Yet before quite taking this step he demanded that a council of the generals of division should be summoned to express their opinions. This was done, with the result that McDowell, Sumner, Heintzelman, and Barnard voted against McClellan's plan; Keyes voted for it, with the proviso "that no change should be made until the rebels were driven from their batteries on the Potomac." Fitz-John Porter, Franklin, W.F. Smith, McCall, Blenker, Andrew Porter, and Naglee (of Hooker's division) voted for it. Stanton afterward said of this: "We saw ten generals afraid to fight." The insult, delivered in the snug personal safety which was suspected to be very dear to Stanton, was ridiculous as aimed at men who soon handled some of the most desperate battles of the war; but it is interesting as an expression of the unreasoning bitterness of the controversy then waging over the situation in Virginia, a controversy causing animosities vastly more fierce than any between Union soldiers and Confederates, animosities which have unfortunately lasted longer, and which can never be brought to the like final and conclusive arbitrament. The purely military question quickly became snarled up with politics and was reduced to very inferior proportions in the noxious competition. "Politics entered and strategy retired," says General Webb, too truly. McClellan himself conceived that the politicians were leagued to destroy him, and would rather see him discredited than the rebels whipped. In later days the strong partisan loves and hatreds of our historical writers have perpetuated and increased all this bad blood, confusion, and obscurity.