etween Halleck, McClellan, and
Pope, the only one who had fought like a soldier and manoeuvred like
a general was sent to the northwestern frontier to watch the petty
Indian tribes, carrying the burden of others' sins into the
wilderness. Mr. Lincoln's sacrifice of his sense of justice to what
seemed the only expedient in the terrible crisis, was sublime.
McClellan commanded the army, and Porter and Franklin each commanded
a corps. If the country was to be saved, confidence and power could
not be bestowed by halves.

In his "Own Story" McClellan speaks of the campaign in Maryland as
made "with a halter round his neck," [Footnote: O. S., p. 551.]
meaning that he had no real command except of the defences of
Washington, and that he marched after Lee without authority, so
that, if unsuccessful, he might have been condemned for usurpation
of command. It would be incredible that he adopted such a mere
illusion, if he had not himself said it. It proves that some at
least of the strange additions to history which he thus published
had their birth in his own imagination brooding over the past, and
are completely contradicted by the official records. [Footnote: This
illusion, at least, is shown to be of later origin by his telegram
to his wife of September 7. "I leave here this afternoon," he says,
"to take command of the troops in the field. The feeling of the
government towards me, I am sure, is kind and trusting. I hope, with
God's blessing, to justify the great confidence they now repose in
me, and will bury the past in oblivion." O. S., p. 567.] The
consolidation of the armies under him was, in fact, a promotion,
since it enlarged his authority and committed to him the task that
properly belonged to Halleck as general-in-chief. For a few days,
beginning September 1st, McClellan's orders and correspondence were
dated "Headquarters, Washington," because no formal designation had
been given to the assembled forces at the capital. When he took the
field at Rockville on the 8th of September, he assumed, as he had
the right to do in the absence of other direction from the War
Department, that Burnside's and Pope's smaller armies were lost in
the larger Army of the Potomac by the consolidation, and resumed the
custom of dating his orders and dispatches from "Headquarters, Army
of the Potomac," from the command of which he had never been
removed, even when its divisions were temporarily separated from
him. [Footnote: On August 31