" This means that he had, before the President and the
cabinet, advocated putting Halleck in supreme command over himself
and McClellan to give unity to a campaign that would else be
hopelessly broken down. McClellan was then at Harrison's Landing,
believing Lee's army to be 200,000 strong, and refusing to listen to
any suggestion except that enormous reinforcements should be sent to
him there. He had taught the Army of the Potomac to believe
implicitly that the Confederate army was more than twice as numerous
as it was in fact. With this conviction it was natural that they
should admire the generalship which had saved them from
annihilation. They accepted with equal faith the lessons which came
to them from headquarters teaching that the "radicals" at Washington
were trying for political ends to destroy their general and them. In
regard to the facts there were varying degrees of intelligence among
officers and men; but there was a common opinion that they and he
were willingly sacrificed, and that Pope, the radical, was to
succeed him. This made them hate Pope, for the time, with holy
hatred. If the army could at that time have compared authentic
tables of strength of Lee's army and their own, the whole theory
would have collapsed at once, and McClellan's reputation and
popularity with it.
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