But both these elaborate schemes, which embraced
such magnificent details as capturing the war steamer _Michigan_ on Lake
Erie, came to naught. Nor did the plans to burn St. Louis and New York,
and to destroy steamboats on the Mississippi River, to which he also
gave his sanction, succeed much better. A very few men were tried and
punished for these and similar crimes, despite the voluble protest of
the Confederate government but the injuries he and his agents were able
to inflict, like the acts of the Knights of the Golden Circle on the
American side of the border, amounted merely to a petty annoyance, and
never reached the dignity of real menace to the government.
XXVI
Burnside--Fredericksburg--A Tangle of Cross-Purposes--Hooker Succeeds
Burnside--Lincoln to Hooker--Chancellorsville--Lee's Second
Invasion--Lincoln's Criticisms of Hooker's Plans--Hooker
Relieved--Meade--Gettysburg--Lee's Retreat--Lincoln's Letter to
Meade--Lincoln's Gettysburg Address--Autumn Strategy--The Armies go into
Winter Quarters
It was not without well-meditated reasons that Mr. Lincoln had so long
kept McClellan in command of the Army of the Potomac. He perfectly
understood that general's defects, his want of initiative, his
hesitations, his delays, his never-ending complaints.
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