The reference which he made to suggestions that the army would follow him in a _coup d'e'tat_ is supported by what he formally declared in his memoirs. He there tells us that in 1861 he was often approached in regard to a "dictatorship," and that when he was finally removed many in the army were in favor of his marching upon Washington to take possession of the government. [Footnote: Own Story, pp. 85, 652.] It would seem that treasonable notions were rife about him to an extent that was never suspected, unless he was made the dupe of pretenders who saw some profit in what might be regarded as a gross form of adulation. He must be condemned for the weakness which made such approaches to him possible; but we are obliged to take the fact as he gives it, and to accept as one of the strange elements of the situation a constant stream of treasonable suggestions from professed friends in the army and out of it. An anecdote which came to me in a way to make it more than ordinarily trustworthy was that in the summer of 1861 McClellan was riding with an older officer of the regular army, [Footnote: General McCall.] and said to him, "I understand there is a good deal of talk of making a dictatorship." "Ah!" said the other, "Mr. Lincoln, I suppose." "Oh, no," replied McClellan, "it's me they're talking of." Bits of evidence from many sources prove that there had been from the first too much such talk about Washington, and whilst McClellan cannot be held responsible for it, there is no proof that he rebuked it as he should have done. It was part of the fermenting political and military intrigue which is found at the seat of government in such a time, if anywhere, and I take satisfaction in testifying that away from that neighborhood I never even heard the thing mentioned or referred to, that I can recollect. Washington would be spoken of in a general way as a place of intrigues, but I never knew this to have a wider meaning given to it than the ordinary one of political schemes within lawful limits and personal ambitions of no criminal character.