A Little Speech-Making.
McClellan was enthusiastically received, and, to the strains of the "Star Spangled Banner," escorted to head-quarters. There, General Prentiss, who had so decided a penchant for speech-making, that cynics declared he always kept a particular stump in front of his office for a rostrum, welcomed him with some rhetorical remarks:
* * * * "My command are all anxious to taste those dangers which war ushers in—not that they court danger, but that they love their country. We have toiled in the mud, we have drilled in the burning sun. Many of us are ragged—all of us are poor. But we look anxiously for the order to move, trusting that we may be allowed to lead the division."
The soldiers applauded enthusiastically—for in those days the anxiety to be in the earliest battles was intense. The impression was almost universal throughout the North that the war was to be very brief. Officers and men in the army feared they would have no opportunity to participate in any fighting!
McClellan responded to Prentiss and his officers in the same strain:
* * * "We shall meet again upon the tented field; and Illinois, which sent forth a Hardin and a Bissell, will, I doubt not, give a good account of herself to her sister States. Her fame is world-wide: in your hands, gentlemen, I am sure it will not suffer. The advance is due to you."
Then there was more applause, and afterward a review of the brigade.
Penalty of Writing for the Tribune.
General McClellan is stoutly built, short, with light hair, blue eyes, full, fresh, almost boyish face, and lip tufted with a brown mustache. His urbane manner truly indicates the peculiar amiability of character and yielding disposition which have hurt him more than all other causes. An officer once assured me that McClellan had said to him: "My friends have injured me a thousand times more than my enemies." It was certainly true.