With this change in high command, impatient Northerners expected action. Angry at the army’s inertia, several senators, including Trumbull, Wade, and Chandler, called on Lincoln. According to a journalist, they “kindled a brisk fire around his crazy and spavined old legs.” They wanted to know who was responsible for the army’s failure to move. The president “assured them that now and henceforth McClellan should be in full command [of] the Army of the Potomac [which] is to act under his orders, he [is] to be responsible for [an] advance, and to be actually unfettered.” Trumbull warned the president “that if the federal army did not achieve a decided success before winter set in, it would be very difficult not only to raise a fresh loan in the money market, but [also] to get Congress to authorize a new loan.” Wade expressed doubt that “the people of the northern states care to pay forty millions a month simply to retain Maryland in the Union, for that seems to be about all the government is doing, or attempting to do.” He cautioned “that Congress would not allow the Army of the Potomac to winter” in Washington and declared: “Something, Mr. President, must be done. War must be made on the secessionists, or we will make war on the Administration.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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