federate as well as National records had brought within his
reach. He had forgotten much, but he had learned nothing.

CHAPTER XVIII

PERSONAL RELATIONS OF McCLELLAN, BURNSIDE, AND PORTER

Intimacy of McClellan and Burnside--Private letters in the official
files--Burnside's mediation--His self-forgetful devotion--The
movement to join Pope--Burnside forwards Porter's dispatches--His
double refusal of the command--McClellan suspends the organization
of wings--His relations to Porter--Lincoln's letter on the
subject--Fault-finding with Burnside--Whose work?--Burnside's
appearance and bearing in the field.

McClellan and Burnside had been classmates at West Point, and had
been associated in railway employment after they had left the army,
in the years immediately before the war. The intimacy which began at
the Academy had not only continued, but they had kept up the
demonstrative boyish friendship which made their intercourse like
that of brothers. They were "Mac" and "Burn" to each other when I
knew them, and although Fitz-John Porter, Hancock, Parker, Reno, and
Pleasonton had all been members of the same class, the two seemed to
be bosom friends in a way totally different from their intimacy with
the others. Probably there was no one outside of his own family to
whom McClellan spoke his secret thoughts in his letters, as he did
to Burnside. The characteristic lack of system in business which was
very noticeable in Burnside, made him negligent, apparently, in
discriminating between official letters and private ones, and so it
happens that there are a number in the official records which were
never meant to reach the public. They show, however, as nothing else
could, the relations which the two men sustained to each other, and
reveal strong traits in the characters of both.

After Burnside had secured his first success in the Roanoke
expedition, he had written to McClellan, then in the midst of his
campaign of the peninsula, and this was McClellan's reply on the
21st of May, 1862:--[Footnote: Official Records, vol ix. p. 392.]

"MY DEAR BURN,--Your dispatch and kind letter received. I have
instructed Seth [Williams] to reply to the official letter, and now
acknowledge the kind private note. It always does me good, in the
midst of my cares and perplexities, to see your wretched old
scrawling. I have terrible troubles to contend with, but have met
them with a good heart, like your good old self, and have thus