# The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Holland)/Chapter XXII

A civilian, ignorant of the art of war, can only judge a military man by what he accomplishes in the long run by his policy and action; and it is difficult for such a judge to perceive what General McClellan accomplished, With his magnificent army of a hundred and sixty thousand as good soldiers as ever the sun shone upon--well drilled, well fed, well clothed and well armed--but to scatter and wear out that army, volunteer general advice to a government that was presumed to be competent to the management of its own affairs, and win the doubtful honor of becoming the favorite of men who, from the first, opposed the war, and threw all possible obstacles in the way of its successful prosecution. The whole history of McClellan's operations is a history of magnificent preparations and promises, of fatal hesitations and procrastinations, of clamoring for more preparations, and justifications of hesitations and procrastinations, of government indulgence and forbearance, of military intrigues within the camp, of popular impatience and alarms, and of the waste of great means and golden opportunities. Even the opportunity of becoming "the hero of Antietam" came to General McClellan through his culpable remissness in permitting the enemy to cross the Potomac; and this victory lost all its value by his failure to gather its fruits.
When General McClellan assumed command, he found waiting for him fifty thousand men, more or less, in and around Washington. He assumed command during the last days of July; and, within a period of less than three months, that army was raised to a force of more than a hundred and fifty thousand men, with five hundred pieces of artillery. The people gave him more men than any one commander was ever known to handle effectively in the field; and the government lavishly bestowed upon his army all the material of war. The unfortunate matter of Ball's Bluff, which occurred on the twenty-second of October, has already found record. This was the first return for the fresh means that the government had placed at the commanding General's disposal. The Potomac was blockaded by a small force of rebels, and both the President and Secretary of War felt that there was no necessity for permitting this vexatious and humiliating blockade to continue. They tried to induce McClellan to aid in this business; and, at one time in October, he agreed to send four thousand men to co-operate with a naval force for this purpose; but he falsified his promise, on the ground that his engineers told him that so large a force could not be landed. It did not matter that the department assumed the responsibility of landing the troops. It did not matter, even, that he made another promise to send the troops. They were never sent, the second refusal being based upon his fear of bringing on a general engagement, which was exactly what ought to have been brought on. Captain Craven of the navy, with whom these troops were to co-operate, threw up his command in disgust, and the rebels never were driven away from the Potomac. They kept this grand highway closed until the following spring, and then retired of their own accord, and at leisure.
The confidence in General McClellan on the part of the government and the country generally was at this time unbounded; and he could not appear among his soldiers without such demonstrations of enthusiastic affection as few commanders have ever received. On the first of November he succeeded General Scott in the command of all the armies of the Union, still retaining personal command of the Army of the Potomac; but he seemed to be unable to move. Cautious, hesitating, always finding fresh obstacles to a movement, he permitted the golden days of autumn to pass away. In the meantime, the government was urging him to do something, as the rebel forces were massing in his front, and the country was clamorous for action. Instead of holding the commanding General responsible for these delays, the country blamed the government, and manifested its dissatisfaction by its votes in the fall elections.
All that autumn passed away, and not a blow was struck. The Potomac was closed to government war vessels and transports, by a few batteries which the over-cautious General was afraid to touch.
Mr. Lincoln was determined to break the spell which seemed to hold the General's mind; and, on the twenty-seventh of January, he issued an order that on the twenty-second day of February, 1862, there should be a general movement of the land and naval forces of the United States, against the insurgent armies--especially the army at and about Fortress Monroe, the army of the Potomac, the army of Western Virginia, the army near Mumfordsville, Kentucky, the army and flotilla at Cairo, and a naval force in the gulf of Mexico. He further declared "that the heads of departments, and especially the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, with all their subordinates, and the General-in-Chief with all other commanders and subordinates of land and naval forces, will severally be held to their strict and full responsibilities for prompt execution of this order." On the thirty-first of January--four days afterward--he issued another order, specially to the anny of the Potomac, to engage, on or before the twenty-second of February, in the attempt to seize upon and occupy a point upon the railroad south-west of Manassas Junction, the details of the movement to be in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief.
To this last order of the President, General McClellan replied in a long letter to the Secretary of War. He objected to the President's plan, that the roads would be bad at the season proposed; and wished to substitute a plan of his own, which had in its favor a better soil for the moving of troops. He wished to move by the Lower Rappahannock, making Urbana his base. He would throw upon the new line from one hundred and ten thousand to one hundred and forty thousand troops, according to circumstances, hoping to use the latter number, by bringing such fresh troops into Washington as would protect the capital. He "respectfully but firmly" advised that he might be permitted to make this substitution of his own for the President's plan. So firm was he that he was willing to say: "I will stake my life, my reputation, on the result,--more than that, I will stake on it the success of our cause." His judgment, he declared, was against the movement on Manassas. On the third of February, Mr. Lincoln addressed a note to the General on this difference of opinion; which ought to have shown him that his superior was a competent adviser and a keen critic:
   "My dear Sir:--You and I have distinct and different plans for a movement of the army of the Potomac; yours to be done by the Chesapeake, up the Rappahannock, to Urbana, and across land to the terminus of the railroad on the York River; mine to move directly to a point on the railroad south-west of Manassas. If you will give satisfactory answers to the following questions, I shall gladly yield my plans to yours:
   "1. Does not your plan involve a greatly larger expenditure of time and money than mine?
   "2. Wherein is a victory more certain by your plan than mine?
   "3. Wherein is a victory more valuable by your plan than mine?
   "4. In fact, would it not be less valuable in this: that it would break no great line of the enemy's communications, while mine would?
   "5. In case of disaster, would not a retreat be more difficult by your plan than mine?"
General McClellan replied to this through the Secretary of War, after his fashion; but the President was not convinced, and finally agreed to submit the two plans to a council of twelve officers. This council, eight to four, decided in favor of the General's plan. The President acquiesced; but the rebels rendered both plans useless by withdrawing from Manassas on the ninth of March to the other side of the Rappahannock--which date will be seen to be two weeks later than the date fixed for the advance of all the armies by the President.
