ing for this ritual of
command, sneered. They exchanged stories of the elaborate dinners he
was said to give daily, the several courses, the abundance of wine, the
numerous guests; and after these dinners, he and his gorgeous staff,
"clattering up and down the public streets" merely to show themselves
off. All this sneering was wildly exaggerated. The mania of
exaggeration, the mania of suspicion, saturated the mental air breathed
by every politician at Washington, that desperate winter, except the
great and lonely President and the cynical Secretary of State.

McClellan made no concessions to the temper of the hour. With Lincoln,
his relations at first were cordial. Always he was punctiliously
respectful to "His Excellency." It is plain that at first Lincoln liked
him and that his liking was worn away slowly. It is equally plain that
Lincoln did not know how to deal with him. The tendency to pose was so
far from anything in Lincoln's make-up that it remained for him, whether
in McClellan or another, unintelligible. That humility which was so
conspicuous in this first period of his rule, led him to assume with his
General a modest, even an appealing tone. The younger man began to ring
false by failing to appreciate it. He even complained of it in a letter
to his wife. The military ritualist would have liked a more Olympian
superior. And there is no denying that his head was getting turned.
Perhaps he had excuse. The newspapers printed nonsensical editorials
praising "the young Napoleon." His mail was filled with letters urging
him to carry things with a high hand; disregard, if necessary, the
pusillanimous civil government, and boldly "save the country." He had
so little humor that he could take this stuff seriously. Among all the
foolish letters which the executors of famous men have permitted to see
the light of publicity, few outdo a letter of McClellan's in which he
confided to his wife that he was willing to become dictator, should that
be the only way out, and then, after saving his country, to perish.(3)

In this lordly mood of the melodramatic, he gradually--probably without
knowing it--became inattentive to the President. Lincoln used to go
to his house to consult him, generally on foot, clad in very ordinary
clothes. He was known to sit in McClellan's library "rather unnoticed"
awaiting the General's pleasure.(4)

At last the growing coolness of McClellan went so far that an event
occurred which Hay indignan