ut of the whole concern," soldiers
remark that the military situation was really sound; but he was right,
for a people can hardly be kept up to the pitch of a high enterprise if
it is forced to think that nothing will happen. Before the end of the
year 1861 military reasons for waiting were no longer being urged;
McClellan had long been promising immediate action, Buell and Halleck
seemed merely unable to agree.

In later days when Lincoln had learnt much by experience it is hard to
trace the signs of his influence in military matters, because, though
he followed them closely, he was commonly in full agreement with his
chief general and he invariably and rightly left him free. At this
stage, when his position was more difficult, and his guidance came from
common sense and the military books, of which, ever since Bull Run, he
had been trying, amidst all his work, to tear out the heart, there is
evidence on which to judge the intelligence which he applied to the
war. Certainly he now and ever after looked at the matter as a whole
and formed a clear view of it, which, for a civilian at any rate, was a
reasonable view. Certainly also at this time and for long after no
military adviser attempted, in correcting any error of his, to supply
him with a better opinion equally clear and comprehensive. This is
probably why some Northern military critics, when they came to read his
correspondence with his generals, called him, as his chief biographers
were tempted to think him, "the ablest strategist of the war." Grant
and Sherman did not say this; they said, what is another thing, that
his was the greatest intellectual force that they had met with.
Strictly speaking, he could not be a strategist. If he were so judged,
he would certainly be found guilty of having, till Grant came to
Washington, unduly scattered his forces. He could pick out the main
objects; but as to how to economise effort, what force and how composed
and equipped was necessary for a particular enterprise, whether in
given conditions of roads, weather, supplies, and previous fatigue, a
movement was practicable, and how long it would take any clever
subaltern with actual experience of campaigning ought to have been a
better judge than he. The test, which the reader must be asked to
apply to his conduct of the war, is whether he followed, duly or unduly
his own imperfect judgment, whether, on the whole, he gave in whenever
it was wise to the generals under