Now, at this very moment of my
writing, news has reached us that President Lincoln has relieved
General McClellan from the command of the whole army, that he has
given separate commands to two other generals - to General Halleck,
namely, and, alas!
To General Fremont, and that he has altogether
altered the whole organization of the military command as it
previously existed. This he did not only during war, but with
reference to a special battle, for the special fighting of which he,
as ex-officio commander-in-chief of the forces, had given orders. I
do not hereby intend to criticise this act of the President's, or to
point out that that has been done which had better have been left
undone. The President, in a strategetical point of view, may have
been, very probably has been, quite right. I, at any rate, cannot
say that he has been wrong. But then neither can anybody else say
so with any power of making himself heard. Of this action of the
President's, so terribly great in its importance to the nation, no
one has the power of expressing any opinion to which the President
is bound to listen. For four years he has this sway, and at the end
of four years he becomes so powerless that it is not then worth the
while of any demagogue in a fourth-rate town to occupy his voice
with that President's name. The anger of the country as to the
things done both by Pierce and Buchanan is very bitter.
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