Lincoln had committed one of his worst blunders. Herndon has a curious, rather subtle theory that while Lincoln's judgments of men in the aggregate were uncannily sure, his judgments of men individually were unreliable. It suggests the famous remark of Goethe that his views of women did not derive from experience; that they antedated experience; and that he corrected experience by them. Of the confessed artist this may be true. The literary concept which the artist works with is often, apparently, a more constant, more fundamental, more significant thing, than is the broken, mixed, inconsequential impression out of which it has been wrought. Which seems to explain why some of the writers who understand human nature so well in their books, do not always understand people similarly well in life. And always it is to be remembered that Lincoln was made an artist by nature, and made over into a man of action by circumstance. If Herndon's theory has any value it is in asserting his occasional danger--by no means a constant danger--of forming in his mind images of men that were more significant than it was possible for the men themselves to be. John Pope was perhaps his worst instance. An incompetent general, he was capable of things still less excusable. Just after McClellan had so tragically failed in the Seven Days, when Lincoln was at the front, Pope was busy with the Committee, assuring them virtually that the war had been won in the West, and that only McClellan's bungling had saved the Confederacy from speedy death.(7) But somehow Lincoln trusted him, and continued to trust him even after he had proved his incompetency in the catastrophe at Manassas. During August, Pope marched gaily southward issuing orders that were shot through with bad rhetoric, mixing up army routine and such irrelevant matters as "the first blush of dawn." Lincoln was confident of victory. And after victory would come the new policy, the dissipation of the European storm-cloud, the break-up of the vindictive coalition of Jacobins and Abolitionists, the new enthusiasm for the war. But of all this, the incensed Abolitionists received no hint. The country rang with their denunciations of the President. At length, Greeley printed in The Tribune an open letter called "The Prayer of Twenty Millions." It was an arraignment of what Greeley chose to regard as the pro-slavery policy of the Administration. This was on August twentieth. Lincoln, in high hope that a victory was at hand, seized the opportunity both to hint to the country that he was about to change his policy, and to state unconditionally his reason for changing. He replied to Greeley through the newspapers: "As to the policy I 'seem to be pursuing,' as you say, I have meant to leave no one in doubt.