CHAPTER IX

THE DISASTERS OF THE NORTH

1. _Military Policy of the North_.

The story of the war has here to be told from the point of view of the

civilian administrator, the President; stirring incidents of combat and

much else of interest must be neglected; episodes in the war which

peculiarly concerned him, or have given rise to controversy about him,

must be related lengthily. The President was an inexperienced man. It

should be said, too--for respect requires perfect frankness--that he

was one of an inexperienced people. The Americans had conquered their

independence from Great Britain at the time when the ruling factions of

our country had reached their utmost degree of inefficiency. They had

fought an indecisive war with us in 1812-14, while our main business

was to win at Salamanca and Vittoria. These experiences in some ways

warped American ideas of war and politics, and their influence perhaps

survives to this day. The extent of the President's authority and his

position in regard to the advice he could obtain have been explained.

An examination of the tangle in which military policy was first

involved may make the chief incidents of the war throughout easier to

follow.

Immediately after Bull Run McClellan had been summoned to Washington to

command the army of the Potomac. In November, Scott, worn out by

infirmity, and finding his authority slighted by "my ambitious junior,"

retired, and thereupon McClellan, while retaining his immediate command

upon the Potomac, was made for the time General-in-Chief over all the

armies of the North. There were, it should be repeated, two other

principal armies besides that of the Potomac: the army of the Ohio, of

which General Buell was given command in July; and that of the West, to

which General Halleck was appointed, though Frémont seems to have

retained independent command in Missouri. All these armies were in an

early stage of formation and training, and from a purely military point

of view there could be no haste to undertake a movement of invasion

with any of them.

Three distinct views of military policy were presented to Lincoln in

the early days. Scott, as soon as it was clear that the South meant

real fighting, saw how serious its resistance would be. His military

judgment was in favour of a strictly defensive attitude before

Washington; of training the volunteers for at least four months in

healthy camps; and of then pushing a large army right down the

Mississippi valley to New Orleans, making the whole line of that river

secure, and establishing a pressure on the South between this Western

army and the naval blockade which must slowly have strangled the

Confederacy. He was aware that public impatience might not allow a

rigid adherence to his policy, and in fact, when his view was made

public before Bull Run, "Scott's Anaconda," coiling itself round the

Confederacy, was the subject of general derision. The view of the

Northern public and of the influential men in Congress was in favour of

speedy and, as it was hoped, decisive action, and this was understood

as involving, whatever else was done, an attempt soon to capture

Richmond. In McClellan's view, as in Scott's, the first object was the

full preparation of the Army, but he would have wished to wait till he

had a fully trained force of 273,000 men on the Potomac, and a powerful

fleet with many transports to support his movements; and, when he had

all this, to move southwards in irresistible force, both advancing

direct into Virginia and landing at points on the coast, subduing each

of the Atlantic States of the Confederacy in turn. If the indefinite

delay and the overwhelming force which his fancy pictured could have

been granted him, it is plain, the military critics have said, that "he

could not have destroyed the Southern armies--they would have withdrawn

inland, and the heart of the Confederacy would have remained

untouched." But neither the time nor the force for which he wished

could be allowed him. So he had to put aside his plan, but in some

ways perhaps it still influenced him.

It would have been impossible to disregard the wishes of those, who in

the last resort were masters, for a vigorous attempt on Richmond, and

the continually unsuccessful attempts that were made did serve a

military purpose, for they kept up a constant drain upon the resources

of the South. In any well-thought-out policy the objects both of

Scott's plan and of the popular plan would have been borne in mind.

That no such policy was consistently followed from the first was partly

a result of the long-continued difficulty in finding any younger man

who could adequately take the place of Scott; it was not for a want of

clear ideas, right or wrong, on Lincoln's part.

Only two days after the battle of Bull Run, he put on paper his own

view as to the future employment of the three armies. He thought that

one should "threaten" Richmond; that one should move from Cincinnati,

in Ohio, by a pass called Cumberland Gap in Kentucky, upon Knoxville in

Eastern Tennessee; and that the third, using Cairo on the Mississippi

as its base, should advance upon Memphis, some 120 miles further south

on that river. Apparently he did not at first wish to commit the army

of the Potomac very deeply in its advance on Richmond, and he certainly

wished throughout that it should cover Washington against any possible

attack. Memphis was one of the three points at which the Southern

railway system touched the great river and communicated with the States

beyond--Vicksburg and New Orleans, much further south, were the others.

