ope the Administration had enlarged the command of
McClellan and trusted the fortunes of the country to his generalship.
The trust had not been in vain. He had rolled back the tide of
invasion by a great battle in which for the first time the army of
Lee had been beaten. He was now marching forward with his army
strengthened for another conflict, and without explanation to the
country or to himself was deprived of his command. A large part
of the people and of the public press and an overwhelming majority
in the army were dissatisfied with the act, and believed that it
would entail evil consequences.

This ended the military career of General McClellan which throughout
its whole period had been a subject of constant discussion--a
discussion which has not yet closed. The opinion of a majority of
intelligent observers, both civil and military, is that he was a
man of high professional training, admirably skilled in the science
of war, capable of commanding a large army with success, but at
the same time not original in plan, not fertile in resource, and
lacking the energy, the alertness, the daring, the readiness to
take great risks for great ends, which distinguish the military
leaders of the world. For a commander of armies, in an offensive
campaign, his caution was too largely developed. He possessed in
too great a degree what the French term the _defensive instinct of
the engineer_, and was apparently incapable of doing from his own
volition what he did so well on the bloody field of Antietam, when
under the pressure of an overwhelming necessity.

General Burnside assumed the command with diffidence. After a
consultation with General Halleck he moved down the Rappahannock
opposite Fredericksburg where he confronted General Lee's army on
the 13th of December, and made an attack upon it under great
disadvantages and with the legitimate result of a great defeat.
The total loss of killed and wounded of the Union army exceeded
ten thousand men. The public mind was deeply affected throughout
the North by this untoward event. All the prestige which Lee had
lost at Antietam had been regained, all the advantage we had secured
on that field was sacrificed by the disaster on the still bloodier
field of Fredericksburg. It added immeasurably to the gloom of a
gloomy winter, and in the rank and file of the army it caused a
dissatisfaction somewhat akin to mutiny. So pronounced did this
feeling become and so plainly wa