On the eighth of March, the President ordered General McClellan to organize that part of his army which he proposed to engage in active operations, into four Army Corps, to be commanded respectively by General McDowell, General Sumner, General Heintzelman and General Keyes; and directed the order to be executed with such dispatch as not to delay operations already determined on--alluding to the movement by the Chesapeake and Rappahannock. On the same day, he issued another order: that no change of base should take place without leaving in and about Washington such an army as should make the city secure; that no more than two army corps should move before the Potomac should be cleared of rebel batteries; and that the movement should begin as early as the eighteenth of March.
On the next day, as has already been stated, the enemy retired unsuspected and undisturbed from his defenses; and then General McClellan moved forward, not to pursue, according to his own authority, but to give his troops some exercise, and a taste of the march and bivouac, before more active operations. On the fifteenth, the army moved back to Alexandria.
On the eleventh of March, General McClellan was relieved from the command of other military departments, because he had personally taken the field. Major-General Halleck received the command of the department of the Mississippi, and General Fremont that of the mountain department. On the thirteenth, a council of war decided that, as the enemy had retreated behind the Rappahannock, the new base of operations should be Fortress Monroe, on certain conditions which touched the neutralization of the power of the Merrimac, (an iron plated rebel vessel which had already destroyed the frigates Cumberland and Congress, and been beaten back by the Monitor,) means of transportation, and naval auxiliaries sufficient to silence the batteries on York River. On the same day, Mr. Stanton wrote to General McClellan, stating that the President saw no objection to the plan, but directing that such a force should be left at Manassas Junction as would make it entirely certain that the enemy should not repossess it, that Washington should be left secure, and that, whatever place might be chosen as the new base, the army should move at once in pursuit of the enemy, by some route.
The President was impatient for action. Not a blow had been struck. Back from the Potomac blockade, and back from Manassas, the enemy had been permitted to retire without the loss of a man or a gun.
On the thirty-first of March, Mr. Lincoln ordered Blenker's division from the army of the Potomac to join General Fremont, who had importuned him for a larger force, and who was supported in his request by exacting friends. In a note to General McClellan, he said,--"I write this to assure you that I did so with great pain, understanding that you would wish it otherwise. If you could know the full pressure of the case, I am confident that you would justify it." General Banks, who had been ordered to cover Washington by occupying Manassas, was ordered on the first of April to force General Jackson back from Winchester.
Transportation had already been provided by the War Department for moving the troops to any new base that might be determined on, and General McClellan was not obliged to wait. On the first of April, there were under his command, by the official report of the Adjutant-general, 146,255 men in the four corps, with regular infantry and cavalry and other troops to raise the number to 158,419. In all the orders given by the President concerning the movements of this army, there was one condition that he insisted upon, viz, that troops should be left sufficient to protect Washington; and by General McClellan's order only twenty thousand effective men were to be left with General Wadsworth, the military governor of the District. The force was much smaller than was necessary, according to General McClellan's previous calculations; and General Wadsworth was so much impressed with its inadequacy that he called the attention of the war department to the subject. The letter was referred to Adjutant-general Thomas and General E.A. Hitchcock, whose decision was embodied in the words: "In view of the opinion expressed by the council of the commanders of army corps, of the force necessary for the capital, though not numerically stated, and of the force represented by General McClellan as left for that purpose, we are of opinion that the requirement of the President that this city shall be left entirely secure, not only in the opinion of the General-in-Chief, but that of the commanders of all the army corps also, has not been fully complied with." In the meantime, General McClellan had gone forward to Fortress Monroe, and all but two corps of the troops had left for the new base. When, therefore, Generals Thomas and Hitchcock made their report, and the President saw that Washington was about to be left without sufficient defense, he directed the Secretary of War to order that one of the two corps not then embarked should remain in front of Washington, and that the other corps should go forward as speedily as possible. This was under date of April third. The first corps, under General McDowell, was designated for this protective service, numbering 38,454 men. Two new military departments were at once erected--the Department of the Rappahannock, under General McDowell, and the Department of the Shenandoah, lying between the mountain department and the Blue Ridge, under General Banks.
General McClellan pushed a portion of his troops toward Yorktown at once--toward a line of intrenchments held by the enemy, stretching across the Peninsula. On the fifth of April he wrote to the President, dating his letter "Near Yorktown," and stating that the enemy were in large force in his front, and that they apparently intended to make a determined resistance. At that time, the rebel force at that point, according to subsequent reports by the rebels themselves, did not exceed ten thousand men. No one doubts now that General McClellan's cautiousness betrayed his judgment, and that a strong and well-directed attack would have swept the rebels out or their works.
In this letter, he began his long-continued complaint of inadequate force. He begged the President to reconsider his order detaching the first corps from his command, as it was his opinion that he should have to fight all the available force of the rebels, not far from the place where he was writing. If he could not have the whole corps, he begged for Franklin and his division. On the sixth, Mr. Stanton replied that Sumner's troops were on the way to him, that Franklin's division was on the advance to Manassas, and that there were no means of transportation to send it forward in time for service in his operations. "All in the power of the government," added the Secretary, "shall be done to sustain you, as occasion may require."
Another day passed away; and, on the date of Mr. Stanton's dispatch, General McClellan wrote again, begging for Franklin's division, complaining that he had no sufficient transportation, and stating that the order forming new departments deprived him of the power of ordering up wagons and troops, absolutely necessary for his advance on Richmond. He requested that the material he had prepared and necessarily left behind, with wagon trains, ammunition, and Woodbury's brigade, might be subject to his order. Mr. Lincoln immediately telegraphed him that his order for forwarding what he had demanded, including Woodbury's brigade, was not, and would not be interfered with, informing him at the same time that he had then more than one hundred thousand troops with him, independent of those under General Wool's command. Mr. Lincoln closed his dispatch with the words: "I think you had better break the enemy's line from Yorktown to Warwick River at once. They will probably use time as advantageously as you can."
