Lincoln had good reason for hesitating to change commanders,
for, unsatisfactory as McClellan had proved, the President was by
no means sure that any of his other generals would do better. In
fact, with all his defects, there was much to be said in McClellan's
favor. As an organizer of troops or chief of staff he had displayed
talents of the highest possible order, transforming the armed mob
which had flocked to the defense of the Union at the opening of
the war into a well-drilled and disciplined army. That he had not
accomplished much with this great engine of war after it had been
constructed, had not been wholly his fault, for he had never been
entirely free from interference at the hands of incompetent superiors,
and he had had the misfortune to be pitted against a past master of
the art of war. Moreover, he had been called to the chief command
at a moment of panic and peril and, if he had not succeeded
in defeating Lee, he had, at Antietam, given the North the only
semblance of victory which it could claim in all its campaigning
in the South. But that one taste of triumph had whetted the public
appetite for more. Despite McClellan's continuous talk about the
overpowering numbers of his foes, the supporters of the Union knew
that they outmatched the Confederacy in men, arms, ships, money,
and resources of every kind. They accordingly insisted that the
immense army which had lain idle in its camps for almost two months
after the drawn battle at Antietam should be set to work.

In response to this popular demand, General Ambrose Burnside was
appointed to take McClellan's place, and a more utterly unfitted
man for prosecuting a successful campaign against Lee could scarcely
have been selected. He himself fully realized this. Indeed, he