Beauregard, with great sagacity, attacked General Grant with overwhelming force before Buell could come up. “The first day of the battle was in favour of the rebels, but night brought Buell, and the morrow victory, to the Union army.” The shattered rebel army retreated into their strong works at Corinth, but “leaving the victors almost as badly punished as themselves.” General Halleck now assumed command of the Western army, succeeding General Hunter. On the 30th May, Halleck took Corinth, capturing immense quantities of stores and a line of fortifications fifteen miles long, but was so dilatory in his attack that General Beauregard escaped, and transferred his army to aid the rebels in the East. For these magnificent victories, President Lincoln published a thanksgiving proclamation. But while these fierce battles and great victories went on in the West, and commanders and men became alike inured to hardship and hard fighting, the splendid army of the Potomac had done nothing beyond digging endless and useless trenches, in which thousands found their graves. The tangled and wearisome correspondence which for months passed between President Lincoln and General M‘Clellan is one of the most painful episodes of the war. The President urged action. General M‘Clellan answered with excuses for inaction, with many calls for more men, and with repartees. At one time, when clamorous for more troops, he admitted that he had over 38,000 men absent on furlough--which accounted for his personal popularity with his soldiers. “He wrote more despatches, and General Grant fewer, than any General of the war.” Meanwhile, he was building up a political party for himself in the army, and among the Northern malcontents, who thought it wrong to coerce the South. When positively ordered to march, or to seize different points, he replied with protests and plans of his own. After the battle of Antietam, September 16th, 1862, President Lincoln again urged M‘Clellan to follow the retreating Confederates, and advance on Richmond. “A most extraordinary correspondence ensued, in which the President set forth with great clearness the conditions of the military problem, and the advantages that would attend a prompt movement by interior lines towards the rebel capital.” In this correspondence, Lincoln displays not only the greatest patience under the most tormenting contradictions, but also shows a military genius and a clear intelligence of what should be done which indicate the greatness and versatility of his mind. He was, to the very last, kind to M‘Clellan, and never seems to have suspected that the General “whose inactivity was to some extent attributable to an indisposition to inflict great injury upon the rebels,” was scheming to succeed him in his office, and intriguing with rebel sympathisers. When at last the country would no longer endure the ever-writing, never-fighting General, he removed him from command (November 7th, 1862), and appointed General Burnside in