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THE POLITICAL EFFECT.

[1862.

cere) that the proclamation had changed the whole character of the war! And this was true, though not in the sense in which they meant it. When begun, it was a war for a temporary peace; the proclamation converted it into a war for a permanent peace. But the autumn elections showed how near Mr. Lincoln came to being ahead of his people after all; for they went largely against the Administration, and even in the States that the Democrats did not carry there was a falling-off in the Republican majorities; though the result was partly due to the failure of the Peninsula campaign, and the escape of Lee's army after Antietam. Yet this did not shake the great emancipator's faith in the justice and wisdom of what he had done. He said on New Year's evening to a knot of callers, "The signature looks a little tremulous, for my hand was tired, but my resolution was firm. I told them in September, if they did not return to their allegiance and cease murdering our soldiers, I would strike at this pillar of their strength. And now the promise shall be kept, and not one word of it will I ever recall."

If we wonder at the slowness with which that great struggle arrived at its true theme and issue, we shall do well to note that it has a close parallel in our own history. The first battle of the Revolution was fought in April, 1775, but the Declaration of Independence was not made till July, 1776 -a period of nearly fifteen months. The first battle in the War of Secession took place in April, 1861, and the Emancipation Proclamation was

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AN HISTORICAL PARALLEL.

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issued in September, 1862 - seventeen months. In the one case, as in the other, the interval was filled with doubt, hesitation, and divided counsels; and Lincoln's reluctance finds its match in Washington's confession that when he took command of the army (after Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill had been fought) he still abhorred the idea of independence. And again, as the great Proclamation was preceded by the attempts of Frémont and Hunter, so the great Declaration had been preceded by those of Mendon, Mass., Chester, Penn., and Mecklenburg, N. C., which anticipated its essential propositions by two or three years. A period of fifteen or seventeen months, however slow for an individual, is perhaps for an entire people as rapid development of a radical purpose as we could have any reason to expect.

CHAPTER XIV.

BURNSIDE'S CAMPAIGN.

AFTER the battle of the Antietam, Lee withdrew to the neighborhood of Winchester, where he was reënforced till at the end of a month he had about sixty-eight thousand men. McClellan followed as far as the Potomac, and there seemed to plant his army, as if he expected it to sprout and increase itself like a field of corn. Ten days after he defeated Lee on the Antietam, he wrote to the President that he intended to stay where he was, and attack the enemy if they attempted to re-cross into Maryland! At the same time, he constantly called for unlimited reënforcements, and declared that, even if the city of Washington should be captured, it would not be a disaster so serious as the defeat of his army. Apparently it did not occur to General McClellan that these two contingencies were logically the same. For if Lee could have defeated that army, he could then have marched into Washington; or if he could have captured Washington without fighting the army whose business it was to defend it, the army would thereby be substantially defeated.

On the 1st of October the President visited General McClellan at his headquarters, and made himself acquainted with the condition of the army.

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M'CLELLAN'S INACTION.

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Five days later he ordered McClellan to "cross the Potomac, and give battle to the enemy, or drive him south." The despatch added, "Your army must move now, while the roads are good. If you cross the river between the enemy and Washington, and cover the latter by your operation, you can be reënforced with thirty thousand men." Nevertheless, McClellan did not stir. Instead of obeying the order, he inquired what sort of troops they were that would be sent to him, and how many tents he could have, and said his army could not move without fresh supplies of shoes and clothing. While he was thus paltering, the Confederate General Stuart, who had ridden around his army on the Peninsula, with a small body of cavalry rode entirely around it again, eluding all efforts for his capture. On the 13th the President wrote a long, friendly letter to General McClellan, in which he gave him much excellent advice that he, as a trained soldier, ought not to have needed. A sentence or two will suggest the drift of it: "Are you not overcautious when you assume that you cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing?

In coming to us, he [the enemy] tenders us an advantage which we should not waive. We should not so operate as to merely drive him away. It is all easy if our troops march as well as the enemy, and it is unmanly to say they cannot do it." The letter had outlined a plan of campaign, but it closed with the words, characteristic of Lincoln's modesty in military matters, "This letter is in no sense an order." Twelve days more of fine

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weather were frittered away in renewed complaints, and such inquiries as whether the President wished him to move at once or wait for fresh horses, for the General said his horses were fatigued and had sore tongue. Here the President began to show some impatience, and wrote: "Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?" The General replied that they had been scouting, picketing, and making reconnoissances, and that the President had done injustice to the cavalry. Whereupon Mr. Lincoln wrote again : "Most certainly I intend no injustice to any, and if I have done any I deeply regret it. To be told, after more than five weeks' total inaction of the army, and during which period we had sent to that army every fresh horse we possibly could, amounting in the whole to 7,918, that the cavalry horses were too much fatigued to move, presented a very cheerless, almost hopeless, prospect for the future, and it may have forced something of impatience into my despatches." That day, October 26, McClellan began to cross the Potomac; but it was ten days (partly owing to heavy rains) before his army was all on the south side of the river, and meanwhile he had brought up new questions for discussion and invented new excuses for delay. He wanted to know to what extent the line of the Potomac was to be guarded; he wanted to leave strong garrisons at certain points, to prevent the army he was driving southward before him from rushing northward into Maryland again; he dis

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