otion? After leaving all that would be necessary, how many
troops could join the movement from southwest of the river? How many
from northeast of it?" Then he proceeded briefly to hint rather than
distinctly to suggest that plan of a direct advance by way of
Centreville and Manassas, which later on he persistently advocated. Ten
days elapsed before McClellan returned answers, which then came in a
shape too curt to be respectful. Almost immediately afterward the
general fell ill, an occurrence which seemed to his detractors a most
aggravating and unjustifiable intervention of Nature herself in behalf
of his policy of delay.

On January 10 a dispatch from General Halleck represented in his
department also a condition of check and helplessness. Lincoln noted
upon it: "Exceedingly discouraging. As everywhere else, nothing can be
done." Yet something must be done, for the game was not to be abandoned.
Under this pressure, on this same day, he visited McClellan, but could
not see him; nor could he get any definite idea how long might be the
duration of the typhoid fever, the lingering and uncertain disease which
had laid the general low. Accordingly he summoned General McDowell and
General Franklin to discuss with him that evening the military
situation. The secretaries of state and of the treasury, and the
assistant secretary of war, also came. The President, says McDowell,
"was greatly disturbed at the state of affairs," "was in great
distress," and said that, "if something was not soon done, the bottom
would be out of the whole affair; and if General McClellan did not want
to use the army, he would like to '_borrow it_,' provided he could see
how it could be made to do something." The two generals were directed to
inform themselves concerning the "actual condition of the army," and to
come again the next day. Conferences followed on January 11 and 12,
Postmaster-General Blair and General Meigs being added to the council.
The postmaster-general condemned a direct advance as "strategically
defective," while Chase descanted on the "moral power" of a victory. The
picture of the two civilians injecting their military suggestions is not
reassuring. Meigs is somewhat vaguely reported to have favored a "battle
in front."

McDowell and Franklin had not felt justified in communicating these
occurrences to McClellan, because the President had marked his order to
them "private and confidential." But the commander heard rumors of what