cal
subjects than I had with Burnside. We found ourselves, however, in
entire accord in advising him that any declaration on his part
against the Proclamation would be a fatal error. We could easily
understand that he should differ from us in his way of viewing the
question of public policy, but we pointed out very clearly that any
public utterance by him in his official character criticising the
civil policy of the administration would be properly regarded as a
usurpation. He intimated that this was his own opinion, but, by way
of showing how the matter was thrust at him by others, said that
people had assured him that the army was so devoted to him that they
would as one man enforce any decision he should make as to any part
of the war policy.

I had so recently gone through the little experience on this subject
which I have narrated above, that I here spoke out with some
emphasis. I said that those who made such assurances were his worst
enemies, and in my judgment knew much less of the army than they
pretended; that our volunteer soldiers were citizens as well as
soldiers, and were citizens more than soldiers; and that greatly as
I knew them to be attached to him, I believed not a corporal's guard
would stand by his side if he were to depart from the strict
subordination of the military to the civil authority. Burnside and
Cochrane both emphatically assented to this, and McClellan added
that he heartily believed both that it was true and that it ought to
be so. But this still left the question open whether the very fact
that there was an agitation in camp on the subject, and intrigues of
the sort I have mentioned, did not make it wise for him to say
something which would show, at least, that he gave no countenance to
any would-be revolutionists. We debated this at some length, with
the general conclusion that it might be well for him to remind the
army in general orders that whatever might be their rights as
citizens, they must as soldiers beware of any organized effort to
meddle with the functions of the civil government.

I left the Army of the Potomac before McClellan's general order on
this subject, dated October 7, was published, but when I read it in
the light of the conference in his tent, I regarded it as an honest
effort on his part to break through the toils which intriguers had
spread for him, and regretted that what seemed to me one of his most
laudable actions should have been one of the most misrepr