I therefore accepted the general judgment of
himself and his intimate friends as to his late campaign and Pope's,
and believed that his restoration to command was an act of justice
to him and of advantage to the country. I did not stay long enough
with that army to apply any test of my own to the question of
relative numbers, and have had to correct my opinions of the men and
the campaigns by knowledge gained long afterward. I however used
whatever influence I had to combat the ideas in McClellan's mind
that the administration meant to do him any wrong, or had any end
but the restoration of National unity in view.
Whether Halleck was appointed on Pope's urgent recommendation or no,
his campaign in the West was the ground of his promotion. The
advance from the Ohio to Fort Donelson, to Nashville, to Shiloh, and
to Corinth had been under his command, and he deservedly had credit
for movements which had brought Kentucky and Tennessee within the
Union lines. He had gone in person to the front after the battle of
Shiloh, and though much just criticism had been made of his slow
digging the way to Corinth by a species of siege operations, he had
at any rate got there.
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