Knoxville again is a point, by occupying which, the Northern forces

would have cut the direct railway communication between Virginia and

the West, but for this move into Eastern Tennessee Lincoln had other

reasons nearer his heart. The people of that region were strongly for

the Union; they were invaded by the Confederates and held down by

severe coercion, and distressing appeals from them for help kept

arriving through the autumn; could they have been succoured and their

mountainous country occupied by the North, a great stronghold of the

Union would, it seemed to Lincoln, have been planted securely far into

the midst of the Confederacy. Therefore he persistently urged this

part of his scheme on the attention of his generals. The chief

military objection raised by Buell was that his army would have to

advance 150 miles from the nearest base of supply upon a railway; (for

200 miles to the west of the Alleghanies there were no railways running

from north to south). To meet this Lincoln, in September, urged upon a

meeting of important Senators and Representatives the construction of a

railway line from Lexington in Kentucky southwards, but his hearers,

with their minds narrowed down to an advance on Richmond, seem to have

thought the relatively small cost in time and money of this work too

great. Lincoln still thought an expedition to Eastern Tennessee

practicable at once, and it has been argued from the circumstances in

which one was made nearly two years later that he was right. It would,

one may suppose, have been unwise to separate the armies of the Ohio

and of the West so widely; for the main army of the Confederates in the

West, under their most trusted general, Albert Sidney Johnston, was

from September onwards in South-western Kentucky, and could have struck

at either of these two Northern armies; and this was in Buell's mind.

On the other hand, Lincoln's object was a wise one in itself and would

have been worth some postponement of the advance along the Mississippi

if thereby the army in the West could have been used in support of it.

However this may be, the fact is that Lincoln's plan, as it stood, was

backed up by McClellan; McClellan was perhaps unduly anxious for Buell

to move on Eastern Tennessee, because this would have supported the

invasion of Virginia which he himself was now contemplating, and he was

probably forgetful of the West; but he was Lincoln's highest military

adviser and his capacity was still trusted. Buell's own view was that,

when he moved, it should be towards Western Tennessee. He would have

had a railway connection behind him all his way, and Albert Johnston's

army would have lain before him. He wished that Halleck meanwhile

should advance up the courses of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers;

Eastern Tennessee (he may have thought) would be in the end more

effectively succoured; their two armies would thus have converged on

Johnston's. Halleck agreed with Buell to the extent of disagreeing

with Lincoln and McClellan, but no further. He declined to move in

concert with Buell. Frémont had disorganised the army of the West, and

Halleck, till he had repaired the mischief, permitted only certain

minor enterprises under his command.

Each of the three generals, including the General-in-Chief, who was the

Government's chief adviser, was set upon his own immediate purpose, and

indisposed to understanding the situation of the others--Buell perhaps

the least so. Each of them had at first a very sound reason, the

unreadiness of his army, for being in no hurry to move, but then each

of them soon appeared to be a slow or unenterprising commander. Buell

was perhaps unlucky in this, for his whole conduct is the subject of

some controversy; but he did appear slow, and the two others, it is

universally agreed, really were so. As 1861 drew to a close, it became

urgent that something should be done somewhere, even if it were not

done in the best possible direction. The political pressure upon the

Administration became as great as before Bull Run. The army of the

Potomac had rapidly become a fine army, and its enemy, in no way

superior, lay entrenching at Manassas, twenty miles in front of it.

When Lincoln grew despondent and declared that "if something was not

done soon, the bottom would drop out of the whole concern," soldiers

remark that the military situation was really sound; but he was right,

for a people can hardly be kept up to the pitch of a high enterprise if

it is forced to think that nothing will happen. Before the end of the

year 1861 military reasons for waiting were no longer being urged;

McClellan had long been promising immediate action, Buell and Halleck

seemed merely unable to agree.

In later days when Lincoln had learnt much by experience it is hard to

trace the signs of his influence in military matters, because, though

he followed them closely, he was commonly in full agreement with his

chief general and he invariably and rightly left him free. At this

stage, when his position was more difficult, and his guidance came from

common sense and the military books, of which, ever since Bull Run, he

had been trying, amidst all his work, to tear out the heart, there is

evidence on which to judge the intelligence which he applied to the

war. Certainly he now and ever after looked at the matter as a whole

and formed a clear view of it, which, for a civilian at any rate, was a

reasonable view. Certainly also at this time and for long after no

military adviser attempted, in correcting any error of his, to supply

him with a better opinion equally clear and comprehensive. This is

probably why some Northern military critics, when they came to read his

correspondence with his generals, called him, as his chief biographers

were tempted to think him, "the ablest strategist of the war." Grant

and Sherman did not say this; they said, what is another thing, that

his was the greatest intellectual force that they had met with.

