even
went so far as formally to put in writing their protest against
restoring him to the command of any army at all; while Stanton actually
tried to frighten the President by a petty threat of personal
consequences. But this was foolish. The crisis was of the kind which
induced Mr. Lincoln to exercise power, decisively. On this occasion his
impersonal, unimpassioned temperament left his judgment free to work
with evenness and clearness amid the whirl of momentous events and the
clash of angry tongues. No one could say that he had been a partisan
either for or against McClellan, and his wise reticence in the past gave
him in the present the privilege of untrammeled action. So he settled
the matter at once by ordering that McClellan should have command
within the defenses of Washington.

By this act the President gave extreme offense to the numerous and
strenuous band with whom hatred of the Democratic general had become a
sort of religion; and upon this occasion even Messrs. Nicolay and Hay
seem more inclined to apologize for their idol than to defend him. In
point of fact, nothing can be more misplaced than either apology or
defense, except criticism. Mr. Lincoln could have done no wiser thing.
He was simply setting in charge of the immediate business the man who
could do that especial business best. It was not a question of a battle
or a campaign, neither of which was for the moment imminent; but it was
a question of reorganizing masses of disorganized troops and getting
them into shape for battles and campaigns in the future. Only the
intensity of hatred could make any man blind to McClellan's capacity for
such work; and what he might be for other work was a matter of no
consequence just now. Lincoln simply applied to the instant need the
most effective help, without looking far afield to study remote
consequences. Two remarks, said to have been made by him at this time,
indicate his accurate appreciation of the occasion and the man: "There
is no one in the army who can man these fortifications and lick these
troops of ours into shape half so well as he can." "We must use the
tools we have; if he cannot fight himself, he excels in making others
ready to fight."

On September 1 Halleck verbally instructed McClellan to take command of
the defenses of Washington, defining this to mean strictly "the works
and their garrisons." McClellan says that later on the same day he had
an interview with the President, in which t