Mr. Lincoln, like the whole country, was convinced that there was no such force behind those works as the fears of the General had counted there; and it is now humiliating to learn from the official report of the rebel commander Magruder, that, "with five thousand men, exclusive of the garrisons, we (they) stopped and held in check over one hundred thousand of the enemy." At Gloucester, Yorktown and Mulberry Island, he was obliged to put garrisons amounting to six thousand men, and he had only five thousand men left to defend a line of thirteen miles. With a hundred thousand men at his back, General McClellan went to work with shovels to begin a regular siege. On the ninth of April, Mr. Lincoln wrote him a letter which is so full of wise counsel, kind criticism, and personal good-will, that it deserves record here:
   "My Dear Sir--Your dispatches, complaining that you are not properly sustained, while they do not offend me, do pain me very much.
   "Blenker's division was withdrawn from you before you left here; and you know the pressure under which I did it, and, as I thought, acquiesced in it--certainly not without reluctance.
   "After you left, I ascertained that less than twenty thousand unorganized men, without a single field battery, were all you designed to be left for the defence of Washington and Manassas Junction; and part of this even was to go to General Hooker's old position. General Banks' corps, once designed for Manassas Junction, was diverted and tied up on the line of Winchester and Strasburg, and could not leave it without again exposing the upper Potomac and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. This presented, or would present, when McDowell and Sumner should be gone, a great temptation to the enemy to turn back from the Rappahannock and sack Washington. My implicit order that Washington should, by the judgment of all the commanders of army corps, be left entirely secure, had been neglected. It was precisely this that drove me to detain McDowell.
   "I do not forget that I was satisfied with your arrangement to leave Banks at Manassas Junction: but, when that arrangement was broken up, and nothing was substituted for it, of course I was constrained to substitute something for it myself. And allow me to ask, do you really think I should permit the line from Richmond, via Manassas Junction, to this city, to be entirely open, except what resistance could be presented by less than twenty thousand unorganized troops? This is a question which the country will not allow me to evade.
   "There is a curious mystery about the number of troops now with you. When I telegraphed you on the sixth, saying you had over a hundred thousand with you, I had just obtained from the Secretary of War a statement taken, as he said, from your own returns, making one hundred and eight thousand then with you and en route to you. You now say you will have but eighty-five thousand when all en route to you shall have reached you. How can the discrepancy of twenty-three thousand be accounted for?
   "As to General Wool's command, I understand it is doing for you precisely what a like number of your own would have to do if that command was away.
   "I suppose the whole force which has gone forward for you is with you by this time. And, if so, I think it is the precise time for you to strike a blow. By delay, the enemy will relatively gain upon you--that is, he will gain faster by fortifications and reinforcements than you can by reinforcements alone. And once more let me tell you, it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. You will do me the justice to remember I always insisted that going down the bay in search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Manassas, was only shifting, and not surmounting, a difficulty; that we would find the same enemy, and the same or equal intrenchments, at either place. The country will not fail to note-is now noting-that the present hesitation to move upon an intrenched enemy is but the story of Manassas repeated.
   "I beg to assure you that I have never written to you or spoken to you in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as, in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can. But you must act.
   Yours, very truly, A. LINCOLN.
The President yielded to McClellan, and sent General Franklin to him, with his division; and General McClellan thanked him for his kindness and consideration, adding, "I now understand the matter which I did not before." Certainly his misunderstanding of the matter had not been the result of any lack of effort on the part of the President to make him understand it. Through the whole month in which the great army lay before Yorktown, the President and War Department were fed with dispatches of the most encouraging character. General McClellan was leaving nothing undone to enable him to attack without delay; after receiving reinforcements, he was "confident of results;" he was soon to be "at them;" there was to be "not a moment's unnecessary delay;" he was "getting up the heavy guns, mortars and ammunition quite rapidly;" there were heavy rains, and horrid roads, but he was "making progress all the time." He was making progress in the concentration of troops, certainly, for, on the thirtieth of April, he had, by Adjutant-general Townsend's report, 130,878 men, of whom 112,392 were reckoned effective. At this time, he called upon the department for Parrott guns; and, on the first of May, the President wrote him: "Your call for Parrott guns from Washington alarms me--chiefly because it argues indefinite procrastination. Is anything to be done?"
There was something to be done, but the enemy did it. After the absolute waste of a month's time, opportunities, and resources of strength and material, the rebels quietly evacuated their position, and retired up the Peninsula. It was the old story of great preparations to fight, and no fighting--no weakening of the enemy. General McClellan thought the success brilliant, if we may judge by his dispatches. It was the costly victory of an engineer. He telegraphed to Mr. Stanton, on the fourth, that he held the entire line of the enemy's works; that he had thrown all his cavalry and horse artillery, supported by infantry, in pursuit; that no time should be lost, and that he should "push the enemy to the wall." The enemy retired to his second line of works at Williamsburgh without pushing, and took his position behind the wall. Here was fought the battle of Williamsburgh, which McClellan designated in his final report as "one of the most brilliant engagements of the war." He bestows the highest praise upon General Hancock, though Hooker had fought with equal gallantry, and encountered greater losses. All did their duty; and when, between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, General McClellan arrived upon the ground (the battle having commenced early in the morning,) he did his duty, and helped materially toward a favorable result of the action. On the next morning, there was no enemy; and, owing to the bad roads, the lack of food, and the exhaustion of the troops, there could be no immediate pursuit.
On the seventh of May, General Franklin landed at West Point with his division, further up the peninsula, supported by the divisions of Sedgwick, Porter and Richardson. The rebels were obliged to attack, to give the retreating columns from Williamsburgh time and opportunity to pass; but, after a battle of six hours they were repulsed, though not until they had accomplished their object.
General McClellan did not like the organization of the army into corps. The measure did not originate with him, and the men appointed to their command were not men of his choosing. He did not believe in fighting the battle of Williamsburgh. The three corps-commanders, Sumner, Heintzelman and Keyes, were all on the ground; and were regarded by the commanding General as indiscreet in commencing the attack, and incompetent in its conduct.
