man, to recant his earlier heresy of presidential
independence, and say to the Jacobins, "I am with you." He must appoint
a Republican to succeed McClellan. Let him do that and the Congressional
Cabal would forgive him. But he did not do it. He swept political
considerations aside and made a purely military appointment Burnside, on
whom he fixed, was the friend and admirer of McClellan and might fairly
be considered next to him in prestige. He was loved by his troops. In
the eyes of the army, his elevation represented "a legitimate succession
rather than the usurpation of a successful rival."(6) He was modest.
He did not want promotion. Nevertheless, Lincoln forced him to take
McClellan's place against his will, in spite of his protest that he had
not the ability to command so large an army.(7)

When Congress assembled and the Committee resumed its inquisition,
Burnside was moving South on his fated march to Fredericksburg. The
Committee watched him like hungry wolves. Woe to Burnside, woe to
Lincoln, if the General failed! Had the Little Men possessed any sort
of vision they would have seized their opportunity to become the
President's supporters. But they, like the Jacobins, were partisans
first and patriots second. In the division among the Republicans they
saw, not a chance to turn the scale in the President's favor, but
a chance to play politics on their own account. A picturesque Ohio
politician known as "Sunset" Cox opened the ball of their fatuousness
with an elaborate argument in Congress to the effect that the President
was in honor bound to regard the recent elections as strictly analogous
to an appeal to the country in England; that it was his duty to remodel
his policy to suit the Democrats. Between the Democrats and the Jacobins
Lincoln was indeed between the devil and the deep blue sea with no one
certainly on his side except the volatile Abolitionists whom he did not
trust and who did not trust him. A great victory might carry him over.
But a great defeat--what might not be the consequence!

On the thirteenth of December, through Burnside's stubborn incompetence,
thousands of American soldiers flung away their lives in a holocaust of
useless valor at Fredericksburg. Promptly the Jacobins acted. They set
up a shriek: the incompetent President, the all-parties dreamer, the
man who persists in coquetting with the Democrats, is blundering into
destruction! Burnside received the dreaded summons from the Comm