The Arkansaw traveler. (Little Rock, Ark.) 1882-1???, 1889-02-16
MCCLELLAN SUMMED UP.

From the advance sheets of Nicoay Hays Lincoln in
the February Century.
When il was reported in Washington that Lee
and Longstreet were at Culpepper courthouse, the
president sent order dated the 5th of NOevmber,
TO General Mcclellan, which reached him at Rec
tortown on the Eth, directing him TO report for
further orders at Trenton, New Jersey, and TO turn
the command of the Army of the Potomac over to
General Burnside. General Buckingham delivered
his message first to burnside and then came with
him to McClellans tent Mcclellan says in his
memoirs that with the eyes of the two generals
upon him he Tread the papers with a SMILE; but
when they were gone, he turned to finish q letter
he had been writing and broke out in the heart felt
ejaculation. "Alas for my poor country !" He
took credit to himself in after years for head
ing a mutiny of the troops lie said, MANY were
in favor of my refusing to obey the order, and of
marching upon Washington TO take possession of
the government"
Thus ended the military career of George Brin-
ton Mcclellan. Now that the fierce passions of
the war; its suspicious and its animosties, have
passed away, we are able to Judge him more
accurately and more justly than was possible amid
that moral and material tumult and confusion.
lie was far from being the traitor and craven
that many thought him, as from being the martyr
and hero that others would like to have him appear
1t would be unfair to deny that he rendered TO the
full measure of his capacity, sincere and honest
service to the republic. His technical know ledge
was extensive, his industry untiring; his private
character was pure and upright, his integrity
without stain In the private life TO which he
retired he carried with him the general respect and
esteem and the affection of a troop of friends and
when by their Partially he was afterward called
to the exercise of important official functions every
office he held he adorned with the highest civic
virtues and accomplishments. No one can now
doubt his patriotism or his honor and the fact
that ii was doubted illustrates merely the part
which the blacklist suspicious play in great civil
war; and the stress TO which the public mind was
driven in the effort to account for the results he
gave the country in return for the vast resources
which were so lavishly placed in his hands.
1t was his native inability TO use great means to
great ends that his failure a general lay 1t was
in his temperament to exaggerate the obstacles in
front of him. and this, added to his constitutional
aversion TO prompt decisions, caused those endless
delays which wasted the army, exasperated the
country, and gave the enemy unbroken leisure for
maturing his plans and constant opportunity for
executing them. His lethargy of six months in
front of Washington, to the wonder and scorn of
the southern generals his standing to gaze at
Yorktown, halted with his vast army by Magrud-
ers men in buckram his innocent astonishment at
Williamsburg at finding that the rebels would not
give up Richmond without fight; his station
astride the Chickahominy, waiting for the enemy
to grow strong enough to attack him, while his
brave soldiers were fading to spectres with the
marsh fevers; his refusal to assume the offensive
after the Confederate repulse at Seven Pines; his
second refusal of the favors of the fortune of
when Lee took his army north Of the Chckahominy
and Porter fought him all day with little more
than one corps, but with splendid courage; his
starting for the James In this crisis of his fate,
when he should have marched upon the scantily