Greatly mortified, he had begged at least to be
"permitted to go to the scene of battle." But he was ignored, as if he
were no longer of any consequence whatsoever. In plain truth it was made
perfectly obvious to him and to all the world that if General Pope could
win a victory the administration had done with General McClellan. Mr.
Lincoln described the process as a "snubbing." Naturally those who were
known to be the chief promoters of this "snubbing," and to have been
highly gratified by it, now looked ruefully on the evident necessity of
suddenly cutting it short, and requesting the snubbed individual to
assume the role of their rescuer. McClellan's more prominent enemies
could not and would not agree to this. Three members of the cabinet even
went so far as formally to put in writing their protest against
restoring him to the command of any army at all; while Stanton actually
tried to frighten the President by a petty threat of personal
consequences. But this was foolish. The crisis was of the kind which
induced Mr. Lincoln to exercise power, decisively. On this occasion his
impersonal, unimpassioned temperament left his judgment free to work
with evenness and clearness amid the whirl of momentous events and the
clash of angry tongues. No one could say that he had been a partisan
either for or against McClellan, and his wise reticence in the past gave
him in the present the privilege of untrammeled action.
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