of the commander of the national armies to perfect his plans and put them safely into execution?

How much of the "public dissatisfaction" which Mr. Lincoln thus found himself" unable to endure" arose from the delays of the army, and how much from the illegal, arbitrary, and violent conduct of the administration in civil matters, as well as from that general loss of confidence in the Republican party which was but the natural consequence of their failure to arrest the civil war, it is not perhaps worth while for us here to attempt to decide. The events of 1861 had certainly given the country abundant reasons for doubting the prescience of Mr. Seward, and with it the sagacity of the great party which looked up to him as its teacher, its founder, and its intellectual chief.

As the President had issued his General War Order, No. 1, to check the flow of "adverse votes," so, under the incipient pressure of the joint committee on the conduct of the war, and of the new secretary of war, he issued his General War Orders, Nos. 2 and 3.

In his History of President Lincoln's Administration, Mr. Raymond gives us the following letter, "never before," as he says, "made public." The letter was addressed to General McClellan; and it is a striking illustration of the patience and forbearance with which General McClellan has adhered to the strictest standard of official propriety in all his publications on the subject of the war that this letter should first have seen the light through an oversight on the part of the friends of the writer, and not through any act of General McClellan or his friends.

FORTRESS MONROE, May 9, 1862.

MY DEAR SIR,-I have just assisted the secretary of war in forming the part of a dispatch to you relating to army corps, which dispatch, of course, will have reached you long before this will. I wish to say a few words privately to you on this subject. I ordered the army corps organization not

only on the unanimous opinion of the twelve generals of division, but also on the unanimous, opinion of every military man I could get an opinion from, and every modern military book, yourself only excepted. Of course, I did not on my own judgment pretend to understand the subject. I now think it indispensable for you to know how your struggle against it is received in quarters which we cannot entirely disregard. It is looked upon as merely an effort to pamper one or two pets, and to persecute and degrade their supposed rivals. I have had no word from Sumner, Heintzelman, or Keyes. The commanders of these corps are of course the three highest officers with you, but I am constantly told that you have no consultation or communication with them, that you consult and communicate with nobody but Fitz-John Porter, and perhaps General Franklin. I do not say these complaints are true or just; but, at all events, it is proper you should know of their existence. Do the commanders of corps disobey your orders in anything?

When you relieved General Hamilton of his command the other day you thereby lost the confidence of at least one of your best friends in the senate. And here let me say, not as applicable to you personally, that senators and representatives speak of me in their places as they please without question; and that officers of the army must cease addressing insulting letters to them for taking no greater liberty with them. But to return, are you strong enough, even with my help, to set your foot upon the neck of Sumner, Heintzelman, and Keyes, all at once? This is a practical and very serious question

for you.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.

The entire absence throughout this letter of any consciousness that a general holding in his hands the lives of a hundred thousand brave men and the hope of a nation might perhaps regard with disgust and contempt such appeals, from his sense

of what was best for his army and for his campaign to his concern about his personal popularity in "quarters which he could not entirely disregard,” and to his fears of losing the confidence of his "friends in the senate," is highly noteworthy, and lets in a lamentable light upon the inner chambers of the history of this great war.

But on the special question of the War Orders, Nos. 2 and 3, the evidence of this letter is final and conclusive when taken in connection with the following passage from the Journal of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War:

"February 26, 1862.

"Pursuant to previous arrangement, the committee waited upon the President at eight o'clock on Tuesday evening, February 25. They made known to the President that, having examined many of the highest military officers of the army, their statements of the necessity of dividing the great army of the Potomac into corps d'armée had impressed the committee with the belief that it was essential that such a division of the army should be made-that it would be dangerous to move upon a formidable enemy with the present organization of the army. The application was enforced by many arguments drawn from the usages in France and every other military nation in Europe, and the fact that, so far as the committee could learn, all our military officers agreed that our army would not be efficient unless such an organization was had.

"The President observed that he had never considered the organization of the army into army corps so essential as the committee seemed to represent it to be; still he had long been in favor of such an organization. General McClellan, however, did not seem to think it so essential, though he had at times expressed himself as favorable to it.

"The committee informed the President that the secretary of war had authorized them to say to him that he deemed such an organization necessary."

From all which it appears that the armies of the United States in general, and the Army of the Potomac in particular, were commanded on the 8th day of March, 1862, by the following persons:

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President;

EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War;
BENJAMIN F. WADE,

ZACHARY CHANDLER, Senators ;

and four members of the House of Representatives, making up, with these senators, a joint committee of Congress.

It was under the auspices and the control of these six commanders-in-chief, assisted by an Aulic council of senators, representatives, and military men, quite indefinite as to numbers, that the active commander in the field of the Army of the Potomac, Major-General McClellan, set out upon his expedition for the capture of Richmond.

"If such a council presumes not only to say to a general-inchief that he is to march on Vienna or on Paris, but also how he is to manœuvre and handle his army, the unfortunate general will be infallibly beaten, and the whole responsibility of his reverses will rest on those who at two hundred leagues' distance from the enemy pretend to direct an army which it is quite difficult enough to direct when one is actually in the field." ""*

* Jomini. Précis de l'Art de la Guerre, tome ii. p. 47.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC IN MOTION.

RETREAT OF JOHNSTON FROM THE DEFENCE OF WASHINGTON, AND OF THE SHENAN

MANASSAS.
DOAH VALLEY.

THE MOVEMENT TO THE PENINSULA.

THE 8th of March, 1862, was a notable day in the history of the war.

On that day, as we have seen, the whole system of warfare, which General McClellan had been laboring so earnestly to perfect and put in operation, was shattered by two war orders of the President.

On that day, also, the Federal ship of war Merrimac, raised from the bottom of Norfolk harbor, where she had been sunk on the abandonment of that port to the enemy, and refitted by the Confederates for a new and terrible experiment in naval warfare, suddenly made her appearance in the waters of the lower James.

She assailed the Federal fleet there lying, shattered and scattered the ships, and for the moment rode supreme over the mouths of the Chesapeake, threatening Fortress Monroe itself.

The engagement which followed next day, between the Merrimac and the Monitor, though it restored the prestige of the Federal navy, and secured the safety of Fortress Monroe, failed to recover for the North the control of the James River. General McClellan's plan of campaign thus received a serious blow. He could no longer count upon the James River, but must modify all his calculations upon the theory that the York