way. The Gaps through the Blue Ridge, I understand to be about the
following distances from Harper's Ferry, to wit: Vestala, five miles;
Gregory's, thirteen; Snicker's, eighteen; Ashby's, twenty-eight;
Manassas, thirty-eight; Chester, forty-five; and Thornton's,
fifty-three. I should think it preferable to take the route nearest the
enemy, disabling him to make an important move without your knowledge,
and compelling him to keep his forces together for dread of you. The
Gaps would enable you to attack if you should wish. For a great part of
the way you would be practically between the enemy and both Washington
and Richmond, enabling us to spare you the greatest number of troops
from here. When, at length, running for Richmond ahead of him enables
him to move this way, if he does so, turn and attack him in rear. But I
think he should be engaged long before such point is reached. It is all
easy if our troops march as well as the enemy, and it is unmanly to say
they cannot do it. This letter is in no sense an order."



A general who failed to respond to such a spur as this was not the man
for offensive warfare; and McClellan did not respond. Movement was as
odious to him now as it ever had been, and by talking about shoes and
overcoats, and by other dilatory pleas, he extended his delay until the
close of the month. It was actually the second day of November before
his army crossed the Potomac. Another winter of inaction seemed about to
begin. It was simply unendurable. Though it was true that he had
reorganized the army with splendid energy and skill, and had shown to
the Northern soldiers in Virginia the strange and cheerful spectacle of
the backs of General Lee's soldiers, yet it became a settled fact that
he must give place to some new man. He and Pope were to be succeeded by
a third experiment. Therefore, on November 5, 1862, the President