At this time, Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Stanton and Mr. Chase were all on a visit to Fortress Monroe; and, on the ninth of May, General McClellan took occasion to write to the Secretary of War, asking permission to re-organize the army corps. He wished to return to the organization by divisions, or to be authorized to relieve incompetent commanders of army corps. To give force to his request, he declared in his note that, had he been half an hour later on the field, the army would have been routed, and would have lost everything. He declared that he found on the field "the utmost confusion and incompetency," and added that "at least a thousand lives were really sacrificed by the organization into corps." Mr. Stanton replied that the President, who would write him privately, would give him liberty to suspend the corps organization temporarily, or until further orders. Mr. Lincoln wrote privately, and wrote a very frank and honest letter, dated at Fortress Monroe, of which these were the essential paragraphs:
   "I have just assisted the Secretary of War in forming the part of a dispatch to you, relating to army corps, which dispatch, of course, will have reached you long before this will. I wish to say a few words to you privately on this subject. I ordered the army corps organization not only on the unanimous opinion of the twelve Generals of division, but also on the unanimous opinion of every military man I could get an opinion from, and every modern military book, yourself only excepted. Of course I did not on my own judgment pretend to understand the subject. I now think it indispensable for you to know how your struggle against it is received in quarters which we cannot entirely disregard. It is looked upon as merely an effort to pamper one or two pets, and to persecute and degrade their supposed rivals. I have had no word from Sumner, Heintzelman and Keyes. The commanders of these corps are of course the three highest officers with you, but I am constantly told that you have no consultation or communication with them, that you consult and communicate with nobody but Fitz John Porter, and perhaps General Franklin. I do not say these complaints are true or just, but, at all events, it is proper you should know of their existence. Do the commanders of corps disobey your orders in anything?
   "Are you strong enough, even with my help, to set your foot upon the neck of Sumner, Heintzelman and Keyes, all at once? This is a practical and very serious question to you.
After the receipt of this private letter, General McClellan concluded not to make the change which seemed so essential; but he created two new corps, or "provisional corps," which he placed respectively under the command of Fitz John Porter and General Franklin, the men whom Mr. Lincoln had mentioned as his favorites.
Leaving the army to make its way toward Richmond, events take us back to Fortress Monroe for a brief space, where the Washington dignitaries were consulting and watching the progress of affairs. Nothing could be done on the James River, on account of the presence of the formidable Merrimac; and, in the meantime, Norfolk was held by the rebels. It was desirable to take Norfolk; and an expedition was fitted out at Fortress Monroe, under command of General Wool, for that purpose. To show how this was done, and, at the same time, to illustrate the free and easy manner in which the President dealt with his officers, we shall let Mr. Lincoln tell his own "little story." In a subsequent conversation with Major General Garfield, he said: "By the way, Garfield, do you know that Chase, Stanton, General Wool and I had a campaign of our own? We went down to Fortress Monroe in Chase's revenue cutter, and consulted with Admiral Goldsborough on the feasibility of taking Norfolk by landing on the North shore and making a march of eight miles. The Admiral said there was no landing on that shore, and we should have to double the cape, and approach the place from the south side, which would be a long journey, and a difficult one. I asked him if he had ever tried to find a landing, and he replied that he had not. I then told him a story of a fellow in Illinois who had studied law, but had never tried a case. He was sued, and, not having confidence in his ability to manage his own case, employed a lawyer to manage it for him. He had only a confused idea of the meaning of law terms, but was anxious to make a display of learning, and, on the trial, constantly made suggestions to his lawyer, who paid but little attention to him. At last, fearing that his lawyer was not handling the opposing counsel very well, he lost all his patience; and, springing to his feet, cried out, 'Why don't you go at him with a capias or a surre-butter or something, and not stand there like a confounded old nudum-pactum?' 'Now, Admiral,' said I, 'if you don't know that there is no landing on the North shore, I want you to find out.'"
Continuing his narrative, Mr. Lincoln said: "The Admiral took the hint; and, taking Chase and Wool along, with a company or two of marines, he went on a voyage of discovery, and Stanton and I remained at Fortress Monroe. That night we went to bed, but not to sleep, for we were very anxious for the fate of the expedition. About two o'clock the next morning, I heard the heavy tread of Wool ascending the stairs. I went out into the parlor and found Stanton hugging Wool in the most enthusiastic manner, as he announced that he had found a landing, and had captured Norfolk."
Thus Norfolk came into our possession on the ninth of May; and on the eleventh the Merrimac was blown up by command of her own officers, releasing our navy from its long durance, though its passage up the James was repulsed by a heavy battery at Drury's Bluff.
General McClellan was still busy with his dispatches. Of the nature of these dispatches, we can judge by the replies of the President. Under date of May fifteenth, the latter writes: "I have done all I could, and can, to sustain you. I hoped that the opening of James River, and putting Wool and Burnside in communications with an open road to Richmond, or to you, had effected something in that direction." For five days our army lay at Williamsburgh, on account of bad roads, which roads the rebel army found it convenient to pass with sufficient rapidity to place themselves within the outer defenses of Richmond, a distance of nearly forty miles. They were, at least, all across the Chickahominy River.
