They were inclined, therefore, to hold the government at Washington
responsible for sacrificing them by demanding the impossible. Under
such circumstances nothing but a cautious defensive policy could be
popular with officers or men. If McClellan's data were true, he and
they were right. It would have been folly to cross the Potomac and,
with their backs to the river, fight a greatly superior enemy.
Because the data were not true there was no solution for the problem
but to give the army another commander, and painfully to undo the
military education it had for a year been receiving. The process of
disillusion was a slow one. The disasters to Burnside and Hooker
strengthened the error. Meade's standstill after Gettysburg was very
like McClellan's after Antietam, and Mr. Lincoln had to deal with it
in a very similar way. When Grant took command the army expected him
to have a similar fate, and his reputation was treated as of little
worth because he had not yet "met Bobby Lee." His terrible method of
"attrition" was a fearfully costly one, and the flower of that army
was transferred from the active roster to the casualty lists before
the prestige of its enemy was broken.
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