orce which has gone forward for you is with you by
this time. And if so, I think it is the precise time for you to strike a
blow. By delay the enemy will relatively gain upon you,--that is, he
will gain faster by fortifications and reinforcements than you can by
reinforcements alone. And once more let me tell you, it is indispensable
to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. You will do
me the justice to remember I always insisted that going down the bay in
search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Manassas, was only
shifting, and not surmounting, a difficulty; that we would find the same
enemy, and the same or equal intrenchments, at either place. The country
will not fail to note, is now noting, that the present hesitation to
move upon an intrenched enemy is but the story of Manassas repeated.

"I beg to assure you that I have never written you or spoken to you in
greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to
sustain you, so far as, in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can.
But you must act."

McClellan, in consternation and almost despair at the repeated pruning
of his force, now begged for at least a part of McDowell's corps, which,
he said on April 10, was "indispensable;" "the fate of our cause depends
upon it." Accordingly Franklin's division was sent to him; and then,
after all this palaver, he kept it a fortnight on shipboard, until
Yorktown was evacuated!

On May 1 the President, tortured by the political gadflies in
Washington, and suffering painfully from the weariness of hope so long
deferred, telegraphed: "Is anything to be done?" A pitiful time of it
Mr. Lincoln was having, and it called for a patient fortitude surpassing
imagination. Yet one little bit of fruit was at this moment ripe for the
plucking! After about four weeks of wearisome labor the general had
brought matters to that condition which was so grateful to his cautious
soul. At the beginning of May he had reduced success to a certainty, so
that he expected to open fire on May 5, and to make short work of the
rebel stronghold. But it so happened that another soldier also had at
the same time finished his task. General Magruder had delayed the Union
army to the latest possible hour, he had saved a whole valuable month;
and now, quite cheerfully and triumphantly, in the night betwixt May 3
and May 4, he quietly slipped away. As it had happened at Manassas, so
now again the Federals marched u