Head-quarters reached White House on the sixteenth. Two days previously, the General had written the President that he could bring only eighty thousand men into the field, and that he wanted every man the government could send him. Mr. Stanton wrote him on the eighteenth that the President was unwilling to uncover the capital entirely, but desired that he would extend his right wing to the north of Richmond, so that McDowell could communicate with him by his left wing. "At your earnest call for reinforcements," said Mr. Stanton, "he is sent forward to co-operate in the reduction of Richmond, but charged, in attempting this, not to uncover the city of Washington." General McClellan seemed to have no idea that the capital was in danger, and replied to this that he wished McDowell to join him by water. He feared that he could not join him overland in season for the coming battle, and complained that McDowell was not put more directly under his command. On the twenty-fourth of May, the President wrote, saying that McDowell and Shields would move for him on the following Monday, Shields' troops being too much worn to march earlier; and that they had so weakened their line already that Banks, in the Shenandoah valley, was in peril, and had met with a serious loss. On the same day, Mr. Lincoln was obliged, in order to save the capital, to suspend McDowell's movement toward McClellan; for the rebel General Jackson had begun a desperate push for Harper's Ferry. Against this action of the President, McClellan protested; and, on the twenty-fifth, the former wrote him a note, giving a full statement of the situation:
   "Your dispatch received. General Banks was at Strasburg with about six thousand men, Shields having been taken from him to swell a column for McDowell to aid you at Richmond, and the rest of his force scattered at various places. On the twenty-third, a force of seven thousand to ten thousand fell upon one regiment and two companies guarding the bridge at Front Royal, destroying it entirely; crossed the Shenandoah, and on the twenty-fourth, yesterday, pushed on to get north of Banks on the road to Winchester. General Banks ran a race with them, beating them into Winchester yesterday evening. This morning a battle ensued between the two forces, in which General Banks was beaten back into full retreat toward Martinsburg, and probably is broken up into a total rout. Geary, on the Manassas Gap Railroad, just now reports that Jackson is now near Front Royal with ten thousand troops, following up and supporting, as I understand, the force now pursuing Banks. Also, that another force of ten thousand is near Orleans, following on in the same direction. Stripped bare, as we are here, I will do all we can to prevent them crossing the Potomac at Harper's Ferry or above. McDowell has about twenty thousand of his forces moving back to the vicinity of Front Royal; and Fremont, who was at Franklin, is moving to Harrisonburg: both these movements intended to get in the enemy's rear.
   "One more of McDowell's brigades is ordered through here to Harper's Ferry; the rest of his forces remain for the present at Fredericksburg. We are sending such regiments and dribs from here and Baltimore as we can spare to Harper's Ferry, supplying their places in some sort, calling in militia from the adjacent states. We also have eighteen cannon on the road to Harper's Ferry, of which arm there is not one at that point. This is now our situation.
   "If McDowell's force was now beyond our reach, we should be entirely helpless. Apprehension of something like this, and no unwillingness to sustain you, has always been my reason for withholding McDowell's forces from you.
   "Please understand this, and do the best you can with the forces you have."
A few hours after this dispatch was sent, the President sent another, stating that the enemy was driving General Banks before him, and was threatening Leesburgh and Geary on the Manassas Gap Railroad; that the movement looked like a general and concerted one--such an one as he would not make if he were acting on the purpose of a very desperate defense of Richmond; and that, if McClellan did not at once attack that capital, he would probably have to give up the job, and come to the defense of Washington.
This dispatch moved the General. General Fitz John Porter was sent to attack a rebel force near Hanover Court-House, which he did with favorable results. General McClellan described it as a perfect rout of the enemy, at which the President wrote a dispatch, stating his gratification, but expressing his surprise that the Richmond and Fredericksburg Railroad was not seized again. On the twenty-sixth, Mr. Lincoln informed General McClellan that Banks was safe at Williamsport. Still the General wanted troops sent to him by water, still he wanted more troops, and still the President assured him, again and again, that he was doing and would do for him everything he could do, consistently with the safety of Washington.
A movement was commenced on the twenty-fifth to cross the Chickahominy; and, on the thirtieth and thirty-first, a battle was fought, which resulted in such a repulse of the rebels, and such heavy losses to them as greatly to alarm Richmond, and impress upon the city the belief that an immediate and fatal pursuit would be made by the federal forces. After the engagement, General McClellan crossed the river, but found the roads so bad that artillery could not be handled, and that pursuit was impossible; although the rebels had found it convenient to get back, and expected to be pursued. The following day, General Heintzelman sent a reconnoitering party within four miles of Richmond, without finding an enemy. Informed of this, General McClellan ordered the force to fall back to its old position: and on the same day wrote to Washington that he only waited for the river to fall, to cross over the rest of his army, and make a general attack; and that the morale of his army was such that be could venture much, not fearing the odds against him.
McClellan had met great losses by battle and disease; and the government did what it could for him, by placing under his command the troops at Fortress Monroe, and by sending to him McCall's division of McDowell's corps. On the seventh of June, the General wrote to the Secretary of War that he should be ready to move as soon as McCall should reach him, and McCall reached him on the tenth. On that day, he had caught a rumor that Beauregard had reinforced the rebels in Richmond; and then he wanted some of Halleck's army in Tennessee sent to him. The Secretary assured him that Beauregard and his army were not in Richmond, but that Halleck would be urged to comply with the request, so far as he could do so with safety. The particular friends of McClellan were busy at this time with suspicions and reports that the President and Secretary of War were trying to sacrifice him; and, to put an extinguisher on this, Mr. Stanton wrote: "Be assured, General, that there never has been a moment when my desire has been otherwise than to aid you with my whole heart, mind and strength, since the hour we first met; and, whatever others may say, for their own purposes, you have never had, and never can have, anyone more truly your friend, or more anxious to support you, or more joyful than I shall be at the success which I have no doubt will soon be achieved by your arms."
With a long series of dispatches in which General McClellan quarrels with the relations which General McDowell's troops held to his command, it is not necessary to burden these pages. The President wished to hold on to McDowell's troops, and still have them assist McClellan. He had sent McCall's division by water; but these were directed to be posted so that they could unite with the corps coming by land, and to be kept under McDowell. McClellan saw in this arrangement only ambition on the part of McDowell; and, in one of his dispatches, wrote the government: "If I cannot fully control all his troops, I want none of them, but would prefer to fight the battle with what I have, and let others be responsible for the results," which was equivalent to saying that he would rather be whipped without McDowell's troops, under the circumstances, than be victorious with them.
On the twenty-first, the General sent a dispatch to the President, saying that ten thousand men had been sent from Richmond to reinforce Jackson. Mr. Lincoln informed him of the confirmation of the news, and told him that it was as good to him as a reinforcement of an equal number.
