THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
by this or that General or high staff-officer in the Army of the Potomac that some of those in command did not wish the Union Army to achieve decisive success, but looked for general exhaustion on both sides, which would render a compromise favorable to slavery possible, went from mouth to mouth in the camps as well as among the public. The failure of the Army of the Potomac to follow up the advantages gained in the awful slaughter of Antietam was used to serve as proof. These suspicions survived long after the war. More than thirty years later I heard a retired officer of the regular army who, in 1862, occupied a staff position in the Army of the Potomac, assert positively that he knew of a conspiracy then on foot in that army, the object of which was to resist and balk the policy of the government. The foundation of all this was probably little more than mere headquarters bluster; but at the time it caused serious concern.
It was under these circumstances that I wrote from my camp to Mr. Lincoln, giving voice to the widespread anxiety as I understood and felt it. I thought myself all the more at liberty to do so since Mr. Lincoln, when I joined the army, had asked me personally to write to him freely whenever I had anything to say that I believed he should know. I have never again seen that letter, and do not clearly remember all it contained. One of its main points probably was that, in view of the suspicions current in the army and among the people, the administration should select for the discharge of important duties only men whose hearts were in the struggle and who could, therefore, be depended upon. Perhaps I intimated also that the government had been too lax in that respect. Mr. Lincoln's prompt reply took me to task for my criticism in his peculiar clean-cut, logical style, and there was in what he said an undertone of impatience, of irritation, unusual with
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