tly set down in his diary: "I wish here
to record what I consider a portent of evil to come. The President,
Governor Seward and I went over to McClellan's house tonight. The
servant at the door said the General was at the wedding of Colonel
Wheaton at General Buell's and would soon return. We went in and after
we had waited about an hour, McClellan came in, and without paying
particular attention to the porter who told him the President was
waiting to see him, went up-stairs, passing the door of the room where
the President and the Secretary of State were seated. They waited about
half an hour, and sent once more a servant to tell the General they were
there; and the answer came that the General had gone to bed.

"I merely record this unparalleled insolence of epaulettes without
comment It is the first indication I have yet seen of the threatened
supremacy of the military authorities. Coming home, I spoke to the
President about the matter, but he seemed not to have noticed it
specially, saying it were better at this time not to be making points of
etiquette and personal dignity."(5)

Did ever a subordinate, even a general, administer to a superior a more
astounding snub? To Lincoln in his selfless temper, it was Only a detail
in his problem of getting the army into action. What room for personal
affronts however gross in a mood like his? To be sure he ceased going to
McClellan's house, and thereafter summoned McClellan to come to him, but
no change appeared in the tone of his intercourse with the General. "I
will hold McClellan's horse," said he, "if he will win me victories."(6)

All this while, the two were debating plans of campaign and McClellan
was revealing-as we now see, though no one saw it at the time-the deep
dread of responsibility that was destined to paralyze him as an active
general. He was never ready. Always, there must be more preparation,
more men, more this, more that.

In January, 1862, Lincoln, grown desperate because of hope deferred,
made the first move of a sort that was to be lamentably frequent the
next six months. He went over the head of the Commanding General,
and, in order to force a result, evoked a power not recognized in
the military scheme of things. By this time the popular adulation of
McClellan was giving place to a general imitation of the growling of the
Jacobins, now well organized in the terrible Committee and growing each
day more and more hostile to the Administration. Linco