and enduring alone all
consequences, he appears a man so isolated from his fellow men amid such
tests and trials, that one is filled with a sense of awe, almost beyond
sympathy, in the contemplation.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] This language was too vague to make known to us now what Sumner's
demand was; for one of the questions bitterly in dispute soon became:
what forces were properly to be regarded as available "for the defense
of the city."

[5] McClellan says that he offered to General Hitchcock, "who at that
time held staff relations with his excellency, the President, and the
secretary of war," to submit a list of troops, to be left for the
defense of Washington, with their positions; but Hitchcock replied that
McClellan's judgment was sufficient in the matter. McClellan's _Report_,
683. VOL. II.

[6] By letter to the adjutant-general, wherein he requested the
transmission of the information to the secretary of war. _Report of
Comm. on Conduct of the War_, ii. pt. i. 13. The addition in the
_Report_ is erroneous, being given as 54,456 instead of 55,456.

[7] See Comte de Paris, _Civil War in America_, i. 626, 627.

[8] See discussion by Swinton, _Army of Potomac_, 108 _et seq._

[9] Perhaps he was not justified in counting upon it with such apparent
assurance as he had done. Webb, _The Peninsula_, 37-42.

[10] General Webb says that this question is "the leading point of
dispute in the campaign and may never be satisfactorily set at rest."
But he also says: "To allow the general to remain in command, and then
cut off the very arm with which he was about to strike, we hold to have
been inexcusable and unmilitary to the last degree." Swinton condemns
the withholding McDowell (_Army of the Potomac_, 104), adding, with fine
magnanimity, that it is not necessary to impute any "really unworthy
motive" to Mr. Lincoln!

[11] It seems to me that military opinion, so far as I can get at it,
inclines to hold that the government, having let McClellan go to the
Peninsula with the expectation of McDowell's corps, ought to have sent
it to him, and not to have repaired its own oversight at his cost. But
this does not fully meet the position that, oversight or no oversight,
Peninsula-success or Peninsula-defeat, blame here or blame there, when
the President had reason to doubt the safety of the capital, he was
resolved, and rightly resolved, to put that safety beyond _possibility
of question_, by any means or at any cost. The tr