them. If it is not deemed best to intrust me with the command even of my own army, I simply ask to be permitted to share their fate on the field of battle. Please reply to this to-night.

"I have been engaged for the last few hours in doing what I can to make arrangements for the wounded. I have started out all the ambulances now landed."

General Halleck replied the next morning that he could give no orders, as "General Pope was in command of the department." On the previous day, indeed, at the very moment when the Army of Virginia was falling to pieces in General Pope's incompetent hands, the secretary of war had issued an order giving General Burnside command of his own corps, giving General Pope "command of the Army of Virginia and of all forces temporarily attached to it," and giving General McClellan command of "that portion of the Army of the Potomac not sent forward to General Pope's command," the whole Army of the Potomac being then under orders to join General Pope! This was on the 30th of August. At ten o'clock of the next night, August 31st, the general-in-chief, Halleck, was telegraphing to the commander thus derided and insulted twentyfour hours before:

"I beg of you to assist me with your ability and experience. I am entirely tired out."

No thought but his country in his mind, General McClellan responded at once to this Macedonian cry. At midnight of the 31st, learning that the rebel cavalry were on the Fairfax road, that the right wing of Pope's beaten army was entirely exposed, and that his whole left wing had been that day driven in, he telegraphed to Washington:

"I recommend that no more of Couch's division be sent to the front, that Burnside be brought here as soon as practicable, and that everything available this side of Fairfax be drawn in at once, including the mass of the troops on the railroad. I apprehend that the enemy will, or have by this time, occupied Fairfax Court House, and cut off Pope entirely, unless he falls

back to-night, via Sangster's and Fairfax Station. I think these orders should be sent at once. I have no confidence in the dispositions made, as I gather them. To speak frankly, and the occasion requires it, there appears to be a total absence of brains, and I fear the total destrnction of the army. I have some cavalry here that can carry out any orders you may have to send. The occasion is grave, and demands grave measures. The question is the salvation of the country. I learn that our loss yesterday amounted to fifteen thousand (15,000).* We cannot afford such losses without an object. It is my deliberate opinion that the interests of the nation demand that Pope should fall back to-night, if possible, and not one moment is to be lost. I will use all the cavalry I have, to watch our right. Please answer at once. I feel confident you can rely upon the information I give you. I shall be up all night, and ready to obey any orders you give me."

Within an hour General Halleck had responded, acquiescing in General McClellan's suggestions, authorizing him to "establish an outer line of defence," and begging him for more “reliable news." Such news was indeed desirable-for at 4 P. M. of this very day General Pope had contrived to get word to Washington that he "was all right!"

On the next day, September 1st, General McClellan was sent for, to come to Washington and take command of the defences, his command to be strictly limited to the garrison of the works. He accepted the duty thus ungraciously thrust upon him; but suggested that General Halleck should send out some “reliable" person to ascertain whether General Pope was indeed "all right.”

The general-in-chief sent one of his own staff; and shortly after requested General McClellan to come to his headquarters to meet the President. Utterly prostrated by the disasters which he had brought upon the country, the President had

*This was equal to the whole loss of the army in the "Seven Days' battles" before Richmond.

suffered himself to be persuaded into insulting the whole army of the Potomac by supposing that its soldiers, angry at the injustice done their commander, were not cheerfully co-operating with General Pope. Unnerved, and tremulous with emotion, he assured General McClellan that he had "always been his friend," and begged him to telegraph to "Fitz-John Porter, or some other of his friends," and try to do away with the alleged reluctance of the Potomac Army to act with Pope. General McClellan, as positively as was consistent with a proper respect for the President's official station, assured him of the gross absurdity and indecency of these allegations: but finding that nothing less would calm the perturbed spirit of the commander-in-chief, he finally sent a telegram to General Fitz-John Porter, urging him, for his own sake and that of the country and of the old Army of the Potomac, to "lend the fullest and most cordial co-operation to General Pope." Of course General Porter replied that he and all the Army of the Potomac had done, were doing, and would always do, their duty as soldiers of the Republic.

