ult.

In Washington the only powerful backing upon which McClellan could still
rely was that of the President, and he was surely wearing away the
patience of his only friend by the irritating attrition of promises ever
reiterated and never redeemed. No man ever kept his own counsel more
closely than did Mr. Lincoln, and the indications of his innermost
sentiments concerning McClellan at this time are rare. But perhaps a
little ray is let in, as through a cranny, by a dispatch which he sent
to the general on June 2: "With these continuous rains I am very anxious
about the Chickahominy,--so close in your rear, and crossing your line
of communication. Please look to it." This curt prompting on so obvious
a point was a plain insinuation against McClellan's military competence,
and suggests that ceaseless harassment had at last got the better of
Lincoln's usually imperturbable self-possession; for it lacked little of
being an insult, and Mr. Lincoln, in all his life, never insulted any
man. As a spot upon a white cloth sets off the general whiteness, so
this dispatch illustrates Lincoln's unweariable patience and
long-suffering without parallel. McClellan, never trammeled by respect,
retorted sharply: "As the Chickahominy has been almost the only obstacle
in my way for several days, your excellency may rest assured that it has
not been overlooked." When finally the general became active, it was
under the spur of General Jackson, not of President Lincoln. Jackson
compelled him to decide and act; and the result was his famous southward
movement to the James River. Some, adopting his own nomenclature, have
called this a change of base; some, less euphemistically, speak of it as
a retreat. According to General Webb, it may be called either the one or
the other with equal propriety, for it partook of the features of
each.[24] It is no part of the biographer of Lincoln to narrate the
suffering and the gallantry of the troops through those seven days of
continuous fighting and marching, during which they made their painful
way, in the face of an attacking army, through the dismal swamps of an
unwholesome region, amid the fierce and humid heats of the Southern
summer. On July 1 they closed the dread experience by a brilliant
victory in the desperate, prolonged, and bloody battle of Malvern Hill.

In the course of this march a letter was sent by McClellan to Stanton
which has become famous. The vindictive lunge, visibly aimed at the