This army being without any organization into Army Corps, the President, on the 8th of March, as a movement was about to be made toward Manassas, issued a peremptory order to the Commanding General to attend forthwith to such organization, naming the Corps and their Commanders, according to seniority of rank.

On the same day, the President, who had, against his own judgment, yielded the plan for an advance upon Richmond which should at the same time cover Washington, wise through experience, issued the following:

“Executive Mansion, Washington, March 8th, 1862.

“Ordered. That no change of the base of operations of the Army of the Potomac shall be made without leaving in and about Washington such a force as, in the opinion of the General-in-chief and the commanders of Army Corps, shall leave said city entirely secure.

“That no more than two Army Corps (about fifty thousand troops) of said Army of the Potomac shall be moved en route for a new base of operations until the navigation of the Potomac, from Washington to the Chesapeake Bay, shall be freed from the enemy’s batteries, and other obstructions, or until the President shall hereafter give express permission.

“That any movement as aforesaid, en route for a new base of operations, which may be ordered by the General-in-chief, and which may be intended to move upon Chesapeake Bay, shall begin to move upon the bay as early as the 18th of March, instant, and the General-in-chief shall be responsible that it moves as early as that day.

“Ordered, That the Army and Navy coöperate in an immediate effort to capture the enemy’s batteries upon the Potomac between Washington and the Chesapeake Bay.

“Abraham Lincoln.

“L. Thomas, Adjutant-General.”

Finally​—​after delays manifold, correspondence voluminous, discussions heated, and patience nearly worn threadbare​—​commenced that military movement, which has passed into history as the American Peninsular Campaign; by virtue of which, commencing about the middle of March, 1862, a large body of finely disciplined troops​—​their numbers varying, according to various accounts, from one hundred thousand nine hundred and seventy, to one hundred and twenty-one thousand five hundred men​—​left Alexandria for Richmond, via Yorktown, and succeeded, after sanguinary battles, swamp sickness, severe exposures, and terrible hardships, in returning (how many of them?) to Alexandria via Harrison’s Landing, by about the middle of August, 1862.

That campaign was the most disastrous drawback of the war, not merely in the loss of men, nor in the failure to reach the end aimed at, but mainly in its enervating effect upon the supporters of the Government. It was Bull Run over again, only immensely magnified, indefinitely prolonged. Fortune seemed determined never to favor our Eastern braves.

Into the details of that campaign it is needless to enter here. Every schoolboy knows them by heart, so far as they are spread upon the record. Equally idle is it to attempt a criticism upon the campaign in a military point of view. That has been already done to a nauseating extent; yet will, doubtless, continue to be done while the reader lives.

No details, nor military criticism therefore here. But that President Lincoln may fairly be presented in his relations to this campaign, certain observations must be made. And this is the place to make them.

Conceding to General McClellan all the ability, patriotism, and bravery which have been claimed for him by his warmest admirers, there still remain some unfortunate circumstances connected with him, by reason of which​—​even though he, personally, were responsible for no single one of them​—​not all the ability, patriotism, and bravery of a Napoleon, Tell, and Bayard combined, could have secured in his person what this country needed for the rooting out of the great rebellion.

It was unfortunate for him that, at the very outset​—​when so little was known of him, when he had done so little​—​sycophantic flatterers should have exalted him at once into a great military chieftain. Peculiarly unfortunate was this, considering that the changeable American people were to pass upon him and his actions​—​that people, in their relations to their leading men, with their “Hosannas” to-day and their “Crucify him’s” to-morrow. The sequel of “going up like a rocket” is not generally supposed to be particularly agreeable.

It was unfortunate for him that the opinion obtained, in the minds of many, impartial and competent to judge, that, in his case, caution had passed the bounds of prudence and run mad. There are emergencies when every thing must be risked that nothing be lost.