brought up new questions for discussion and invented new excuses for delay. He wanted to know to what extent the line of the Potomac was to be guarded; he wanted to leave strong garrisons at certain points, to prevent the army he was driving southward before him from rushing northward into Maryland again; he discussed the position of General Bragg's (Confederate) army, which was four hundred miles away beyond the mountains; he said the old regiments of his command must be filled up with recruits before they could go into action. [Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN NEWTON.] [Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL E. V. SUMNER.] [Illustration: CONFEDERATE SHARP-SHOOTERS ON THE HEIGHTS OF FREDERICKSBURG.] [Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL J. J. BARTLETT.] McClellan was a sore puzzle to the people of the loyal States. But large numbers of his men still believed in him, and--as is usual in such cases--intensified their personal devotion in proportion as the distrust of the people at large was increased. After crossing the Potomac, he left a corps at Harper's Ferry, and was moving southward on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, while Lee moved in the same direction on the western {193} side, when, on November 7, the President solved the riddle that had vexed the country, by relieving him of the command. The successor of General McClellan was Ambrose E. Burnside, then in his thirty-ninth year, who was graduated at West Point fifteen years before, had commanded cavalry during the Mexican war, had invented a breech-loading rifle which was commercially unsuccessful, and at the breaking out of the rebellion was treasurer of the Illinois Central Railroad. When the First Rhode Island Regiment went to Washington, four days after the President's first call for troops, Burnside was its colonel. He commanded a brigade at the first battle of Bull Run; led an expedition that captured Roanoke Island, New Berne, and Beaufort, N. C., in January, 1862; and commanded one wing of McClellan's army at South Mountain and Antietam. Whether he was blameworthy for not crossing the Antietam early in the day and effecting a crushing defeat of Lee's army, is a disputed question. It might be worth while to discuss it, were it not that he afterward accepted a heavier responsibility and incurred a more serious accusation. The command of the Army of the Potomac had been offered to him twice before, but he had refused it, saying that he "was not competent to command such a large army." When the order came relieving McClellan and appointing him, he consulted with that general and with his staff officers, making the same objection; but they took the ground that as a soldier he was bound to obey without question, and so he accepted the place, as he says, "in the midst of a violent snow-storm, with the army in a position that I knew little of." These two generals were warm personal friends, and McClellan remained a few days to put Burnside in possession, as far as possible, of the