Grant or Sherman had
been in Halleck's place, Lee would never have crossed the Potomac
into Maryland. McClellan, Pope, and Burnside would have commanded
the centre and wings of the united and reinforced army, and under a
competent head it would have marched back to the Rappahannock with
scarcely a halt.

That Halleck was in command was, in no small measure, Pope's own
work. He reminded Halleck of this in his letter of September 30th,
written when he was chafing under the first effects of his removal.
[Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 816, etc.] "If
you desire," said he, "to know the personal obligation to which I
refer, I commend you to the President, the Secretary of War, or any
other member of the administration. Any of these can satisfy your
inquiries." This means that he had, before the President and the
cabinet, advocated putting Halleck in supreme command over himself
and McClellan to give unity to a campaign that would else be
hopelessly broken down. McClellan was then at Harrison's Landing,
believing Lee's army to be 200,000 strong, and refusing to listen to
any suggestion except that enormous reinforcements should be sent to
him there. He had taught the Army of the Potomac to believe
implicitly that the Confederate army was more than twice as numerous
as it was in fact. With this conviction it was natural that they
should admire the generalship which had saved them from
annihilation. They accepted with equal faith the lessons which came
to them from headquarters teaching that the "radicals" at Washington
were trying for political ends to destroy their general and them. In
regard to the facts there were varying degrees of intelligence among
officers and men; but there was a common opinion that they and he
were willingly sacrificed, and that Pope, the radical, was to
succeed him. This made them hate Pope, for the time, with holy
hatred. If the army could at that time have compared authentic
tables of strength of Lee's army and their own, the whole theory
would have collapsed at once, and McClellan's reputation and
popularity with it. They did not have the authentic tables, and
fought for a year under the awful cloud created by a blundering
spy-system.

The fiction as to Lee's forces is the most remarkable in the history
of modern wars. Whether McClellan was the victim or the accomplice
of the inventions of his "secret service," we cannot tell. It is
almost incredible that he should be deceiv