st Halleck had written to him, "You will
retain the command of everything in this vicinity not temporarily
belonging to Pope's army in the field;" and in the general order
issued August 30, McClellan's command of the Army of the Potomac is
affirmed. Official Records, vol. xi. pt. i. p. 103; _Id_., vol. li.
pt. i. p. 775.] The defences of Washington were now entrusted to
Major-General Banks, strictly in subordination, however, to himself.
[Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. pp. 202, 214.] The
official record of authority and command is consistent and perfect,
and his notion in his later years, that there was anything informal
about it, is proven to be imaginary. [Footnote: _Ante_, p. 257.]
Halleck's direction, which I have quoted, to "let our troops move
immediately," would be absurd as addressed to the commandant of the
Army of the Potomac into which the Army of Virginia was
consolidated, unless that commandant was to take the field, or a
formal order relieved him of command as Pope was relieved. Certainly
no other commander was designated, and I saw enough of him in those
days to say with confidence that he betrayed no doubt that the order
to "move immediately" included himself. McClellan's popularity with
the Army of the Potomac had seemed to Mr. Lincoln the only power
sufficient to ensure its prompt and earnest action against the
Confederate invasion. His leadership of it, to be successful, had to
be accompanied with plenary powers, even if the stultification of
the government itself were the consequence. When the patriotism of
the President yielded to this, the suggestion of McClellan twenty
years afterward, that it had all been a pitfall prepared for him,
would be revolting if, in view of the records, the absurdity of it
did not prove that its origin was in a morbid imagination. It is far
more difficult to deal leniently with the exhibition of character in
his private letters, which were injudiciously added to his "Own
Story" by his literary executor. In them his vanity and his ill-will
toward rivals and superiors are shockingly naked; and since no
historian can doubt that at every moment from September, 1861, to
September, 1862, his army greatly outnumbered his enemy, whilst in
equipment and supply there was no comparison, his persistent outcry
that he was sacrificed by his government destroys even that
character for dignity and that reputation for military intelligence
which we fondly attributed to him