The key had been put in McClellan's hand and it would take but one turn of his wrist to unlock the door upon dazzling success.
Dick saw the war finished in a month.

Lee could not have more than twenty or twenty-five thousand men with him, and Jackson was three or four days' march away.

He clutched the order in his hand and ran toward Colonel Winchester.
"Here, take it, sir! Take it!" he exclaimed.
"Take what ?" "Look! Look! See what it is!" Colonel Winchester took one glance at it, and then he, too, became excited.

He hurried with it to General McClellan, and that day the commander-in-chief telegraphed to the anxious President at Washington: "I have all the plans of the rebels, and will catch them in my own trap, if my men are equal to the emergency." The shrewd Lincoln took notice of the qualifying clause, "if my men are equal to the emergency," and sighed a little.

Already this general, so bold in design and so great in preparation was making excuses for possible failure in action--if he failed his men and not he would be to blame..