responsibility. He was void of humor. These
damaging qualities, brought out and exaggerated by too swift a rise to
apparent greatness, eventually worked his ruin. As an organizer he was
unquestionably efficient. His great achievement which secures him a
creditable place in American history was the conversion in the autumn of
1861 of a defeated rabble and a multitude of raw militia into a splendid
fighting machine. The very excellence of this achievement was part of
his undoing. It was so near to magical that it imposed on himself, gave
him a false estimate of himself, hid from him his own limitation. It
imposed also on his enemies. Crude, fierce men like the Vindictive
leaders of Congress, seeing this miracle take place so astoundingly
soon, leaped at once to the conclusion that he could, if he would,
follow it by another miracle. Having forged the thunderbolt, why could
he not, if he chose, instantly smite and destroy? All these hasty
inexperienced zealots labored that winter under the delusion that one
great battle might end the war. When McClellan, instead of rushing to
the front, entered his second phase--the one which he did not understand
himself, which his enemies never understood--when he entered upon his
long course of procrastination, the Jacobins, startled, dumfounded,
casting about for reasons, could find in their unanalytical vision, but
one. When Jove did not strike, it must be because Jove did not wish to
strike. McClellan was delaying for a purpose. Almost instantaneous
was the whisper, followed quickly by the outcry among the Jacobins,
"Treachery! We are betrayed. He is in league with the enemy."

Their distrust was not allayed by the manner in which he conducted
himself. His views of life and of the office of commanding general were
not those of frontier America. He believed in pomp, in display, in an
ordered routine. The fine weather of the autumn of 1861 was utilized
at Washington for frequent reviews. The flutter of flags, the glint of
marching bayonets, the perfectly ordered rhythm of marching feet, the
blare of trumpets, the silvery notes of the bugles, the stormily rolling
drums, all these filled with martial splendor the golden autumn air when
the woods were falling brown. And everywhere, it seemed, look where one
might, a sumptuously uniformed Commanding General, and a numerous and
sumptuous staff, were galloping past, mounted on beautiful horses.
Plain, blunt men like the Jacobins, caring noth