the
situation very fully, and answering the inquiries apparently to the
satisfaction of the President, who consented to the plan submitted by
McClellan and concurred in by a council of his division commanders, by
which the base of the Army of the Potomac should be transferred from
Washington to the lower Chesapeake. Yet Lincoln must have had misgivings
in the matter, for some weeks later he wrote to McClellan: "You will do
me the justice to remember I always insisted that going down the bay in
search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Manassas, was only
shifting, and not surmounting, a difficulty; that we would find the same
enemy, and the same or equal intrenchments, at either place."

After the transfer of the Army of the Potomac to the Peninsula there was
great impatience at the delays in the expected advance on Richmond. The
President shared this impatience, and his despatches to McClellan took
an urgent and imperative though always friendly tone. April 9 he wrote:
"Your despatches, complaining that you are not properly sustained, while
they do not offend me, do pain me very much. I suppose the whole force
which has gone forward for you is with you by this time. And, if so, I
think it is the precise time for you to _strike a blow_. By delay, the
enemy will relatively gain upon you--that is, he will gain faster by
fortifications and reinforcements than you can by reinforcements alone.
And once more let me tell you, it is indispensable to you that you
_strike a blow_.... I beg to assure you that I have never written to you
or spoken to you in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a
fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as, in my most anxious judgment, I
consistently can. But you _must act_."

While Lincoln was thus imperative toward McClellan, he would not permit
him to be unjustly criticized. Considerable ill-feeling having been
developed between McClellan and Secretary Stanton, which was made worse
by certain meddlesome persons in Washington, the President took
occasion, at a public meeting, to express his views in these frank and
manly words: "There has been a very wide-spread attempt to have a
quarrel between General McClellan and the Secretary of War. Now, I
occupy a position that enables me to observe that these two gentlemen
are not nearly so deep in the quarrel as some pretending to be their
friends. General McClellan's attitude is such that, in the very
selfishness of his nature, he cannot