ward wrote,
"must have produced some effect upon the mind of the President!" The
slur was unjust. The President now and always considered the views of
the general with a liberality of mind rarely to be met with in any man,
and certainly never in McClellan himself. In this instance the letter
did in fact produce so much "effect upon the mind of the President" that
he prepared to yield views which he held very strongly to views which he
was charged with not being able to understand, and which he certainly
could not bring himself actually to believe in.

Yet before quite taking this step he demanded that a council of the
generals of division should be summoned to express their opinions. This
was done, with the result that McDowell, Sumner, Heintzelman, and
Barnard voted against McClellan's plan; Keyes voted for it, with the
proviso "that no change should be made until the rebels were driven from
their batteries on the Potomac." Fitz-John Porter, Franklin, W.F. Smith,
McCall, Blenker, Andrew Porter, and Naglee (of Hooker's division) voted
for it. Stanton afterward said of this: "We saw ten generals afraid to
fight." The insult, delivered in the snug personal safety which was
suspected to be very dear to Stanton, was ridiculous as aimed at men who
soon handled some of the most desperate battles of the war; but it is
interesting as an expression of the unreasoning bitterness of the
controversy then waging over the situation in Virginia, a controversy
causing animosities vastly more fierce than any between Union soldiers
and Confederates, animosities which have unfortunately lasted longer,
and which can never be brought to the like final and conclusive
arbitrament. The purely military question quickly became snarled up with
politics and was reduced to very inferior proportions in the noxious
competition. "Politics entered and strategy retired," says General Webb,
too truly. McClellan himself conceived that the politicians were leagued
to destroy him, and would rather see him discredited than the rebels
whipped. In later days the strong partisan loves and hatreds of our
historical writers have perpetuated and increased all this bad blood,
confusion, and obscurity.

The action of the council of generals was conclusive. The President
accepted McClellan's plan. Therein he did right; for undeniably it was
his duty to allow his own inexperience to be controlled by the
deliberate opinion of the best military experts in the country;