f
his base. Here his army lay in a position of security; they might yet
threaten Richmond, and McClellan's soldiers still believed in him. But
the South was led by a great commander and had now learned to give him
unbounded confidence; there was some excuse for a panic in Wall Street,
and every reason for dejection in the North.

On the third of the Seven Days, McClellan, much moved by the sight of
dead and wounded comrades, sent a gloomy telegram to the Secretary of
War, appealing with excessive eloquence for more men. "I only wish to
say to the President," he remarked in it, "that I think he is wrong in
regarding me as ungenerous when I said that my force was too weak." He
concluded: "If I save the army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no
thanks to you nor to any other persons in Washington. You have done
your best to sacrifice this army." Stanton still expressed the
extraordinary hope that Richmond would fall in a day or two. He had
lately committed the folly of suspending enlistment, an act which,
though of course there is an explanation of it, must rank as the one
first-rate blunder of Lincoln's Administration. He was now negotiating
through the astute Seward for offers from the State Governors of a levy
of 300,000 men to follow up McClellan's success. Lincoln, as was his
way, feared the worst. He seems at one moment to have had fears for
McClellan's sanity. But he telegraphed, himself, an answer to him,
which affords as fair an example as can be given of his characteristic
manner. "Save your army at all events. Will send reinforcements as
fast as we can. Of course they cannot reach you to-day or to-morrow,
or next day. I have not said you were ungenerous for saying you needed
reinforcements. I thought you were ungenerous in assuming that I did
not send them as fast as I could. I feel any misfortune to you and
your army quite as keenly as you feel it yourself. If you have had a
drawn battle or repulse, it is the price we pay for the enemy not being
in Washington. We protected Washington and the enemy concentrated on
you. Had we stripped Washington, he would have been upon us before the
troops could have gotten to you. Less than a week ago you notified us
reinforcements were leaving Richmond to come in front of us. It is
the nature of the case, and neither you nor the Government are to
blame. Please tell me at once the present condition and aspect of
things."

Demands for an impossible nu