by a philanthropic breeze back to the shores of Africa—­a breeze of which the philanthropy would certainly not be appreciated by those so wafted—­the South would be a wilderness.  The subject is one as full of difficulty as any with which the politicians of these days are tormented.  The Northerners fully appreciate this, and, as a rule, are not abolitionists in the Western sense of the word.  To them the war is recommended by precisely those feelings which animated us when we fought for our colonies—­when we strove to put down American independence.  Secession is rebellion against the government, and is all the more bitter to the North because that rebellion broke out at the first moment of Northern ascendency.  “We submitted,” the North says, “to Southern Presidents, and Southern statesmen, and Southern councils, because we obeyed the vote of the people.  But as to you—­the voice of the people is nothing in your estimation!  At the first moment in which the popular vote places at Washington a President with Northern feelings, you rebel.  We submitted in your days; and, by Heaven! you shall submit in ours.  We submitted loyally, through love of the law and the Constitution.  You have disregarded the law and thrown over the Constitution.  But you shall be made to submit, as a child is made to submit to its governor.”