Lincoln, the unknown

138 • LINCOLN THE UNKNOWNto his soldiers, as the older Napoleon used to do, and thenstarted off with one hundred and twenty thousand men singing"The Girl I Left Behind Me."The war had been going on for a year. McClellan boastedthat he was going to clean up the whole thing now, at once, andlet the boys get home in time to plant a little late corn andmillet.Incredible as it seems, Lincoln and Stanton were so optimisticthat they wired the governors of the various States to accept nomore volunteers, to close the recruiting-places, and to sell thepublic property belonging to these organizations.One of the military maxims of Frederick the Great was:"Know the man you are fighting." Lee and Stonewall Jacksonappreciated full well the kind of a weak-kneed Napoleon theyhad to deal with—a timid, cautious, whining Napoleon who wasnever on the battle-field, because he couldn't endure the sight ofblood.So Lee let him spend three months crawling up to Richmond.McClellan got so close that his men could hear the clocks inthe church towers striking the hour.Then the inspired Lee crashed upon him in a series of terrificonslaughts, and, in seven days, forced him back to theshelter of his gunboats and killed fifteen thousand of his men.Thus the "en grande affair," as McClellan called it, ended inone of the bloodiest failures of the war.But, as usual, McClellan blamed it all on "those traitors inthey hadn't sent him enough men.Washington." The old story:Their "cowardice and folly" made his "blood boil." He hatedLincoln and the Cabinet, now, more than he despised the Confederates.He denounced their actions as "the most infamousthing history has ever recorded."McClellan had more troops than his enemies—usually farmore. He was never able to use at one time all that he thenpossessed. But he kept on demanding more. More. He askedfor an additional ten thousand, then for fiftythousand, finallyfor a hundred thousand. They were not to be had. He knew it,and Lincoln knew that he knew it. Lincoln told him his demandswere "simply absurd."McClellan's telegrams to Stanton and the President were fieryand insulting. They sounded like the ravings of a madman. Theyaccused Lincoln and Stanton of doing their best to destroy his