Clellan is, therefore, in considerable degree the selection of the country as well as of the executive, and hence there is better reason to hope there will be given him the confidence and cordial support thus by fair implication promised, and without which he cannot with so full efficiency serve the country.

At this time Lincoln had every reason to believe that McClellan would soon move. The General certainly was assuring the few persons whom he condescended to take into his confidence to that effect. The Hon. Galusha A. Grow, of Pennsylvania, Speaker of the House, says that very soon after Congress came together, the members began to comment on the number of board barracks that were going up around Washington.

"It seemed to them," says Mr. Grow," that there were a great many more than were necessary for hospital and reserve purposes. The roads at that time in Virginia were excellent; everybody was eager for an advance. Congressmen observed the barracks with dismay; it looked as if McClellan was going into winter quarters. Finally several of them came to me and stated their anxiety, asking what it meant. 'Well, gentlemen,' I said, 'I don't know what it means, but I will ask the General,' so I went to McClellan, who received me kindly, and told him how all the members were feeling, and asked him if the army was really going into winter quarters. 'No, no,' McClellan said, 'I have no intention of putting the army into winter quarters; I mean the campaign shall be short, sharp, and decisive.' He began explaining his plan to me, but I interrupted him, saying I did not desire to know his plan; I preferred not to know it, in fact. If I could assure members of Congress that the army was going to move, it was all that was necessary. I returned with his assurance that there would soon be an advance. Weeks went on, however, without the promised advance; nor did the Army of the Potomac leave the vicinity of Washington until Mr. Lincoln issued the special orders compelling McClellan to move."

Lincoln continued to defend McClellan. "We've got to stand by the General," he told his visitors. "I suppose," he added dubiously, "he knows his business." But loyal as he was he too was losing patience. His friend, Mr. Arnold, tells how the President said one day to a friend of General McClellan, doubtless with the expectation that it would be repeated: "McClellan's tardiness reminds me of a man in Illinois, whose attorney was not sufficiently aggressive. The client knew a few law phrases, and finally, after waiting until his patience was exhausted by the non-action of his counsel, he sprang to his feet and exclaimed: "Why don't you go at him with a Fi fa demurrer, a capias, a surrebutter, or a ne exeat, or something, and not stand there like a nudum pactum, or a non est?"

Later he made a remark which was repeated up and down the country: "If General McClellan does not want to use the army for some days, I should like to borrow it and see if it cannot be made to do something."

Towards the end of December McClellan fell ill. The long-expected advance was out of the question until he recovered. Distracted at this idea, the President for the first time asserted himself as commander-in-chief of the forces of the United States. Heretofore he had used his military authority principally in raising men and commissioning officers; campaigns he had left to the generals. It had been to be sure largely because of his urgency that the Battle of Bull Run had been fought. After Bull Run he had prepared a "Memorandum of Military Policy Suggested by the Bull Run Defeat," and may have thought the War Department was working according to this. When he relieved Frémont he had offered his successor a few suggestions but he had been careful to add:

"Knowing how hazardous it is to bind down a distant commander in the field to specific lines and operations, as so

much always depends on a knowledge of localities and passing events, it is intended therefore, to leave a considerable margin for the exercise of your judgment and discretion."

Early in December, weary with waiting for McClellan, he had sent him a list of questions concerning the Potomac campaign. They were broad hints, but in no sense orders and McClellan hardly gave them a second thought. Nicolay and Hay say that after keeping them ten days, the General returned them with hurried answers in pencil. Certainly he was in no degree influenced by them. And this was about all the military authority-" interference" some critics called it, that the President had exercised up to the time McClellan was shut up by fever.

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Now, however, he undertook to learn direct from the officers the condition things were in, and if it was not possible to get some work out of the army somewhere along the line. Particularly was he anxious that East Tennessee be relieved. The Unionists there were "being hanged and driven to despair," there was danger of them going over to the South. All this the generals knew. Lincoln telegraphed Halleck, then in command of the Western Department, and Buell, in charge of the forces in Kentucky, asking if they were concert" and urging a movement which he supposed to have been decided upon some time before. The replies he received disappointed and distressed him. There seemed to be no more idea of advancing in the West than in the East. The plans he supposed settled his generals now controverted. He could get no promise of action, no precise information. "Delay is ruining us," he wrote to Buell on January 7, “and it is indispensable for me to have something definite." And yet, convinced though he was that his plans were practicable, he would not make them into orders.

"For my own views," he wrote Buell on January 13, “I have not offered and do not offer them as orders; and while

I am glad to have them respectfully considered, I would blame you to follow them contrary to your own clear judgment, unless I should put them in the form of orders. As to General McClellan's views, you understand your duty in regard to them better than I do. With this preliminary, I state my general idea of this war to be that we have the greater numbers, and the enemy has greater facility of concentrating forces upon points of collision; that we must fail unless we can find some way of making our advantage an overmatch for his; and that this can only be done by menacing him with superior forces at different points at the same time, so that we can safely attack one or both if he makes no change; and if he weakens one to strengthen the other, forbear to attack the strengthened one, but seize and hold the weakened one, gaining so much."

This hesitancy about exercising his military authority, came from Lincoln's consciousness that he knew next to nothing of the business of fighting. When he saw that those supposed to know something of the science did nothing, he resolved to learn the subject himself as thoroughly as he could. "He gave himself, night and day, to the study of the military situation," say Nicolay and Hay, his secretaries. "He read a large number of strategical works. He pored over the reports from the various departments and districts. of the field of war. He held long conferences with eminent generals and admirals, and astonished them by the extent of his special knowledge and the keen intelligence of his questions."

By the time McClellan was about again, Lincoln had learned enough of the situation to convince him that the Army of the Potomac could and must advance, and on January 27, he, for the first time, used his power as commander-in-chief of the army, and issued his General War Order No. I.

Ordered, That the 22d day of February, 1862, be the day for a general movement of all the land and naval forces of

the United States against the insurgent forces. That especially the army at and about Fortress Monroe; the Army of the Potomac; the Army of Western Virginia; the army near Munfordville, Kentucky; the army and flotilla at Cairo, and a naval force in the Gulf of Mexico, be ready to move on that day.

That all other forces, both land and naval, with their respective commanders, obey existing orders for the time, and be ready to obey additional orders when duly given.

That the heads of departments, and especially the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, with all their subordinates, and the general-in-chief, with all other commanders and subordinates of land and naval forces, will severally be held to their strict and full responsibilities for prompt execution of this order.

Four days later the President issued his first Special War Order, applying exclusively to the Army of the Potomac.

Ordered, That all the disposable force of the Army of the Potomac, after providing safely for the defense of Washington, be formed into an expedition for the immediate object of seizing and occupying a point upon the railroad southwestward of what is known as Manassas Junction, all details to be in the discretion of the commander-in-chief, and the expedition to move before or on the 22d day of February next.

For a time after these orders were issued there was general hopefulness in the country. The newspapers that had been attacking the President now praised him for taking hold of the army. "It has infused new spirit into every one since the President appears to take such an interest in our operations," wrote an officer from the West, to the "Tribune."

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The hope of an advance in the East was short-lived. McClellan was not willing to carry out the plan for the campaign which the President approved. Mr. Lincoln believed that the Army of the Potomac should move directly across