. Halleck did not do
this. It would seem that he had become conscious of his own lack of
nerve in the actual presence of an enemy, and looked back upon his
work at St. Louis in administering his department, whilst Grant and
Buell took the field, with more satisfaction than upon his own
advance from Shiloh to Corinth. He seemed already determined to
manage the armies from his office in Washington and assume no
responsibility for their actual leadership.

When the Army of the Potomac was arriving at Alexandria, another
crisis occurred in which a single responsible head in the field was
a necessity. McClellan had been giving a continuous demonstration,
since August 4th, how easy it is to thwart and hinder any movement
whilst professing to be accomplishing everything that is possible.
No maxim in war is better founded in experience than that a man who
believes that a plan is sure to fail should never be set to conduct
it. McClellan had written that Pope would be beaten before the Army
of the Potomac could be transferred to him, and Pope was beaten.
[Footnote: Halleck to McClellan, August 10 and 12, and McClellan's
reply: Official Records, vol. xi. pt. i. pp. 86-88. See also O. S.,
p. 466.] The only chance for any other result was for Halleck
himself to conduct the transfer. If Halleck meant that Franklin
should have pushed out to Manassas on the 27th of August, he should
have taken the field and gone with the corps. He did not know and
could not know how good or bad McClellan's excuses were, and nothing
but his own presence, with supreme power, could certainly remove the
causes for delay. He wrote to Pope that he could not leave
Washington, when he ought not to have been in Washington. [Footnote:
Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 797.] He worked and worried
himself ill trying to make McClellan do what he should have done
himself, and then, overwhelmed with details he should never have
burdened himself with, besought his subordinate to relieve him of
the strain by practically taking command. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 691;
vol. xi. pt. i. p. 103.]

As soon as McClellan began the movement down the James, Lee took
Longstreet's corps to Jackson, leaving only D. H. Hill's at
Richmond. [Footnote: _Id_., pt. ii. pp. 177, 552.] From that moment
McClellan could have marched anywhere. He could have marched to
Fredericksburg and joined Pope, and Halleck could have met them with
Burnside's troops. But the vast imaginary army of the