cut off the very arm with which he was about to strike, we hold to have
been inexcusable and unmilitary to the last degree." Swinton condemns
the withholding McDowell (_Army of the Potomac_, 104), adding, with fine
magnanimity, that it is not necessary to impute any "really unworthy
motive" to Mr. Lincoln!

[11] It seems to me that military opinion, so far as I can get at it,
inclines to hold that the government, having let McClellan go to the
Peninsula with the expectation of McDowell's corps, ought to have sent
it to him, and not to have repaired its own oversight at his cost. But
this does not fully meet the position that, oversight or no oversight,
Peninsula-success or Peninsula-defeat, blame here or blame there, when
the President had reason to doubt the safety of the capital, he was
resolved, and rightly resolved, to put that safety beyond _possibility
of question_, by any means or at any cost. The truth is that to the end
of time one man will think one way, and another man will think another
way, concerning this unendable dispute.

[12] General Wool was in command at Fortress Monroe. It had been
originally arranged that General McClellan should draw 10,000 men from
him. But this was afterward countermanded. The paragraph in the
President's letter has reference to this.

[13] A slight obstruction by a battery at Drury's Bluff must have been
abandoned instantly upon the approach of a land force.

[14] Whose command had been added to McDowell's.

[15] Colonel Franklin Haven, who was on General McDowell's staff at the
time, is my authority for this statement. He well remembers the reason