Touching Farewell Address

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.]