Many anecdotes show this boy frolicking about the White House,a licensed intruder everywhere.Another flood of anecdotes preserve the stupefying grief of his father after the child's death.Of these latter,the most extreme which portray Lincoln toward the close of February so unnerved as to be incapable of public duty,may be dismissed as apocryphal.But there can be no doubt that his unhappiness was too great for the vain measurement of descriptive words;that it intensified the nervous mood which had already possessed him;that anxiety,deepening at times into terrible alarm,became his constant companion.
In his dread and sorrow,his dilemma grew daily more intolerable.McClellan had opposed so stoutly the Washington birthday order that Lincoln had permitted him to ignore it.He was still wavering which advice to take,McClellan's or the elder generals'.To remove McClellan,to try at this critical moment some other general,did not occur to him as a rational possibility.But somehow he felt he must justify himself to himself for yielding to McClellan's views.In his zeal to secure some judgment more authoritative than his own,he took a further step along the dangerous road of going over the Commander's head,of bringing to bear upon him influences not strictly included in the military system.He required McClellan to submit his plan to a council of his general officers.Lincoln attended this council and told the generals "he was not a military man and therefore would be governed by the opinion of a majority."[10]The council decided in McClellan's favor by a vote of eight to four.This was a disappointment to Lincoln.So firm was his addiction to the overland route that he could not rest content with the council's decision.Stanton urged him to disregard it,sneering that the eight who voted against him were McClellan's creatures,his "pets."But Lincoln would not risk going against the majority of the council."We are civilians,"said he,"we should justly be held responsible for any disaster if we set up our opinions against those of experienced military men in the practical management of a campaign."[11]
Nevertheless,from this quandary,in which his reason forced him to do one thing while all his sensibilities protested,he extricated himself in a curious way.Throughout the late winter he had been the object of a concerted attack from Stanton and the Committee.The Committee had tacitly annexed Stanton.He conferred with them confidentially.At each important turn of events,he and they always got together in a secret powwow.As early as February twentieth,when Lincoln seemed to be breaking down with grief and anxiety,one of those secret conferences of the high conspirators ended in a determination to employ all their forces,direct and indirect,to bring about McClellan's retirement.They were all victims of that mania of suspicion which was the order of the day."Amajority of the Committee,"wrote its best member,long afterward when he had come to see things in a different light,"strongly suspected that General McClellan was a traitor."Wade vented his spleen in furious words about "King McClellan."Unrestrained by Lincoln's anguish,the Committee demanded a conference a few days after his son's death and threatened an appeal from President to Congress if he did not quickly force McClellan to advance.[12]
All this while the Committee was airing another grievance.
They clamored to have the twelve divisions of the army of the Potomac grouped into corps.They gave as their motive,military efficiency.And perhaps they thought they meant it.
But there was a cat in the bag which they carefully tried to conceal.The generals of divisions formed two distinct groups,the elder ones who did not owe their elevation to McClellan and the younger ones who did.The elder generals,it happened,sympathized generally with the Committee in politics,or at least did not sympathize with McClellan.The younger generals reflected the politics of their patron.And McClellan was a Democrat,a hater of the Vindictives,unsympathetic with Abolition.Therefore,the mania of suspicion being in full flood,the Committee would believe no good of McClellan when he opposed advancing the elder generals to the rank of corps commanders.His explanation that he "wished to test them in the field,"was poohpoohed.Could not any good Jacobin see through that!Of course,it was but an excuse to hold back the plums until he could drop them into the itching palms of those wicked Democrats,his "pets."Why should not the good men and true,elder and therefore better soldiers,whose righteousness was so well attested by their political leanings,why should not they have the places of power to which their rank entitled them?
Hitherto,however,Lincoln had held out against the Committee's demand and bad refused to compel McClellan to reorganize his army against his will.He now observed that in the council which cast the die against the overland route,the division between the two groups of generals,what we may call the Lincoln generals and the McClellan generals,was sharply evident.The next day he issued a general order which organized the army of the Potomac into corps,and promoted to the rank of corps commanders,those elder generals whose point of view was similar to his own.[13]Thereafter,any reference of crucial matters to a council of general officers,would mean submitting it,not to a dozen commanders of divisions with McClellan men in the majority,but to four or five commanders of corps none of whom was definitely of the McClellan faction.
Thus McClellan was virtually put under surveillance of an informal war council scrutinizing his course from the President's point of view.It was this reduced council of the subordinates,as will presently appear,that made the crucial decision of the campaign.
