pe at all.

The gloom in Washington was profound.

An excited General rushed to the White House at two o'clock in the
morning, roused the President from his bed and pleaded for the immediate
dispatch of a fleet of transports to Harrison's Landing as the only
possible way to save the army from annihilation.

The President soothed his fears and sent him home. He was not the man to
be thrown into a panic. Yet the incredible thing had happened. His army
of more than two hundred thousand men, under able generals, had been
hurled back from the gates of Richmond in hopeless, bewildering defeat,
and he must begin all over again.

One big ominous fact loomed in tragic menace from the smoke and flame of
this campaign--the South had developed two leaders of matchless military
genius--Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It was a fact the President
must face and that without fear or favor to any living man in his own
army.

He left Washington for the front at once. He must see with his own eyes
the condition of the army. He must see McClellan. The demand for his
removal was loud and bitter. And fiercest of all those who asked for his
head was the iron-willed Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, his former
champion.

CHAPTER XIV

THE RETREAT

John Vaughan had become one of his General's trusted aides. His services
during the month's terrific struggle had proven invaluable. The
Commander was quick to discern that he was a man of culture and
possessed a mind of unusual power. More than once the General had called
him to his headquarters to pour into his ears his own grievances against
the authorities in Washington. Naturally his mind had been embittered
against the man in the White House. The magnetic personality of
McClellan had appealed to his imagination from their first meeting.

The General was particularly bitter on the morning the President was
expected. His indignation at last broke forth in impassioned words to
his sympathetic listener.

The tragic consequence of the impression made in that talk neither man
could dream at the moment.

Pacing the floor with the tread of a caged lion McClellan suddenly
paused and his fine blue eyes flashed.

"I tell you, Vaughan, the wretches have done their worst. They can't do
much more----"

He stopped suddenly and drew from his pocket the copy of a dispatch he
had sent to the war office. He read it carefully and looked up with
flashing eyes:

"I'll face the Presid