informed
himself correctly as to the geography; he found the enemy not so
unprepared as he had supposed; he wasted, it is agreed, a month in
regular approaches to their thinly-manned fortifications at Yorktown,
when he might have carried them by assault. He was soon confronted by
Joseph Johnston, and he seems both to have exaggerated Johnston's
numbers again and to have been unprepared for his movements. The
Administration does not seem to have spared any effort to support him.
In addition to the 100,000 troops he took with him, 40,000 altogether
were before long despatched to him. He was operating in a very
difficult country, but he was opposed at first by not half his own
number. Lincoln, in friendly letters, urged upon him that delay
enabled the enemy to strengthen himself both in numbers and in
fortifications. The War Department did its best for him. The whole of
his incessant complaints on this score are rendered unconvincing by the
language of his private letters about that "sink of iniquity,
Washington," "those treacherous hounds," the civil authorities, who
were at least honest and intelligent men, and the "Abolitionists and
other scoundrels," who, he supposed, wished the destruction of his
army. The criticism in Congress of himself and his generals was no
doubt free, but so, as Lincoln reminded him, was the criticism of
Lincoln himself. Justly or not, there were complaints of his relations
with corps commanders. Lincoln gave no weight to them, but wrote him a
manly and a kindly warning. The points of controversy which McClellan
bequeathed to writers on the Civil War are innumerable, but no one can
read his correspondence at this stage without concluding that he was
almost impossible to deal with, and that the whole of his evidence in
his own case was vitiated by a sheer hallucination that people wished
him to fail. He had been nearly two months in the Peninsula when he
was attacked at a disadvantage by Johnston, but defeated him on May 31
and June 1 in a battle which gave confidence and prestige to the
Northern side, but which he did not follow up. A part of his army
pursued the enemy to within four miles of Richmond, and it has been
contended that if he had acted with energy he could at this time have
taken that city. His delay, to whatever it was due, gave the enemy
time to strengthen himself greatly both in men and in fortifications.
The capable Johnston was severely wounded in the battle, and wa