the river. It was the last straw. McClellan had been weighed and
found wanting. He registered a solemn promise with God that if the great
Confederate Commanders succeeded in making good their retreat from this
desperate situation he would remove McClellan.

The Confederates withdrew, rallied their shattered forces safely in
Virginia, and Jeb Stuart once more rode around the Northern army!

The President issued his Emancipation Proclamation, challenging the
South to war to the death, and flung down the gauntlet to his rival, the
coming leader of Northern Democracy, George Brinton McClellan, by
removing him from command.

CHAPTER XXII

BENEATH THE SKIN

John Vaughan saw the blow fall on McClellan's magnificent headquarters
in deep amazement. The idol of the army was ordered to turn over his
command to General Burnside and the impossible had happened.

Instead of the brilliant _coup d'etat_ which he and the entire staff had
predicted, the fallen leader obeyed and took an affectionate leave of
his men.

McClellan knew, what his staff could not understand, that for the moment
the President was master of the situation. He still held the unbounded
confidence of his officers, but the rank and file of his soldiers had
become his wondering critics. They believed they had crushed Lee's army
at Antietam and yet they lay idle until the skillful Southern Commander
had crossed the Potomac, made good his retreat, and once more insulted
them by riding around their entire lines. The volunteer American soldier
was a good fighter and a good critic of the men who led him. He had his
own ideas about how an army should be fought and maneuvered. As the idol
of fighting men, McClellan had ceased to threaten the supremacy of the
civil law. There was no attempt at the long looked for _coup d'etat_. It
was too late. No one knew this more clearly than McClellan himself.

But his fall was the bitterness of death to the staff who adored him and
the generals who believed in him. Burnside, knowing the condition of
practical anarchy he must face, declined the command. The President
forced him to accept. He took it reluctantly with grim forebodings of
failure.

John received his long leave of absence from his Chief and left for
Washington the night before the formal farewell. His rage against the
bungler who ruled the Nation with autocratic power was fierce and
implacable.

His resentment against the woman he loved was scarcely less b