The effect of this speech was profound. It enraged McClellan's friends to the highest pitch; it was not supported at the time by any like utterance in Congress, and at first many who believed it to be true condemned, or at least deprecated, the fierceness of the attack; but those who knew that "the young Napoleon" at heart preferred a pro-slavery compromise to the conquest of a durable and honorable peace, and who had marked with righteous indignation the attempt of his _claquers_ to make the Secretary of War the scape-goat for his own blunders, greeted with enthusiasm the signal courage of the man who, in the face of abuse, prejudice, and popular blindness, dared to tell with words of rugged force this story of disastrous imbecility. Mr. Chandler disregarded the remonstrances of weak friends, and met without quailing the storm of vituperation he had invited. Events made themselves his justifiers and within four months[24] President Lincoln, with the full approval of the patriotic masses of the North, relieved General McClellan from all command and abruptly terminated his military career. Nothing contributed more to this salutary change than Mr. Chandler's arraignment, of which it has been well said, that "with words resembling battles he told the American people that they were leaning upon a broken reed, that 'the idol of the soldiers' was as incapable of helping them as the idols of the heathen, and that McClellan was only digging graves for the brave men who followed him and a last ditch for the cause he defended; he shocked by his language the mass of the people into a right comprehension of the death's dance this military Jack-o'-lantern was leading them through the swamps of Virginia." Mr. Chandler, who took this step after full deliberation and not from any passing impulse, rated the McClellan speech as his most important public service, alike in its necessity, its timeliness, and its results. He also felt that it involved more real hazard, and made larger demands upon his courage, than any other act of his Senatorial career, for such relentless invective could scarcely fail to mortally wound either its object or its maker. Had time shown that he had uttered calumnies and not the sober truth, he would have been inevitably driven from public life; and even when he spoke, the men who thoroughly doubted McClellan were still a small minority. History has shown that his indictment was as true in substance as it was unsparing in terms and bold in spirit.