enerals 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.

On the same day Lincoln issued another general order accepting
McClellan's plan for a flanking movement to the Virginia coast.(14) The
Confederate lines at this time ran through Manassas--the point
Lincoln wished McClellan to strike. It was to be known later that the
Confederate General gave to Lincoln's views the high endorsement
of assuming that they were the inevitable views that the Northern
Commander, if he knew his business, would act upon. Therefore, he had
been quietly preparing to withdraw his army to more defensible positions
farther South. By a curious coincidence, his "strategic retreat"
occurred immediately after McClellan had been given authority to do what
he liked. On the ninth of March it was known at Washington that Manassas
had been evacuated. Whereupon, McClellan's fatal lack of humor permitted
him to make a great blunder. The man who had refused to go to Manassas
while the Confederates were there, marched an army to Manassas the
moment he heard that they were gone--and then marched back again.
This performance was instantly fixed upon for ridicule as McClellan's
"promenade to Manassas."

To Lincoln the news of the promenade seemed both a vindication of his
own plan and crushing evidence that if he had insisted on his plan, the
Confederate army would have been annihilated, the war in one cataclysm
brought to an end. He was ridden, as most men were, by the delusion
of one terrific battle that was to end all. In a bitterness of
disappointment, his slowly tortured spirit burst into rage. The
Committee was delighted. For once, they approved of him. The next act
of this man, ordinarily so gentle, seems hardly credible.