By a stroke
of his pen, he stripped McClellan of the office of Commanding General,
reduced him to the rank of mere head of a local army, the army of
the Potomac; furthermore, he permitted him to hear of his degradation
through the heartless medium of the daily papers.(15) The functions of
Commanding General were added to the duties of the Secretary of
War. Stanton, now utterly merciless toward McClellan, instantly took
possession of his office and seized his papers, for all the world as if
he were pouncing upon the effects of a malefactor. That McClellan was
not yet wholly spoiled was shown by the way he received this blow. It
was the McClellan of the old days, the gallant gentleman of the year
1860, not the poseur of 1861, who wrote at once to Lincoln making no
complaint, saying that his services belonged to his country in whatever
capacity they might be required.

Again a council of subordinates was invoked to determine the next move.
McClellan called together the newly made corps commanders and obtained
their approval of a variation of his former plan. He now proposed to use
Fortress Monroe as a base, and thence conduct an attack upon Richmond.
Again, though with a touch of sullenness very rare in Lincoln, the
President acquiesced. But he added a condition to McClellan's plan by
issuing positive orders, March thirteenth, that it should not be carried
out unless sufficient force was left at Washington to render the city
impregnable.

During the next few days the Committee must have been quite satisfied
with the President. For him, he was savage. The normal Lincoln, the man
of immeasurable mercy, had temporarily vanished. McClellan's blunder had
touched the one spring that roused the tiger in Lincoln. By letting slip
a chance to terminate the war--as it seemed to that deluded Washington
of March, 1862--McClellan had converted Lincoln from a brooding
gentleness to an incarnation of the last judgment. He told Hay he
thought that in permitting McClellan to retain any command, he had shown
him "very great kindness."(16) Apparently, he had no consciousness that
he had been harsh in the mode of McClellan's abatement, no thought of
the fine manliness of McClellan's reply.

During this period of Lincoln's brief vengefulness, Stanton thought that
his time for clearing scores with McClellan had come. He even picked out
the man who was to be rushed over other men's heads to the command of
the army of the Potomac. General Hitch