It establishes plausibility is my argument. Now for whether other people were aware of this possibility, or thought there was a possibility where there was actually not:
Rumors traveled through the capital that McClellan might resign, or instigate a military coup, if Scott were not removed. Lincoln's Cabinet met on October 18 and agreed to accept Scott's resignation for "reasons of health."[36]
That come's from George B. McClellan's Wikipedia page, with the source citation being: McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 360.
But hey! Let's not trust Wikipedia to cite a real source. Let's find Battle Cry, page 360:
http://books.google.com/books?id=GXfGuNAvm7AC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false <---- well, it won't let us preview page 360, but we have established McPherson's "Battle Cry" is "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James M. McPherson.
So, we have a primary source suggesting McClellan was aware of the possibility he could stage a coup, and a non-primary source stating that there were fears McClellan was capable of such a coup. The whole section of the Wikipedia article is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._McClellan#Building_an_army
But, so you don't ignore my verification attempt of the cited source, let's go check if this Battle Cry of Freedom is considered historically accurate:
http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-The-Civil/dp/0345359429
According to Amazon it won the Pulitzer, and is considered to be a historical book and not fiction.
Of course it could all be a ruse, so we shall now check the Pulitzer website!
http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/History <--- Yep, it is there.
So, unless the Pulitzer committee for the category of history don't know Santa Anna from Santana, we have established that officials in the government at the time were worried about McClellan staging a coup and that McClellan thought he could succeed in such an endeavor.
But wait, did the military really suggest the possibility? Well I got that from the Lincoln quote in the Alternate History thread that inspired me to this, which I linked earlier. Let's check if that was ahistorical or chronologically sound.
Oh my! Let it not be said I am not doing my homework, that was a letter from Lincoln to General Hooker. http://deadpresidents.tumblr.com/post/1065509354/full-text-of-the-letter-from-president-lincoln-to
And given that said letter was 1863, two years after McClellan's casual thoughts to himself and his wife about dictatorship, I would say that Lincoln or anyone else for that matter could come to hear about Mac's inner thoughts from his private discourse the same way the rumors around Hooker came to his attention.
So, I have established plausibility. Due to the imprecision involved, I have not established probability, but I did not claim to. But it happened in our actual history that the administration was worried about a general staging a coup, and that there were rumors about such; and it is true that McClellan considered a coup. So rumours circulating about McClellan, and even perhaps being supported in some circles are not implausible by any means.
If you want me to apologize for not double-checking what I remembered about that thread when I claimed to you that members of the military were discussing a possible coup...well it's not going to happen, because you did even less work and yet insulted me; whereas I did a small amount of work and did something constructive, which turns out after the fact to have actually been plausible, so most of what I said - about it being plausible, still stands and my argument is now even better supported than before.
And considering I was being judged for not supporting an argument by some rhetorical support not being enough, descriptive discourse not being enough, when the only rebuttal was an insult with no argument or details to back it up at all, I can correctly claim I was not half-assing it or anything. I made a clear and well thought out argument in response to an empty rhetorical tool, a attempt at insult meant to use humor to mock me in front of a virtual crowd. And I responded with a well supported argument. If, on a forum full of lots of talking about history and spare citation of sources, a few paragraphs in support of an argument don't count as any supporting details, then frankly what does that say about every one-liner and short refutation that has ever been given on these boards?
Gentlemen and ladies, I stand before you here and I solidly claim that I behaved properly and did support to the community standard my point, in the face of nothing but ill-conceived derision with nothing backing it up. I was then afterwards in some quarters accused of having no argument, no well supported claim, which is a most prejudicial statement; considering my previous point about the community standard, I'm sure you will agree that I met it with my previous statement.
So let my citation of sources now not be seen as a correction of a past error, but a continued legacy of uninterrupted excellence on my part in this thread in supporting my point.
Rumors traveled through the capital that McClellan might resign, or instigate a military coup, if Scott were not removed. Lincoln's Cabinet met on October 18 and agreed to accept Scott's resignation for "reasons of health."[36]
That come's from George B. McClellan's Wikipedia page, with the source citation being: McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 360.
But hey! Let's not trust Wikipedia to cite a real source. Let's find Battle Cry, page 360:
http://books.google.com/books?id=GXfGuNAvm7AC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false <---- well, it won't let us preview page 360, but we have established McPherson's "Battle Cry" is "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James M. McPherson.
So, we have a primary source suggesting McClellan was aware of the possibility he could stage a coup, and a non-primary source stating that there were fears McClellan was capable of such a coup. The whole section of the Wikipedia article is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._McClellan#Building_an_army
But, so you don't ignore my verification attempt of the cited source, let's go check if this Battle Cry of Freedom is considered historically accurate:
http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-The-Civil/dp/0345359429
According to Amazon it won the Pulitzer, and is considered to be a historical book and not fiction.
Of course it could all be a ruse, so we shall now check the Pulitzer website!
http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/History <--- Yep, it is there.
So, unless the Pulitzer committee for the category of history don't know Santa Anna from Santana, we have established that officials in the government at the time were worried about McClellan staging a coup and that McClellan thought he could succeed in such an endeavor.
But wait, did the military really suggest the possibility? Well I got that from the Lincoln quote in the Alternate History thread that inspired me to this, which I linked earlier. Let's check if that was ahistorical or chronologically sound.
Oh my! Let it not be said I am not doing my homework, that was a letter from Lincoln to General Hooker. http://deadpresidents.tumblr.com/post/1065509354/full-text-of-the-letter-from-president-lincoln-to
And given that said letter was 1863, two years after McClellan's casual thoughts to himself and his wife about dictatorship, I would say that Lincoln or anyone else for that matter could come to hear about Mac's inner thoughts from his private discourse the same way the rumors around Hooker came to his attention.
So, I have established plausibility. Due to the imprecision involved, I have not established probability, but I did not claim to. But it happened in our actual history that the administration was worried about a general staging a coup, and that there were rumors about such; and it is true that McClellan considered a coup. So rumours circulating about McClellan, and even perhaps being supported in some circles are not implausible by any means.
If you want me to apologize for not double-checking what I remembered about that thread when I claimed to you that members of the military were discussing a possible coup...well it's not going to happen, because you did even less work and yet insulted me; whereas I did a small amount of work and did something constructive, which turns out after the fact to have actually been plausible, so most of what I said - about it being plausible, still stands and my argument is now even better supported than before.
And considering I was being judged for not supporting an argument by some rhetorical support not being enough, descriptive discourse not being enough, when the only rebuttal was an insult with no argument or details to back it up at all, I can correctly claim I was not half-assing it or anything. I made a clear and well thought out argument in response to an empty rhetorical tool, a attempt at insult meant to use humor to mock me in front of a virtual crowd. And I responded with a well supported argument. If, on a forum full of lots of talking about history and spare citation of sources, a few paragraphs in support of an argument don't count as any supporting details, then frankly what does that say about every one-liner and short refutation that has ever been given on these boards?
Gentlemen and ladies, I stand before you here and I solidly claim that I behaved properly and did support to the community standard my point, in the face of nothing but ill-conceived derision with nothing backing it up. I was then afterwards in some quarters accused of having no argument, no well supported claim, which is a most prejudicial statement; considering my previous point about the community standard, I'm sure you will agree that I met it with my previous statement.
So let my citation of sources now not be seen as a correction of a past error, but a continued legacy of uninterrupted excellence on my part in this thread in supporting my point.