[9] Page 208, line 3, after the word "McClellan." WASHINGTON, April 13, 1888. MY DEAR MARSHAL LAMON,--I received the proof sheet of your article enclosed in your note of the 8th. I have read it very carefully and I find the facts as stated are correct. Mr. F. P. Blair, Senior, told me the incident of conveying in person President Lincoln's letter to McClellan. I liked McClellan, but I have always believed he was politically slaughtered in the house of his alleged friends. Yours truly, A. PLEASONTON. What the great soldier might have done, if left alone to determine for himself the proper course of action in the premises, can never be known. The letter was submitted by General McClellan to some of his party friends in New York, and its wise and statesmanlike propositions were declined. On the morning of the election he resigned his commission. His party was routed, and upon the death of Mr. Lincoln was opened the new Iliad of partisan conflict and reconstruction woes. Mr. Lincoln fearlessly struck out and boldly pursued, in situations the most exacting, capital plans, of which none knew except those who might be absolutely necessary to their execution. If he failed in the patriotic objects which he proposed to accomplish by coalition with McClellan, and was ultimately compelled to achieve them by less Napoleonic and more tedious methods, the splendid conception and the daring attempt were his alone, and prove him one of the most masterful politicians of this or any recent age. The division of the Roman world between the members of the Triumvirate was not comparable to this proposal of his, because the Roman was a smaller world than the American, and it was partitioned among three, while this was only to be halved. More than a quarter of a century has passed, and still the press teems with inquiries concerning the relations between Lincoln and McClellan, with accusation and defense by the literary partisans of each. Had the general seen fit to respond to the magnanimous tender of the President, their names would have been equally sacred in every American household, and their fame would have been united, like their parties and their country, by an act of patriotic statesmanship unparalleled in the history of this world. CHAPTER XIV. HIS MAGNANIMITY.