no other commander was designated, and I saw enough of him in those days to say with confidence that he betrayed no doubt that the order to "move immediately" included himself. McClellan's popularity with the Army of the Potomac had seemed to Mr. Lincoln the only power sufficient to ensure its prompt and earnest action against the Confederate invasion. His leadership of it, to be successful, had to be accompanied with plenary powers, even if the stultification of the government itself were the consequence. When the patriotism of the President yielded to this, the suggestion of McClellan twenty years afterward, that it had all been a pitfall prepared for him, would be revolting if, in view of the records, the absurdity of it did not prove that its origin was in a morbid imagination. It is far more difficult to deal leniently with the exhibition of character in his private letters, which were injudiciously added to his "Own Story" by his literary executor. In them his vanity and his ill-will toward rivals and superiors are shockingly naked; and since no historian can doubt that at every moment from September, 1861, to September, 1862, his army greatly outnumbered his enemy, whilst in equipment and supply there was no comparison, his persistent outcry that he was sacrificed by his government destroys even that character for dignity and that reputation for military intelligence which we fondly attributed to him. The general arrangement of the campaign seems to have been settled between Halleck and McClellan on the 5th of September. General Sumner with the Second and Twelfth corps moved up the Potomac by way of Tenallytown, Burnside with the First and Ninth corps moved to Leesboro with a view to covering Baltimore, the front was explored by the cavalry under Pleasonton, and the Sixth Corps, under Franklin, constituted a reserve. [Footnote: Confusion in the numbers of the First and Twelfth corps is found in the records and dispatches, owing to the fact that in the Army of Virginia the corps numbers were not those given them by the War Department. Sigel's, properly the Eleventh Corps, had been called First of that army. Banks's, properly Twelfth, had been called Second, and McDowell's, properly First, had been called Third. In the Maryland campaign Hooker was assigned to McDowell's, and it sometimes figures as First, sometimes as Third; Mansfield was assigned to Banks's. The proper designations after the consolidation were First and Twelfth. Reno had been assigned to the First, but McClellan got authority to change it, and gave it to Hooker, sending Reno back to the Ninth. Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. pp. 197, 198, 279, 349.] The preliminary movements occupied the 5th and 6th, but on the 7th the positions were as I have stated them. The principal bodies were designated, respectively, as right and left wings instead of armies. The two corps from the Army of Virginia were separated, one being