life, we have said all that is in truthfulness due him. Jomini once took pains to answer the stricture of a military critic upon his position, that war is a passionate drama, not an exact science. His answer substantially was, that war is not an exact science, because it is complicated by differences of intellect, character, passion, materials, accidents, and all that enters into the diversity observable among men and among their possessions and surroundings. The stricture of his critic is, however, much more easily disposed of than by his admission, which is not true, that war is not an exact science. It is astonishing that such a writer as Jomini did not see that the facts of observation do not need any such fallacy to reconcile them. The precise truth is that the science of war is exact, but that the art of war is complicated by all that belongs to human diversity. We have an illustrative case of the truth of this in General McClellan. He understood the science of war, but his defects of character made it impossible that he could practice successfully the art of war.

The measure of McClellan's mind lies in his military performances with great resources, and not less in the output of his written and oral speech. His blindness to the relations and to the eternal fitness of things, in spheres both military and civil, is proved by the history of his service as a general and in that of his conduct in politics, to which he betook himself. His career as a general has been here sufficiently discussed, and therefore it only remains to cite as evidence of his incapacity for civil affairs of magnitude, that he should have allowed himself to become a candidate for the Presidency of the United States upon the platform which contained the humiliating declaration that the war was a failure. There is a difference between the view that the conduct of the war was a failure, and that the war in itself was a failure. To affirm even the first would have

been indelicate for a man to whom part of its failure might be attributed, but to affirm the second was to repudiate the very principles for which the people of the North had striven as strenuously as the people of the South were striving to maintain their opposites; and enunciated at the time chosen for their denial, when the dawn of the future was lighting up the whole land, was a confession of dwelling in Cimmerian darkness. Happily the people saw with the utmost clearness the implications of the candidacy which was offered on the one side, as contrasted with those which were offered by the candidacy of the other, and they rose with intelligence and irresistible might to uphold common sense and justice in a political victory which may well give joy to the hearts of the men of the North and of the South who believe in the capacity of themselves and their fellowcitizens for self-government.

CHAPTER XII.

THE BATTLE OF FREDERICKSBURG.

Ar Rectorstown, in the night of the 7th of November, 1862, General McClellan was relieved from, and General Burnside ordered to assume, the command of the Army of the Potomac. The manner in which McClellan bore himself under these circumstances stands as a bright page in the history of his connection with that army. He contributed in the most friendly way to the interests of his successor, and issued a farewell address to the army which is unique among his writings for the simple dignity and effectiveness of the thought. When we remember that he was well aware of the fact that his appointed successor was his inferior by far, and that he still had unabated faith in his own powers, we must commend him for the way in which he bore his demission. He says, as we may read in his personal memoirs, "When we broke up the camps on the Upper Potomac and moved in advance, the army was in fine order for another battle; the troops in the best of spirits, full of confidence in me, and I was then, I believe, capable of handling an army in the field as I had never been before. I felt that I could fight a great battle." What greater birth of human vanity is conceivable after this? Not all the fateful hesitancy of the Peninsula, not continuous overestimation of the strength of the enemy and underestimation of his own, not all the frightful carnage of the Antietam had sufficed to give pause and self-introspection to McClellan. Sadder yet it is to contemplate the fact that the rank and file of the army so loved him still as to