the expedition
to move before or on the 22d day of February next." This was the
distinct, as the general order had been the indirect, adoption of his
own plan of campaign, and the overruling of that of the general.
McClellan at once remonstrated, and the two rival plans thus came face
to face for immediate and definitive settlement. It must be assumed
that the President's order had been really designed only to force
exactly this issue; for on February 3, so soon as he received the
remonstrance, he invited argument from the general by writing to him a
letter which foreshadowed an open-minded reception for views opposed to
his own:--

"If you will give satisfactory answers to the following questions, I
shall gladly yield my plan to yours:--

"1st. Does not your plan involve a greatly larger expenditure of _time_
and _money_ than mine?

"2d. Wherein is a victory _more certain_ by your plan than mine?

"3d. Wherein is a victory _more valuable_ by your plan than mine?

"4th. In fact, would it not be _less_ valuable in this: that it would
break no great line of the enemy's communications, while mine would?

"5th. In case of disaster would not a retreat be more difficult by your
plan than mine?"

To these queries McClellan replied by a long and elaborate exposition of
his views. He said that, if the President's plan should be pursued
successfully, the "results would be confined to the possession of the
field of battle, the evacuation of the line of the upper Potomac by the
enemy, and the moral effect of the victory." On the other hand, a
movement in force by the route which he advocated "obliges the enemy to
abandon his intrenched position at Manassas, in order to hasten to
cover Richmond and Norfolk." That is to say, he expected to achieve by a
manoeuvre what the President designed to effect by a battle, to be
fought by inexperienced troops against an intrenched enemy. He
continued: "This movement, if successful, gives us the capital, the
communications, the supplies, of the rebels; Norfolk would fall; all the
waters of the Chesapeake would be ours; all Virginia would be in our
power, and the enemy forced to abandon Tennessee and North Carolina. The
alternative presented to the enemy would be, to beat us in a position
selected by ourselves, disperse, or pass beneath the Caudine forks." In
case of defeat the Union army would have a "perfectly secure retreat
down the Peninsula upon Fort Monroe." "This letter," he after