ailed schedules and
estimates of what would be needed to equip ten thousand men for the
field. This was a unit which could be used by the governor and
legislature in estimating the appropriations needed then or
subsequently. Intervals in this labor were used in discussing the
general situation and plans of campaign. Before the close of the
week McClellan drew up a paper embodying his own views, and
forwarded it to Lieutenant-General Scott. He read it to me, and my
recollection of it is that he suggested two principal lines of
movement in the West,--one, to move eastward by the Kanawha valley
with a heavy column to co-operate with an army in front of
Washington; the other, to march directly southward and to open the
valley of the Mississippi. Scott's answer was appreciative and
flattering, without distinctly approving his plan; and I have never
doubted that the paper prepared the way for his appointment in the
regular army which followed at so early a day. [Footnote: I am not
aware that McClellan's plan of campaign has been published. Scott's
answer to it is given in General Townsend's "Anecdotes of the Civil
War," p. 260. It was, with other communications from Governor
Dennison, carried to Washington by Hon. A. F. Perry of Cincinnati,
an intimate friend of the governor, who volunteered as special
messenger, the mail service being unsafe. See a paper by Mr. Perry
in "Sketches of War History" (Ohio Loyal Legion), _vol. iii._ p.
345.]

During this week McClellan was invited to take the command of the
troops to be raised in Pennsylvania, his native State. Some things
beside his natural attachment to Pennsylvania made the proposal an
attractive one to him. It was already evident that the army which
might be organized near Washington would be peculiarly in the public
eye, and would give to its leading officers greater opportunities of
prompt recognition and promotion than would be likely to occur in
the West. The close association with the government would also be a
source of power if he were successful, and the way to a chief
command would be more open there than elsewhere. McClellan told me
frankly that if the offer had come before he had assumed the Ohio
command, he would have accepted it; but he promptly decided that he
was honorably bound to serve under the commission he had already
received and which, like my own, was dated April 23.

My own first assignment to a military command was during the same
week, on the com