Into the details of that campaign it is needless to enter here. Every schoolboy knows them by heart, so far as they are spread upon the record. Equally idle is it to attempt a criticism upon the campaign in a military point of view. That has been already done to a nauseating extent; yet will, doubtless, continue to be done while the reader lives. No details, nor military criticism therefore here. But that President Lincoln may fairly be presented in his relations to this campaign, certain observations must be made. And this is the place to make them. Conceding to General McClellan all the ability, patriotism, and bravery which have been claimed for him by his warmest admirers, there still remain some unfortunate circumstances connected with him, by reason of which--even though he, personally, were responsible for no single one of them--not all the ability, patriotism, and bravery of a Napoleon, Tell, and Bayard combined, could have secured in his person what this country needed for the rooting out of the great rebellion. It was unfortunate for him that, at the very outset--when so little was known of him, when he had done so little--sycophantic flatterers should have exalted him at once into a great military chieftain. Peculiarly unfortunate was this, considering that the changeable American people were to pass upon him and his actions--that people, in their relations to their leading men, with their “Hosannas” to-day and their “Crucify him’s” to-morrow. The sequel of “going up like a rocket” is not generally supposed to be particularly agreeable. It was unfortunate for him that the opinion obtained, in the minds of many, impartial and competent to judge, that, in his case, caution had passed the bounds of prudence and run mad. There are emergencies when every thing must be risked that nothing be lost. It was unfortunate for him that he was made the especial pet of those individuals who were most clamorous against an Administration which, whatever its short comings, every candid man knew was earnestly intent upon ending the war upon such a basis as could alone, in its judgment, secure permanent peace. If a subordinate general could not agree with his superiors, or content himself with matters purely military, he should have declined to remain in the service.