[Footnote: _Id_., p. 691;
vol. xi. pt. i. p. 103.]
As soon as McClellan began the movement down the James, Lee took
Longstreet's corps to Jackson, leaving only D. H. Hill's at
Richmond. [Footnote: _Id_., pt. ii. pp. 177, 552.] From that moment
McClellan could have marched anywhere. He could have marched to
Fredericksburg and joined Pope, and Halleck could have met them with
Burnside's troops. But the vast imaginary army of the Confederacy
paralyzed everything, and the ponderous task of moving the Army of
the Potomac and its enormous material by water to Washington went
on. The lifeless and deliberate way in which it went on made it the
1st of September when Sumner and Franklin reached Centreville, and
the second battle of Bull Run had ended in defeat on the evening
before.
But the army was at last reunited, within the fortifications of
Washington, it is true, and not on the James or on the line of the
Rappahannock. There was another opportunity given to Halleck to put
himself at its head, with McClellan, Pope, and Burnside for his
three lieutenants. Again he was unequal to his responsibility. Mr.
Lincoln saw his feebleness, and does not seem to have urged him.
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