Thus the time passed away, while his army was wasting with disease in the Chickahominy swamps, and he, with every fresh dispatch, was just "about to move." He had lain there a month; and the rebels thought it was time for him to move in the other direction. He saw the preparations, and, anticipating a defeat, he wrote to inform the government that the rebel force before him was two hundred thousand strong, and that, in case of a disaster, the responsibility could not be thrown on his shoulders. This kind of talk troubled Mr. Lincoln. "I give you all I can," said he, "and act on the presumption that you will do the best you can with what you have; while you continue, ungenerously, I think, to assume that I could give you more if I would." At this very moment as it appears by McClellan's report, he had ordered supplies to a point on the James River, to which he expected to retreat. On the afternoon of the twenty-sixth, the extreme right of the army was attacked; and, from that time until the army had wheeled back to the James River, there was no rest. They fell back, fighting every day, inflicting terrible losses on the enemy, and receiving sad punishment themselves. The General's pen was busy still, as it might be, for he took no part in the engagements. If he had ten thousand fresh troops, he could take Richmond, he thought; but, as it was, he could only cover his retreat. He was not responsible for the result; he must have more troops. "If I save this army now," said he to the Secretary of War, "I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you, or to any persons in Washington; you have done your best to sacrifice this army." Was ever such petulance, such insolence, borne with such patience before? The President wrote him: "Save your army at all events." The President would not blame him. "We protected Washington," said he, "and the enemy concentrated on you. Had we stripped Washington, he would have been upon us before the troops sent could have got to you. Less than a week ago, you notified us that reinforcements were leaving Richmond to come in front of us. It is the nature of the case, and neither you nor the government is to blame." General McClellan called upon the President for a reinforcement of fifty thousand troops, to which Mr. Lincoln replied: "When you ask for fifty thousand men to be promptly sent to you, you surely labor under some gross mistake of fact. Recently, you sent papers showing your disposal of forces made last spring, for the defense of Washington, and advising a return to that plan. I find it included, in and about Washington, seventy-five thousand men. Now, please be assured that I have not men enough to fill that very plan by fifteen thousand." Further on he says: "I have not, outside of your army, seventy-five thousand men east of the mountains. Thus the idea of sending you fifty thousand men, or any other considerable forces promptly, is simply absurd." He closed by assuring him that he did not blame him for his disasters, asking that he would be equally generous toward the government, and adjuring him to save his army. It was absolutely impossible for the government to send reinforcements at once, to enable McClellan to assume the offensive. On the seventh of July, the General, who seems to have had a penchant for giving general advice to the government, found time to write a long letter to Mr. Lincoln, telling him that he thought the war should not look to the "subjugation of the people of any state, in any event." He would have no political execution of persons, no confiscation, and no forcible abolition of slavery; though it appears that he did not object to the practical abolition of slavery upon military necessity, and by military means. "A declaration of radical views, especially upon slavery, will rapidly disintegrate our present armies," said the General: but he did not seem to produce a profound impression upon the mind of the Executive.
The President determined to ascertain, by personal inspection, the condition of the army; and, on the eighth, visited General McClellan at Harrison's Landing. At this time it was understood that the enemy was organizing his forces for an advance on Washington. It was the opinion of Mr. Lincoln, and of the corps commanders, that the army should repair to Washington, but General McClellan was against it. The army, he declared, ought not to be withdrawn. It ought to be promptly reinforced, and thrown again upon Richmond. He wanted the whole of General Burnside's command in North Carolina to help him. He dreaded the effects of a retreat upon the morale of his army, although he had just tried it, and declared, in a dispatch of the eleventh, that the army was in "fine spirits."
On the thirteenth, the President wrote him that one hundred and sixty thousand men had gone with his army to the Peninsula, and that, when he was with him, a few days before, he was informed that only eighty-six thousand remained, leaving seventy-three thousand five hundred to be accounted for. After making all allowances for deaths, wounds and sickness, fifty thousand men were still absent. General McClellan replied that 38,250 men were absent by authority. Here was a reinforcement at command worth having. Why did the General let them go? Why did he not call them back?
It was determined at last to withdraw the army from the Peninsula, and the order found McClellan still protesting. "The true defense of Washington" was just where he was. He received the order to remove his sick on the second of August; but it was not until the twenty-third that General Franklin's corps started from Fortress Monroe, and not until the twenty-sixth that McClellan himself arrived at Alexandria. On the following day, he was ordered to take the entire direction of the forwarding of the troops from Alexandria to assist General Pope, who, two months before, had taken the consolidated commands of McDowell and Fremont, the latter retiring at his own request, and being replaced by Sigel. That portion of the army of the Potomac which arrived before McClellan, pushed off at once to reinforce Pope; but not a man that came afterwards took any part in those battles by which that General was driven back upon Washington. The dispatches by which he was urged, ordered, almost besought, to forward troops to the assistance of Pope, would fill severa1 pages of this volume; and, when we know how promptly troops went forward before his arrival, it is impossible to find in his miserable excuses for inaction anything but a disposition to embarrass Pope, and deprive him of success. It is a hard judgment, and a sad one to render; but it must be rendered, or the conclusion is inevitable that the General was either incompetent to comprehend the emergency or afraid to meet it. It is impossible to find as apology for his failure to act in this great necessity, that would not damage his reputation as a military man.
The triumphant rebels moved up the Potomac with the evident intention of crossing and invading Maryland. No time was to be lost. Under the representation that the army of the Potomac would serve under no commander but McClellan, General Pope was relieved, and the former placed in command of all the troops. On the fourth of September, he commenced moving into Maryland for the purpose of expelling the rebel forces. Washington was in a panic, and the whole country was in a condition of the most feverish excitement. Still he called for reinforcements. He wanted to uncover Washington again, and said that, "even if Washington should be taken," it "would not bear comparison with the ruin and disaster that would follow a single defeat of this army." When that same army was fighting Under Pope, it did not, apparently, impress him in that way at all.
