This evening the Jacobin Club, represented by Trumbull, Chandler
and Wade, came up to worry the administration into a battle. The agitation of
the summer is to be renewed. The President defended McClellan's deliberateness.
We then went over to the General's Headquarters. We found Col. Key there. He
was talking also about the grand necessity of an immediate battle to clean out
the enemy at once. He seemed to think we were ruined if we did not fight. The President
asked what McC. thought about it. Key answered: — “The General is troubled in his
mind. I think he is much embarrassed by the radical difference between his
views and those of Gen'l Scott.”
Here McC. came in, — Key went out, — the President began to
talk about his wonderful new repeating-battery of rifled guns, shooting 50
balls a minute. The President is delighted with it, and has ordered ten, and
asks McC. to go down and see it, and if proper, detail a corps of men to work
it. He further told the General that Reverdy Johnson wants the Maryland
volunteers in Maryland to vote in November. All right.
They then talked about the Jacobins. McC. said that Wade
preferred an unsuccessful battle to delay. He said a defeat could be easily
repaired by the swarming recruits. McClellan answered that “he would rather
have a few recruits before a victory, than a good many after a defeat.”
The President deprecated this new manifestation of popular
impatience, but at the same time said it was a reality, and should be taken
into the account: — “At the same time, General, you must not fight till you are
ready.”
“I have everything at stake,” said the General; “if I fail,
I will not see you again or anybody.”
“I have a notion to go out with you, and stand or fall with
the battle” . . . .
SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and
Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 48-9; Tyler Dennett, Lincoln and
the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay, p. 31-2.
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