It is a lamentable illustration of the rancorous and petty nature of partisan passion, that this telegram, wrung from General McClellan by the entreaties and almost by the tears of the President, and acknowledged at the time by the latter as a "service he should never forget," has been since adduced as a proof that General McClellan had bewitched the officers and soldiers of the Army of the Potomac out of their allegiance to the nation,

On the next morning, September 2d, General Halleck's messenger returned with authentic news of General Pope's humiliating defeat, and of the utter confusion in which his army was retreating. Upon this the President came in person, with General Halleck, to General McClellan's house, and begged him to go out, meet, and take command of the retreating army, to organize the defence of the capital, and in short to act as generalissimo once again-for the salvation of the State.

Upon this moment of the conduct of the war hung its whole future fortunes. Never before nor since has it been so vitally important to the nationai honor, to the safety of the capital, to the very existence of the national government, that the command of the armies of the Union should be lodged in the hands of a man perfectly loyal, perfectly sound of heart and clear of brain, as it was on this second day of September, 1862. The defeat of McDowell at the first battle of Bull Run had for a time imperilled all these things. But the victors of July 21st, 1862, were raw troops, and the Confederate Government of that day was a raw government, with an undeveloped policy before it and an unconsolidated people behind it. The conquerors of General Pope, on the contrary, were the veterans of a year of battles, flushed with the successful defence of the rebel capital, and with the triumphs not of one or two insignificant skirmish fields, but of a whole campaign in Northern Virginia; while the policy of the Confederate Government was now beginning to acquire a certain positiveness and cohesion, and the people of the Confederate States to feel themselves in some sort committed as a nation to war.

The selection by the Government at Washington of General McClellan for the command of the army in July, 1861, is excused by those who pronounce that officer's career to have been " a failure," on the grounds that he was recommended by his recent success in Western Virginia, that the Government knew as much of him as of any one of its generals, and that the time was necessarily a season of experiments.

No such excuse can be given for his re-selection in September, 1862. Then the government knew more of him than of any of its other generals; then he was recommended by the untoward conclusion of the siege of Richmond; then to risk experiments was a crime.

When, on the 2d of September, 1862, the President and General Halleck-the commander-in-chief who "could order what he pleased," and the general-in-chief whom he had him

self selected-put the whole power of the state into the hands of Major-General McClellan they by that act distinctly absolved him of all responsibility for the national disappointment before Richmond, and as distinctly acknowledged their full sense of his superiority as a commander, not merely to themselves but to all the generals whose services were within their disposal.

The accredited biographer of Mr. Lincoln declares it to be his belief that General McClellan was unfitted for command either because he "intentionally avoided decisive engagements in order to accomplish certain political results which he and his secret political advisers deemed desirable," or because he was, "by the native constitution of his mind, unable to meet the gigantic responsibilities of his position when the critical moment of trial arrived.”

If either of these hypotheses be well-founded, it is needless to say, that whatever judgment posterity may pass upon General McClellan, there can be no doubt as to its verdict upon the President of the United States, and the general-in-chief who thus flung all the military responsibilities of these positions upon the shoulders of General McClellan at the moment when these responsibilities were most "gigantic," and when most a man decisive of temper and resolute in action was needed to meet them!

* * * * *

Of one rare and great quality, at least, General McClellan on this memorable 2d of September, proved himself to be possessed. "One single thing," says a brilliant writer,* "has been lacking to Italy, a thing in appearance humble, but in reality of all things the greatest-honesty! Patriotism itself has been unscrupulous in Italy; her most virtuous citizens have professed their disdain for the human species, and have acted upon the principle, that as the world is peopled by fools one must ape madness in order to rule it.

Renan. "Les Revolutions d'Italie." Essais de Morale et de Cri tique. Paris, 1859, pp. 267-8.