In this correspondence, as in all his
correspondence, the great captain showed himself absolutely devoted to
the cause he had in mind. Early in the year, months before the
Peninsular campaign, when McClellan had had the army in camp for a
series of months without expressing the least intention of action,
Lincoln had in talking with the Secretary of War used the expression:
"If General McClellan does not want to use the army just now, I
would like to borrow it for a while." That was as far as the
Commander-in-chief ever went in criticism of the General in the field.
While operations in Virginia, conducted by a vacillating and
vainglorious engineer officer, gave little encouragement, something was
being done to advance the cause of the Union in the West. In 1862, a
young man named Grant, who had returned to the army and who had been
trusted with the command of a few brigades, captured Fort Donelson and
thus opened the Tennessee River to the advance of the army southward.
The capture of Fort Donelson was rendered possible by the use of mortars
and was the first occasion in the war in which mortars had been brought
to bear. I chanced to come into touch with the record of the preparation
of the mortars that were supplied to Grant's army at Cairo. Sometime in
the nineties I was sojourning with the late Abram S.
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