e this army to a force sufficient to resume
aggressive operations. [Footnote: _Id_., pp. 247, 254.] On
McClellan's part nothing further was attempted till on the 22d he
was summoned to Washington to assume command of the army which had
retreated to the capital after the panic of the first Bull Run
battle.

The affair at Rich Mountain and the subsequent movements were among
the minor events of a great war, and would not warrant a detailed
description, were it not for the momentous effect they had upon the
conduct of the war, by being the occasion of McClellan's promotion
to the command of the Potomac army. The narrative which has been
given contains the "unvarnished tale," as nearly as official records
of both sides can give it, and it is a curious task to compare it
with the picture of the campaign and its results which was then
given to the world in the series of proclamations and dispatches of
the young general, beginning with his first occupation of the
country and ending with his congratulations to his troops, in which
he announced that they had "annihilated two armies, commanded by
educated and experienced soldiers, intrenched in mountain fastnesses
fortified at their leisure." The country was eager for good news,
and took it as literally true. McClellan was the hero of the moment,
and when, but a week later, his success was followed by the disaster
to McDowell at Bull Run, he seemed pointed out by Providence as the
ideal chieftain who could repair the misfortune and lead our armies
to certain victory. His personal intercourse with those about him
was so kindly, and his bearing so modest, that his dispatches,
proclamations, and correspondence are a psychological study, more
puzzling to those who knew him well than to strangers. Their turgid
rhetoric and exaggerated pretence did not seem natural to him. In
them he seemed to be composing for stage effect something to be
spoken in character by a quite different person from the sensible
and genial man we knew in daily life and conversation. The career of
the great Napoleon had been the study and the absorbing admiration
of young American soldiers, and it was perhaps not strange that when
real war came they should copy his bulletins and even his personal
bearing. It was, for the moment, the bent of the people to be
pleased with McClellan's rendering of the role; they dubbed him the
young Napoleon, and the photographers got him to stand with folded
arms, in the histori