The battle of South Mountain was fought on the fourteenth, and, on the seventeenth, the battle of Antietam. The rebels were whipped, and recrossed the Potomac, broken and disheartened. General McClellan did not pursue, owing to the condition of his army, one whole corps of which (Fitz John Porter's) had not been in the action at all; and, as if the habit of calling for reinforcements had become chronic, renewed his application for more troops. There he remained, with no effort to follow up his victory. The President was impatient, but, to be sure that he did no injustice to the General, he Visited the army in person, to ascertain what its real condition was. The result was an order, issued on the sixth, for the army to move across the Potomac, and give battle to the enemy, or drive him south. The President promised him thirty thousand new men, if he would move across the river between the enemy and Washington. If he would prefer to move up the Shenandoah valley, he could only spare him fifteen thousand. Then General McClellan began to make inquiries, and call for shoes and other supplies; but he did not begin to move. A few days afterward, the rebel General Stuart made a raid into Pennsylvania, with a large cavalry force, keeping General McClellan busy, and calling forth from him the confident statement that the daring raiders would be bagged; but they went completely around the army, and escaped in safety. A note written to the General by Mr. Lincoln, on the thirteenth, so well illustrates the situation at the moment, and, at the same time, betrays so fully his knowledge of affairs and the intelligence of his military criticisms, that it must be given entire:
   "My Dear Sir--You remember my speaking to you of what I called your over-cautiousness. Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you can not do what the enemy is constantly doing? Should you not claim to be at least his equal in prowess, and act upon the claim?
   "As I understand, you telegraphed General Halleck that you can not subsist your army at Winchester, unless the railroad from Harper's Ferry to that point be put in working order. But the enemy does now subsist his army at Winchester, at a distance nearly twice as great from railroad transportation as you would have to do, without the railroad last named. He now wagons from Culpepper Court-House, which is just about twice as far as you would have to do from Harper's Ferry. He is certainly not more than half as well provided with wagons as you are. I certainly should be pleased for you to have the advantage of the railroad from Harper's Ferry to Winchester; but it wastes all the remainder of autumn to give it to you, and, in fact, ignores the question of time, which can not and must not be ignored.
   "Again, one of the standard maxims of war, as you know, is, "to operate upon the enemy's communications as much as possible without exposing your own." You seem to act as if this applies against you, but can not apply in your favor. Change positions with the enemy, and think you not he would break your communication with Richmond within the next twenty-four hours? You dread his going into Pennsylvania. But, if he does so in full force, he gives up his communications to you absolutely, and you have nothing to do but to follow and ruin him; it he does so with less than full force, fall upon and beat what is left behind all the easier.
   "Exclusive of the water line, you are now nearer Richmond than the enemy is by the route that you can and he must take. Why can you not reach there before him, unless you admit that he is more than your equal on a march? His route is the arc of a circle, while yours is the chord. The roads are as good on yours as on his.
   "You know I desired, but did not order you, to cross the Potomac below, instead of above, the Shenandoah and Blue Ridge. My idea was, that this would at once menace the enemy's communications, which I would seize if he would permit. If he should move northward, I would follow him closely, holding his communications. If he should prevent our seizing his communications, and move toward Richmond, I would press closely to him, fight him if a favorable opportunity should present, and at least try to beat him to Richmond on the inside track. I say 'try;' if we never try, we shall never succeed. If he make a stand at Winchester, moving neither north nor south, I would fight him there, on the idea that, if we cannot beat him when he bears the wastage of coming to us, we never can when we bear the wastage of going to him. This proposition is a simple truth, and is too important to be lost sight of for a moment. In coming to us he tenders us an advantage which we should not waive. We should not so operate as to merely drive him away. As we must beat him somewhere, or fail finally, we can do it, if at all, easier near to us than far away. If we cannot beat the enemy where he now is, we never can, he again being within the intrenchments of Richmond. Recurring to the idea of going to Richmond on the inside track, the facility of supplying from the side away from the enemy is remarkable; as it were, by the different spokes of a wheel, extending from the hub toward the rim;--and this whether you move directly by the chord, or on the inside arc, hugging the Blue Ridge more closely. The chord-line, as you see, carries you by Aldie, Haymarket, and Fredericksburg; and you see how turnpikes, railroads, and finally the Potomac by Acquia Creek, meet you at all points from Washington. The same, only the lines lengthened a little, if you press closer to the Blue Ridge part of the way. The gaps through the Blue Ridge I understand to be about the following distances from Harper's Ferry, to wit: Vestal's, five miles; Gregory's, thirteen; Snicker's, eighteen; Ashby's, twenty-eight; Manassas, thirty-eight; Chester, forty-five; and Thornton's, fifty-three. I should think it preferable to take the route nearest the enemy, disabling him to make an important move without your knowledge, and compelling him to keep his forces together for dread of you. The gaps would enable you to attack if you should wish. For a great part of the way you would be practically between the enemy and both Washington and Richmond, enabling us to spare you the greatest number of troops from here. When, at length, running to Richmond ahead of him enables him to move this way, if he does so, turn and attack him in the rear. But I think he should be engaged long before such point is reached. It is all easy if our troops march as well as the enemy, and it is unmanly to say they cannot do it. This letter is in no sense an order."
Still the government urged the General forward, and still he had excuses for not going forward. His horses were fatigued, and had the sore tongue, he said; and the President could not forbear asking him what his horses had done since Antietam that would fatigue anything. The General did not like what the President said about his cavalry, and called out another note from Mr. Lincoln, who, under date of October twenty-sixth, wrote him that if he had done any injustice he deeply regretted it. He added: "To be told, after five weeks' total inactivity of the army, and during which period we had sent to that army every fresh horse we possibly could, amounting in the whole to 7,918, that the cavalry horses were too much fatigued to move, presented a very cheerless, almost hopeless prospect for the future." On the fifth of November, the army had crossed--just a month after the order to cross was given;--and, of course, the rebels had made all the needful preparations, either for battle or retreat.
But patience at Washington, tried long, and terribly tried, had become exhausted; and, on the same day on which the General announced the army all across the Potomac, an order arrived relieving him of his command.
