o fancy that he believed himself divinely chosen, and
therefore sure of infallible guidance; but it is observable far back,
almost from the beginning of his life; it was a trait of mind and
character, nothing else. The letter closes with a broad general theory
concerning the war, wrought out by that careful process of thinking
whereby he was wont to make his way to the big, simple, and fundamental
truth. The whole is worth holding in memory through the narrative of the
coming weeks.

The conference of January 13 developed a serious difference of opinion
as to the plan of campaign, whenever a campaign should be entered upon.
The President's notion, already shadowed forth in his memorandum of
December, was to move directly upon the rebel army at Centreville and
Manassas and to press it back upon Richmond, with the purpose of
capturing that city. But McClellan presented as his project a movement
by Urbana and West Point, using the York River as a base of supplies.
General McDowell and Secretary Chase favored the President's plan;
General Franklin and Postmaster Blair thought better of McClellan's. The
President had a strong fancy for his own scheme, because by it the Union
army was kept between the enemy and Washington; and therefore the
supreme point of importance, the safety of the national capital, was
insured. The discussion, which was thus opened and which remained long
unsettled, had, among other ill effects, that of sustaining the
vexatious delay. While the anti-McClellan faction--for the matter was
becoming one of factions[163]--grew louder in denunciation of his
inaction, and fastened upon him the contemptuous nickname of "the
Virginia creeper," the friends of the general retorted that the
President, meddling in what he did not understand, would not let the
military commander manage the war.

Nevertheless Mr. Lincoln, dispassionate and fair-minded as usual,
allowed neither their personal difference of opinion nor this abusive
outcry to inveigle into his mind any prejudice against McClellan. The
Southerner who, in February, 1861, predicted that Lincoln "would do his
own thinking," read character well. Lincoln was now doing precisely this
thing, in his silent, thorough, independent way, neither provoked by
McClellan's cavalier assumption of superior knowledge, nor alarmed by
the danger of offending the politicians. In fact, he decided to go
counter to both the disputants; for he resolved, on the one hand, to
compe