Orpheus 0. Kerr thus
wrote, about the time General McClellan was relieved from the command of the
army of the Potomac:
But the whole body of
the Mackerels, sane and insane alike, unite in a feeling of strong anguish
blended with enthusiasm, at the removal of the beloved General of the Mackerel
Brigade. He has been so much a father to them all, that they never expected to
get a step farther while he was with them.
There's a piece of
domestic philosophy for you, my boy.
When the General heard
of his removal, my boy, he said that it was like divorcing a husband from a wife
who had always supported him, and immediately let fly the following farewell
address:
HEAD-QUARTERS
OF ARMY OF ACCOMAC,
FOOT OF
THE BLUE RIDGE
MY CHILDREN: AN order
from the Honest Abe divorces us, and gives the command of all these attached
beings to Major General Wobert Wobinson. [Heartrending and enthusiastic
cheers.]
In parting with you I
cannot express how much I love your dear bosoms. As an army, you have grown from
youth to old age under my care. In you I never found doubt or coldness, nor
anything else. The victories you have won under my command will live in the
nation's work of fiction. The strategy we have achieved, the graves of many
unripe Mackerels, the broken forms of those disabled by the emancipation
proclamation — the strongest associations that can exist
among men — still make it advisable that you should vote for me as President
of the United States in 1865. Thus we shall ever be comrades in supporting the
Constitution, and making the Constitution support us.
THE GENERAL
OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE.
[Green Seal.]