the wastage of coming to us, we never can when we
bear the wastage of going to him." His patience was nearing a limit
which he had already fixed in his own mind. On October 28, more than
five weeks after the battle, McClellan began to cross the Potomac, and
took a week in the process. On November 5, McClellan was removed from
his command, and General Burnside appointed in his place.

Lincoln had longed for the clear victory that he thought McClellan
would win; he gloomily foreboded that he might not find a better man to
put in his place; he felt sadly how he would be accused, as he has been
ever since, of displacing McClellan because he was a Democrat. "In
considering military merit," he wrote privately, "the world has
abundant evidence that I disregard politics." A friend, a Republican
general, wrote to him a week or so after McClellan had been removed to
urge that all the generals ought to be men in thorough sympathy with
the Administration. He received a crushing reply (to be followed in a
day or two by a friendly invitation) indignantly proving that Democrats
served as well in the field as Republicans. But in regard to McClellan
himself we now know that a grave suspicion had entered Lincoln's mind.
He might, perhaps, in the fear of finding no one better, have tolerated
his "over-cautiousness"; he did not care what line an officer who did
his duty might in civil life take politically; but he would not take
the risk of entrusting the war further to a general who let his
politics govern his strategy, and who, as he put it simply, "did not
want to hurt the enemy." This, he had begun to believe, was the cause
of McClellan's lack of energy. He resolved to treat McClellan's
conduct now, in fighting Lee or in letting him escape South, as the
test of whether his own suspicion about him was justified or not. Lee
did get clear away, and Lincoln dismissed McClellan in the full belief,
right or wrong, that he was not sorry for Lee's escape.

It is not known exactly what further evidence Lincoln then had for his
belief, but information which seems to have come later made him think
afterwards that he had been right. The following story was told him by
the Governor of Vermont, whose brother, a certain General Smith, served
under McClellan and was long his intimate friend. Lincoln believed the
story; so may we. The Mayor of New York, a shifty demagogue named
Fernando Wood, had visited McClellan in the Peninsula with a