In executive session on March 14, the senate considered a resolution calling for McClellan’s removal. Three days later a congressional delegation visited the White House to urge that a new commander be named for the Army of the Potomac. Senator Fessenden bemoaned Lincoln’s failure to dismiss Little Mac: “Every movement has been a failure. And yet the President will keep him in command, and leave our destiny in his hands. I am, at times, almost in despair. Well, it cannot be helped. We went in for a rail-splitter, and we have got one.” The New York Herald denounced McClellan as a “Quaker general.” The Confederates’ move, remarked D. W. Bartlett, “disarranges all McClellan’s plans, and puts his reputation in a delicate and dangerous position. He can only sustain himself by immediate and decided victories.” No one “with the brains of a woodchuck can take a good look at Manassas without feeling certain that McClellan has made a gigantic blunder in submitting all winter to the Potomac blockade.” Former Senator Thomas Ewing wrote Lincoln that in Ohio significant “doubts are entertained of McClelland[’]s loyalty, and as I think with reason. He commenced his career with unbounded popularity. Our public here bore with his inaction long & patiently—one excuse after another was used and admitted, until at last the retreat of the rebel army from Manassas, with their mighty armaments and munitions of war, without an attempt at prevention have convinced his best friends that he is either false or strangely incompetent. I for myself cannot conceive it possible that that retreat could have been effected without his knowledge—the like was never heard of in the history of the world.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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