Military men will judge this remarkable campaign in the light of their own science; but the civilian will read its history by the light of its results, and by the light of those later magnificent operations of Thomas in Tennessee,--of Sheridan in the Shenandoah valley and near Richmond,--of Sherman's march from Chattanooga through the heart of the rebellion and up the Atlantic coast, with cities falling before and on either side of him as if swept by a tornado,--and of Grant before Vicksburg, or in the Wilderness and at Richmond, capturing whole armies, and finishing up a was so weakly begun. In the light of these operations, the campaign of McClellan looks like the work of a boy or the play of a man.
With General McClellan's motives, the writer has no desire to deal. That he became the favorite of men whose heart was not in the war, may well be considered his misfortune. That he became the representative of the party opposed to the administration in its general policy, on all subjects, was not inconsistent with his desire and determination to do his whole military duty. That he entertained and acted upon the determination to injure the administration for political purposes, there is very little evidence; and there is absolutely no evidence that the administration, through any jealousy of him, withheld its support from him, that he might be ruined and put out of its way. Such a supposition cannot live a moment in the light of Mr. Lincoln's life. If there is one fact in McClellan's campaign that stands out with peculiar prominence, it is that both Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stanton sent him every man they could spare, consistently with the safety of the capital, by the General's own showing at first, and by the showing of events at last. On one side, we see the presumptuous volunteering of general political and military advice, the unreasonable call for reinforcements when assured again and again that he had every man that could be given him, expostulations against government orders, quarreling with government arrangements, absolute criminations of the government, unaccountable hesitations and boyish inefficiency; while, on the other, there were almost unbroken respectfulness, patience and toleration, ardent desire for the best results, constant urgency to action, constant sacrifice of personal feeling and opinion, and a patent wish to do everything practicable or possible to give the commanding General everything he wanted.
That General McClellan loved power, is evident; and it is just as evident that it was not pleasant to him to share it with any one; but, on the whole, there is no evidence that he was not a good, well-meaning, and patriotic man. The difficulty was that he was great mainly in his infirmities. He was not a great man, nor a great general. He was a good organizer of military force, and a good engineer; he was a good theorizer, and wrote good English; he had that quality of personal magnetism which drew the hearts of his soldiers to him; but he was not a man of action, of expedients, of quick judgment, of dash and daring, of great, heroic deeds. He was never ready. There were many evidences that he held a theory of his own as to the mode of conducting the war, and that, independently of the government, he endeavored to pursue it; but, even if he did, his failure must always be regarded as mainly due to constitutional peculiarities for which he was not responsible.
This chapter should be concluded here, but space must be taken for a very brief record of the immediately succeeding fortunes of the army of the Potomac, and a hurried chronicle of the other military events of the year. On the retirement of General McClellan, General Burnside was placed in command of the army of the Potomac; and, at the same time, the rebel army commenced falling back upon Richmond. On the fourteenth, the army left its camps, and marched for Fredericksburg, arriving there at about the same time with the rebel army. Burnside was obliged to wait for his pontoons, and it was not until the twelfth of December that he was ready to cross. Only a feeble resistance was made to his passage, but it was a worse than fruitless procedure. The attempt to carry the hills was a failure, and he was obliged to withdraw his army, with a loss of from ten thousand to twelve thousand men. This gave a sad finishing up to the year's sad business, with this ill-starred army.
The opening of the campaign of 1862 found the government with a newly created navy at its command. Mr. Welles, though reputed inefficient, had accomplished what no other man had ever done in an equal space of time. Not only were the southern ports efficiently blockaded, but materials for formidable naval expeditions were prepared. General Burnside, at the head of an expedition, captured Roanoke Island on the eighth of February, with three thousand prisoners; and subsequently engaged in other successful movements on the coast and up the rivers of North Carolina. On the nineteenth of June, Charleston was attacked, without success. In the latter part of April, Forts Jackson and St. Philip, below New Orleans, were assailed by the fleet under Commodore Farragut, and so far disabled that they were passed. As a consequence, New Orleans tell into our hands, all the rebel troops fleeing the city. This affair was equally brilliant in its execution and important in its results, and encouraged the government as much as it distressed and discouraged its foes. Fort Pulaski, guarding the entrance to Savannah, was also taken, and that port effectually shut up.
While these much desired, though hardly expected, successes attended the operations at the mouth of the Mississippi, events of equal importance were in progress on its tributaries. At the West movements were on a gigantic scale. The capture of Forts Henry and Donelson on the Cumberland River drew the enemy out of Bowling Green and Nashville, and gave us Columbus. General Price was driven out of Missouri. Island Number Ten and Forts Pillow and Randolph all fell into our hands, and then our forces occupied Memphis. A combination of all the rebel armies at Corinth surprised our troops at Pittsburg Landing, under General Grant, on the morning of April sixth, with overwhelming numbers, and drove them back to the protection of our gunboats; but on the following day, through the opportune arrival of General Buell, with his forces, the rebels were pushed back into retreat, with terrible losses, leaving our victorious army almost as badly punished as themselves. The victory was so decided that Mr. Lincoln was moved to issue a Proclamation of Thanksgiving, in which he also recognized the other victories that have been chronicled. The people were called upon to "render thanks to our Heavenly Father for these inestimable blessings," and were also desired to "implore spiritual consolation in behalf of all those who have been brought into affliction by the casualties and calamities of civil war."
The rebels fell back to Corinth, and, remaining there a few days, retired to Grenada. A powerful effort of General Bragg to invade Kentucky, made later in the season, for the purpose mainly of gathering reinforcements, encouraging the secession spirit, and collecting supplies, was a failure, in nearly every point; and, after a battle at Terryville, he retreated. General Rosecrans was attacked at Corinth by a powerful confederate force, but he repulsed the rebels with great loss. At the very last of the year, there was a severe fight at Murfreesboro which resulted favorably to our arms; and the new year of 1863 found a great advance made toward the entire redemption of Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri, from the presence of rebel armies and the prevalence of rebel influence.