Also other considerations have been
suggested as likely to have weighed with him,--that McClellan could do
with the army what no other man could do, because of the intense
devotion of both officers and men to him; and that an indignity offered
to McClellan might swell the dissatisfaction of the Northern Democracy
to a point at which it would seriously embarrass the administration.
These things may have counteracted, or may have corroborated, Mr.
Lincoln's views concerning the man himself. He was an extraordinary
judge of men in their relationship to affairs; moreover, of all the men
of note of that time he alone was wholly dispassionate and non-partisan.
Opinions tinctured with prejudices are countless; it is disappointing
that the one opinion that was free from prejudice is unknown.[32]
FOOTNOTES:
[28] The consolidation, and the assignment of Pope to the command, bore
date June 26, 1862.
[29] This campaign of General Pope has been the topic of very bitter
controversy and crimination. In my brief account I have eschewed the
view of Messrs. Nicolay and Hay, who seem to me if I may say it, to have
written with the single-minded purpose of throwing everybody's blunders
into the scale against McClellan, and I have adopted the view of Mr.
John C. Ropes in his volume on _The Army under Pope_, in the Campaigns
of the Civil War Series. In his writing it is impossible to detect
personal prejudice, for or against any one; and his account is so clear
and convincing that it must be accepted, whether one likes his
conclusions or not.
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