rible mistake of judgment on McClellan's part. Far
better would it have been to have taken the Manassas route; for even if
its inherent demerits were really so great as McClellan had depicted,
they would have been more than offset by preserving the undiminished
cooeperation of the administration. The personal elements in the problem
ought to have been conclusive.

An indication of the error of forcing the President into a course not
commended by his judgment, in a matter where his responsibility was so
grave, was seen immediately. On March 8 he issued General War Order No.
3: That no change of base should be made "without leaving in and about
Washington such a force as, in the opinion of the general-in-chief and
the commanders of army corps, shall leave said city entirely secure;"
that not more than two corps (about 50,000 men) should be moved en route
for a new base until the Potomac, below Washington, should be freed from
the Confederate batteries; that any movement of the army via Chesapeake
Bay should begin as early as March 18, and that the general-in-chief
should be "responsible that it moves as early as that day." This greatly
aggravated McClellan's dissatisfaction; for it expressed the survival of
the President's anxiety, it hampered the general, and by its last clause
it placed upon him a responsibility not properly his own.

Yet at this very moment weighty evidence came to impeach the soundness
of McClellan's opinion concerning the military situation. On February 27
Secretary Chase wrote that the time had come for dealing decisively with
the "army in front of us," which he conceived to be already so weakened
that "a victory over it is deprived of half its honor." Not many days
after this writing, the civilian strategists, the President and his
friends, seemed entitled to triumph. For on March 7, 8, and 9 the North
was astonished by news of the evacuation of Manassas by Johnston. At
once the cry of McClellan's assailants went up: If McClellan had only
moved upon the place! What a cheap victory he would have won, and
attended with what invaluable "moral effects"! Yet, forsooth, he had
been afraid to move upon these very intrenched positions which it now
appeared that the Confederates dared not hold even when unthreatened!
But McClellan retorted that the rebels had taken this backward step
precisely because they had got some hint of his designs for advancing by
Urbana, and that it was the exact fulfillment, thoug