It was true, as General Pope had reported, that the army as a whole was in good heart and good condition. He might well feel personally hurt and injured that it should so drift out from under him. General McClellan was again in command from and after September 2d. On the 3d he had in his hands information which convinced him of General Lee's intention to cross the upper Potomac into Maryland. It was necessary that he should move at once, establishing his relations with the forces under his command while on the march. This is the process commonly spoken of as his reorganization of the army. The movement of the Confederate troops across the Potomac began at Leesburg between the 4th and 5th of September. Beyond all question they and their leaders believed that they had come to stay. They had exaggerated ideas of the injuries they had inflicted upon the Army of the Potomac and the forces under Pope. Still more erroneous was their conception of the state of public opinion in Maryland. Wilder and more frantic still were their ideas of the condition of affairs at the North and of the relations of what they called "the Lincoln despotism" to the masses of the people. In one point only were they entirely correct. A series of victories in Maryland over the Union armies would undoubtedly have converted their dreams into something very like realities. The stake was tremendous, and it was played for with all the boldness of exulting self-confidence, with the full consciousness of courage and ability, with the deliberate purpose of fighting superior numbers, and the expectation of beating them if those superior numbers could at all be induced to face them upon the field of battle. It is at least apparently true, also, that they were misled as to the whereabouts of a considerable part of their old antagonists of the peninsular battle-grounds.

General McClellan moved very slowly, but the Confederate commanders were pushing their invasion with tremendous vigor. On the 15th of September, without any battle at all, they captured the entire Union force aimlessly permitted to

remain at Harper's Ferry, of about 11,000 men, with 73 pieces of artillery and with valuable material of small arms and stores. No military critic has ever discovered a good excuse for this blunder, and Mr. Lincoln could find none at the time. Accompanying the news of the loss at Harper's Ferry were General McClellan's reports of a brace of severe engagements at South Mountain, commonly described as the battle of that name. About 30,000 Confederates were driven out of good positions after a hard fight. The nature of the ground prevented concentration of the troops on either side or the effective use of superior numbers, but no high degree of "generalship" was exhibited. As usual, the Rebels claimed a "victory," but it was not of the kind it would be necessary for them to win if they desired to make a long visit in Maryland. It was also claimed by General McClellan as a victory; and so it was, for he had not been defeated; but it was not what it should have been, and it prepared the way for the greater failure immediately to follow.

The 15th and 16th of September, after the victory of South Mountain, did not contain much pursuing of the vanquished enemy, but on the 17th was fought the really terrible battle of the Antietam Creek. It was not at all a well-managed fight, but it was splendidly contested by the armies on either side. The Union forces engaged had somewhat the advantage of numbers, as the rebels had of position. The former would have had a greater numerical advantage if their commander had made a proper use of them. That he did not do so enabled General Lee to extract a "drawn battle" from the jaws of what should have been a destructive defeat. He was then permitted to march away into Virginia unmolested. Not all the urgency brought to bear upon General McClellan by Mr. Lincoln could induce him to interfere with the movements of the enemy he had so thoroughly shattered, although he could have done so with troops who had not been under fire and were fresh.

The patience of Mr. Lincoln was once more exhausted by

the short history of McClellan's new command of the Army of the Potomac. Too much had been wasted of men and materials and precious opportunities. Too many costly advantages had been thrown away, and too many orders recklessly disregarded. The remaining days of September and the whole of October were indeed consumed in unavailing efforts to drive him forward, while a force of Rebel cavalry under Stuart dashed across the Potomac and derisively rode all around him.

On the 26th of October he began at last to move his army across the river. It was all over by the 2d of November; but McClellan was still in doubt as to what he should do with it afterwards, and, on the 7th of November, he was finally relieved of his command. General Ambrose E. Burnside was named as his successor.

It is manifest from the record that the latter general was selected from among a dozen officers of nearly equal fame, because he was in some respects the least objectionable and had already held, with good success, an independent military command in North Carolina.

It seems hardly necessary to say, but to some it may be so, that Mr. Lincoln would not have removed General McClellan

for other than strictly military reasons. In fact, without such reasons, clearly so marked out as to be read by all unprejudiced observers, it would not have been politically safe to do so. Even as it was, the removal was both politically dangerous and politically necessary.

General McClellan was already the representative of proslavery Unionism at the North, and of all the forms of discontent which were willing to co-operate with it. His mistakes were his own. If he had obeyed Mr. Lincoln's urgency and consented to win a few more victories, or had made good use of such as were forced upon him, he could not have been set aside without assuring him an overwhelming triumph at the following Presidential election. Had he been left in command, there is reason to doubt if the course of events would

not have been such that the destruction of slavery for which Mr. Lincoln was preparing would have been out of the question.

There is a sense, not hard to find, in which the removal of General McClellan is a part of the Proclamation of Emancipation which followed later. All antislavery men understood it as a telling blow at their political opponents, as well as a thing done for the good of the army and of the Union cause. It sent a shock even through the minds of Southern leaders, for they well understood the divisions of public sentiment at the North. They were by no means as blind as were their followers to the swift changes of opinion concerning them and their cherished institution. They knew what this meant, and it was as if they had lost a battle.

It may almost be said that General McClellan deserved the thanks of his country for giving the President good military reasons for making a removal so eminently desirable politically.

At the North, at the time, multitudes received the news with a storm of angry execrations. As they understood the matter, a great general unjustly put aside had generously come to the rescue at a critical moment. He had rallied and reorganized a ruined army, and with it had won tremendous victories, and had delivered his country from invasion if not from conquest. It is for many to this day impossible to grasp the situation as it was, or to regard such a setting forth as has been made above as other than grossly partisan. They cannot be made to believe that at the battle of the Antietam McClellan had at his disposal at least twice as many men as had Lee, all every inch as good soldiers as his, as well equipped, as full of fight and enthusiasm, and that yet Lee actually fought with about equal numbers, the rest of McClellan's army not fighting at all. They are blind to the simple facts of the drawn battle, and the unhindered escape, and the non-employment of forces in hand.

CHAPTER XLI.

EMANCIPATION.

The War-Power and the Constitution.-A Struggle of Life and DeathThe Hour and the Man-The Proclamation-Waiting for a VictoryAn Unprepared People-Suspension of the Writ of Habeas CorpusVisiting the Army-The Reply of the Opposition.

It is necessary at this point to recall with care the record of Mr. Lincoln as a life-long enemy of human slavery, and to understand fully the position he was forced to occupy regarding it.

In the year 1850 he said to his friend Mr. Stuart: "The time will come when we must all be Democrats or Abolitionists. When that time comes, my mind is made up." In his great speech at Bloomington, Illinois in 1858, he said: "I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved,-I do not expect the house to fall,—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other."

In the private conversation, as in the public utterance, he clearly expressed a conviction which had become a part of his life. That conviction could not have been taken from him by any possible course of events or power of argument. From the date of the Bloomington speech, and from hour to hour, the course of events did but deepen as they justified the sure processes of his reason and their unchanged conclusion.

Before the war began, he saw, as did many other men, that a success of the secession conspiracy and a division of the national territory meant more than the triumph and permanence of human slavery in the Southern Confederacy. It meant also