s great venture, when,
as he claimed, the Confederate capital could have been taken, his
expedition was recalled. Then at a moment of deadly peril to the
country his services were again called in. He warded off the danger.
Yet a little while and his services were discarded for ever. This
summary, which is the truth, but not the whole truth, must enlist a
certain sympathy for him. The chief fact of his later life should at
once be added. In 1864, when a Presidential election was approaching
and despondency prevailed widely in the North, he was selected as the
champion of a great party. The Democrats adopted a "platform" which
expressed neither more nor less than a desire to end the war on any
terms. In accordance with the invariable tradition of party opposition
in war time, they chose a war hero as their candidate for the
Presidency. McClellan publicly repudiated their principles, and no
doubt he meant it, but he became their candidate--their master or their
servant as it might prove. That he was Lincoln's opponent in the
election of that year ensured that his merits and his misfortunes would
be long remembered, but his action then may suggest to any one the
doubtful point in his career all along.

Some estimate of his curious yet by no means uncommon type of character
is necessary, if Lincoln's relations with him are to be understood at
all. The devotion to him shown by his troops proves that he had great
titles to confidence, besides, what he also had, a certain faculty of
parade, with his handsome charger, his imposing staff and the rest. He
was a great trainer of soldiers, and with some strange lapses, a good
organiser. He was careful for the welfare of his men; and his almost
tender carefulness of their lives contrasted afterwards with what
appeared the ruthless carelessness of Grant. Unlike some of his
successors, he could never be called an incapable commander. His great
opponent, Lee, who had known him of old, was wont to calculate on his
extraordinary want of enterprise, but he spoke of him on the whole in
terms of ample respect--also, by the way, he sympathised with him like
a soldier when, as he naturally assumed, he became a victim to scheming
politicians; and Lee confided this feeling to the ready ears of another
great soldier, Wolseley. As he showed himself in civil life, McClellan
was an attractive gentleman of genial address; it was voted that he was
"magnetic," and his private life was so