Part 40 (1/2)

MR. LINCOLN'S OPINION OF GENERAL McCLELLAN.

In the first stage of the war, when the President was commander-in-chief of the forces by virtue of his office, he played the part of the elevated boy in ”The King of the Castle.” Every one of his colleagues, who ought to have been his loyal supporters, until some firm stand was attained under the batteries of Richmond, civil and military, warred against him, underhandedly and haply openly. All aimed, in Cabinet and on the staff, to be ruler. The understrappers of aged General Scott upheld all that concurred with warfare, set and obsolete, of the European strategists, overthrown by the great Napoleon. The princ.i.p.al practiser of these tactics, the _summum bonum_, or ”good thing,” of the ”West Pointers” was General McClellan, ”the Little Mac” of his wors.h.i.+pers and ”the Little Napoleon” of the dazzled crowd. He was, like Ca.s.sio, ”a great arithmetician, who had never set a squadron in the field or the division of a battle knew,” etc. Seeming utterly to ignore that the enemy was composed of men trained by their life and ”genteel”

occupations to shoot true, to ride like Comanches or Revolutionary Harry Lee's Light-horse, used to lying outdoors under skies genial to them, and subsisting on game and corn-cake as Marion on sweet potatoes, he expected to foil such guerrillas as ”Jeb” Stuart, Mosby, and Quantrell by earthworks, which they probably would have leaped their horse over if they wanted to reach their spoil in that way. It was in allusion to this adherence to Vauban that the President, who eyed the aspiring Hotspur as Henry V. his heir, the sixth Henry, trying on his crown, observed shrewdly, when the general kept silence:

”He is entrenching.”

A ”STATIONARY” ENGINE.

Lincoln said of the much-promising General McClellan: ”He is an admirable engineer, but he seems to have a special talent for a _stationary_ engine.”

He also cited him as a scholar and a gentleman.

Nevertheless, as the education lavished on the Army of the Potomac to make it earn foreign military critics' praise at reviews, was not thrown away, but made sound soldiers which in time were invaluable to General Grant, Lincoln did him justice by quaintly, but earnestly, saying:

”I would like to borrow _his_ arm if he has no further use for it.”

(General Franklin heard this.)

But ”Little Mac” had no design on the dictators.h.i.+p, being surely a lover of the Union, too.

SHOVELING FLEAS.

On account of the looseness and corruption attending the raising of soldiers at the first, the President, noting the difference between the number of men forwarded to General McClellan for the Army of the Potomac, and the number reported arrived, said:

”Sending men to that army is like shoveling fleas across a barn-yard--half of them never get there.”

THE GEORGIA COLONEL'S COSTUME.

”On account of this sectional warfare,” Senator Mason, of Virginia, announced his resolve to wear homespun, and dispense with Yankee manufactures altogether. That made Lincoln laugh, and say: ”To carry out his idea, he ought to go barefoot. If that's the plan, they should begin at the foundation, and adopt the well-known Georgian colonel's uniform--a s.h.i.+rt-collar and a pair of spurs!”--(In, speech, New England tour, 1860.)

COa.r.s.e FEED FIRST!

Secretary Whitney wrote: ”In July, 1861, I was in Was.h.i.+ngton, where I merely said to President Lincoln: 'Everything is drifting into the war, and I guess you will have to put _me_ in the army.' (He was in the Indian service at the time.)

”The President looked up from his work, and said good-humoredly: