f infantry, one regiment of cavalry, and five batteries of
artillery designated by name in the "Confederate" newspaper reports
of the seven days' battles. Comparing this with other information
from similar sources, he concluded that Lee had about one hundred
and fifty regiments. These, at 700 men each, would make 105,000, or
at 400 (which he found a full average) the gross of the infantry
would be 60,000. General Webb, with official documents before him,
puts it at 70,000 to 80,000. Does one need better evidence how much
worse than useless was McClellan's secret service? See Official
Records, vol. xi. pt. iii. p. 340.] When I joined McClellan at
Washington, I had no personal knowledge of either army except as I
had learned it from the newspapers. My predilections in favor of
McClellan made me assume that his facts were well based, as they
ought to have been. I therefore accepted the general judgment of
himself and his intimate friends as to his late campaign and Pope's,
and believed that his restoration to command was an act of justice
to him and of advantage to the country. I did not stay long enough
with that army to apply any test of my own to the question of
relative numbers, and have had to correct my opinions of the men and
the campaigns by knowledge gained long afterward. I however used
whatever influence I had to combat the ideas in McClellan's mind
that the administration meant to do him any wrong, or had any end
but the restoration of National unity in view.

Whether Halleck was appointed on Pope's urgent recommendation or no,
his campaign in the West was the ground of his promotion. The
advance from the Ohio to Fort Donelson, to Nashville, to Shiloh, and
to Corinth had been under his command, and he deservedly had credit
for movements which had brought Kentucky and Tennessee within the
Union lines. He had gone in person to the front after the battle of
Shiloh, and though much just criticism had been made of his slow
digging the way to Corinth by a species of siege operations, he had
at any rate got there. Mr. Lincoln was willing to compromise upon a
slow advance upon Richmond, provided it were sure and steady.
Halleck's age and standing in the army were such that McClellan
himself could find no fault with his appointment, if any one were to
be put over him.

Everything points to the expectation, at the time of his
appointment, that Halleck would assume the personal command in the
field. He visited McClella