McClellan’s dismissal! That is Lincoln’s answer to the election
victories of the Democrats.*

The Democratic journals had stated with the most positive
assurance that the election of Seymour as Governor of New York
State would entail the immediate revocation of the proclamation in
which Lincoln declared slavery abolished in Secessia from January
1, 1863." The paper that took this prophetic imprint had hardly
left the press when their favourite general—their favourite.
because “next to a great defeat he most dreaded a decisive
victory” ‘—was deprived of his command and went back to private
life.

We recall that McClellan replied to this proclamation of Lincoln
with a counter-proclamation, an order of the day to his army, in
which he indeed forbade any demonstration against the Presi-
dent’s measure, but at the same time let slip the fatal words: “...It
is the task of citizens through the polls to remedy the govern-
ment’s errors or to pass judgement on its actions.” “ McClellan, at the
head of the main army of the United States, therefore appealed from .
the President to the impending elections. He threw the weight of his

4a See this volume, pp. 263-65.— Ed.

b A. Lincoln, A Proclamation [September 22, 1862], New-York Daily Tribune,
No. 6699, September 23, 1862.— Ed.

© Th. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh
Review, Vol. 1, John Hampden.— Ed.

4 G. B. McClellan [Order, Enjoining on his Officers and Soldiers Obedience to
the President’s Proclamation of Freedom], Headquarters Army of the Potomac. Camp
near Sharpsburg, Md. Oct. 7, 1862, New-York Daily Tribune, No. 6713, October 9,
1862.— Ed.

The Dismissal of McClellan 267

position into the scales. A pronunciamento in the Spanish manner
aside, he could not have demonstrated his hostility to the
President’s policy more strikingly. Accordingly, after the election
victory of the Democrats the only choice left to Lincoln was either
to sink to the level of a tool of the pro-slavery compromise party
or with McClellan to remove from under it its point of support in
the army.

McClellan’s dismissal at this moment is accordingly a political
demonstration. In any case, however, it had become indispensable.
Halleck, the Commander-in-Chief,* in a report to the Secretary of
War,” had charged McClellan with direct insubordination. For,
shortly after the defeat of the Confederates in Maryland, on
October 6, Halleck ordered the crossing of the Potomac,
particularly as the low water-level of the Potomac and its
tributaries favoured military operations at the time. In defiance of
this order, McClellan remained immobile, under the pretext of his
army’s inability to march due to lack of provisions. In the report
mentioned, Halleck proves that this was a hollow subterfuge, that,
compared with the Western army, the Eastern army enjoyed great
privileges in respect of the commissariat and that the supplies still
lacking could have been received just as well south as north of the
Potomac. A second report links up with this report of Halleck’s; in
it the committee appointed to inquire into the surrender of
Harper’s Ferry **’ to the Confederates accuses McClellan of having
concentrated the Union troops stationed near that arsenal in an
inconceivably slow fashion—he let them march only six English
miles (about one and a half German miles) a day—for the
purpose of its relief.2 Both reports, that of Halleck and that of the
committee, were in the President’s hands before the election victory.
of the Democrats.

McClellan’s generalship has been described in these columns so
repeatedly* that it is sufficient to recall how he sought to
substitute strategic envelopment for tactical decision and how
indefatigable he was in discovering considerations of general-staff
discretion which forbade him either to take advantage of victories

¢ H. W. Halleck [Report to E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War], Headquarters of the
Army, Washington, October 28, 1862, New-York Daily Tribune, No. 6740, November 10,
1862.— Ed.

4 [Report of the Investigating Commission...], New-York Daily Tribune, same
issue.— Ed.

€ See this volume, 179-81, 205-08, 226-27, 234-35.— Ed.

or to anticipate defeats. The brief Maryland campaign cast a false
halo about his head. Here, however, we have to consider the fact
that he received his general marching orders from General
Halleck, who also drew up the plan of the first Kentucky
campaign, and that the victory on the battlefield was due
exclusively to the bravery of the subordinate generals, in
particular, of General Reno, who fell, and of Hooker, who has not
yet recovered from his wounds. Napoleon once wrote to his
brother Joseph that on the battlefield there was. danger at all
points and one ran into its jaws most surely when one sought to
avoid it. McClellan seems to have grasped this axiom, but without
giving it the practical application that Napoleon suggested to his
brother. During the whole of his military career McClellan has
never been on the battlefield, has never been under fire, a
peculiarity that Genera] Kearny strongly stresses in a letter, which
his brother published, after Kearny, fighting under Pope’s
command, fell in one of the battles near Washington.’

McClellan understood how to conceal his mediocrity under a
mask of restrained earnestness, laconic reticence and dignified
reserve. His very defects secured him the unshakable trust of the
Democratic Party in the North and the “loyal acknowledgement”
of the secessionists. Among the higher officers of his army he
gained supporters through the formation of a general staff of
dimensions hitherto unprecedented in the annals of military
history. Some of the older officers, who had belonged to the
former army of the Union and had received their training at West
Point Academy, found in him a point of support for their rivalry
with the newly-sprung-up “civilian generals” and for their secret
sympathies with the “comrades” in the enemy camp. The soldiers,
finally, knew of his military qualities only by hearsay; for the rest
they ascribed to him all the merits of the commissariat and could
tell many a glorious tale of his reserved affability. McClellan
possessed one single gift of the supreme commander—that of
assuring himself of popularity with his army.

McClellan’s successor, Burnside, is too little known to pronounce
a judgement on him. He belongs to the Republican Party. Hooker,
on the other hand, who is assuming command of the army corps
serving specifically under McClellan, is incontestably one of the
best warriors in the Union. “Fighting Joe”,? as the troops call him,

4 Ph. Kearney [Letter to O. S. Halstead, Jr., August 4, 1862], New-York Daily
Tribune, No. 6719, October 16, 1862.— Ed.

The Dismissal of McClellan 269

played the biggest part in the successes in Maryland. He is an
Abolitionist.

The same American papers which bring us the news of
McClellan’s dismissal, contain utterances of Lincoln in which he
— resolutely declares that he will not deviate a hair’s breadth from
his proclamation.

“{Lincoln],” The Morning Star observes quite justly, “has taught the world to
know him as a slow, but solid man, who advances with exceeding caution, but does
not go back. Each step of his administrative career has been in the right direction
and has been stoutly maintained. Starting from the resolution to exclude slavery
from the Territories, he has at last arrived at the ultimate purpose of all
‘anti-slavery movements—the uprooting of this evil from the soil of the

Union—and has already reached the high vantage point on which the Union has
ceased to be responsible in any way for the continuance of slavery.”