Strictly speaking, he could not be a strategist. If he were so judged,

he would certainly be found guilty of having, till Grant came to

Washington, unduly scattered his forces. He could pick out the main

objects; but as to how to economise effort, what force and how composed

and equipped was necessary for a particular enterprise, whether in

given conditions of roads, weather, supplies, and previous fatigue, a

movement was practicable, and how long it would take any clever

subaltern with actual experience of campaigning ought to have been a

better judge than he. The test, which the reader must be asked to

apply to his conduct of the war, is whether he followed, duly or unduly

his own imperfect judgment, whether, on the whole, he gave in whenever

it was wise to the generals under him, and whether he did so without

losing his broad view or surrendering his ultimate purpose. It is

really no small proof of strength that, with the definite judgments

which he constantly formed, he very rarely indeed gave imperative

orders as Commander-in-Chief, which he was, to any general. The

circumstances, all of which will soon appear, in which he was tempted

or obliged to do so, are only the few marked exceptions to his habitual

conduct. There are significant contrary instances in which he

abstained even from seeking to know his general's precise intentions.

At the time which has just been reviewed, when the scheme of the war

was in the making, his correspondence with Buell and Halleck shows his

fundamental intention. He emphatically abstains from forcing them; he

lucidly, though not so tactfully as later, urges his own view upon the

consideration of his general, begging him, not necessarily to act upon

it, but at least to see the point, and if he will not do what is

wished, to form and explain as clearly a plan for doing something

better.

2. _The War in the West Up to May, 1862_.

The pressure upon McClellan to move grew stronger and indeed more

justifiable month after month, and when at last, in March, 1862,

McClellan did move, the story of the severest adversity to the North,

of Lincoln's sorest trials, and, some still say, his gravest failures,

began. Its details will concern us more than those of any other part

of the war. But events in the West began earlier, proceeded faster,

and should be told first. Buell could not obtain from McClellan

permission to carry out his own scheme. He did, however, obtain

permission for Halleck, if he consented, to send flotillas up the

Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers to make a diversion while Buell, as

Lincoln had proposed and as McClellan had now ordered, marched upon

Eastern Tennessee. Halleck would not move. Buell prepared to move

alone, and in January, 1862, sent forward a small force under Thomas to

meet an equally small Confederate force that had advanced through

Cumberland Gap into Eastern Kentucky. Thomas won a complete victory,

most welcome as the first success since the defeat of Bull Run, at a

place called Mill Springs, far up the Cumberland River towards the

mountains. But at the end of January, while Buell was following up

with his forces rather widely dispersed because he expected no support

from Halleck, he was brought to a stop, for Halleck, without warning,

did make an important movement of his own, in which he would need

Buell's support.

The Cumberland and the Tennessee are navigable rivers which in their

lower course flow parallel in a northerly or north-westerly direction

to join the Ohio not far above its junction with the Mississippi at

Cairo. Fort Henry was a Confederate fort guarding the navigation of

the Tennessee near the northern boundary of the State of that name,

Fort Donelson was another on the Cumberland not far off. Ulysses

Simpson Grant, who had served with real distinction in the Mexican War,

had retired from the Army and had been more or less employed about his

father's leather store in Illinois and in the gloomy pursuit of

intoxication and of raising small sums from reluctant friends when he

met them. On the outbreak of the Civil War he suddenly pulled himself

together, and with some difficulty got employment from the Governor of

Illinois as a Major-General in the State Militia (obtaining Army rank

later). Since then, while serving under Halleck, he had shown sense

and promptitude in seizing an important point on the Ohio, upon which

the Confederates had designs. He had a quick eye for seeing important

points. Grant was now ordered or obtained permission from Halleck to

capture Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. By the sudden movements of Grant

and of the flotilla acting with him, the Confederates were forced to

abandon Fort Henry on February 6, 1862. Ten days later Fort Donelson

surrendered with nearly 10,000 prisoners, after a brilliant and nearly

successful sortie by the garrison, in which Grant showed, further,

tenacity and a collected mind under the pressure of imminent calamity.

Halleck had given Grant little help. Buell was reluctant to detach any

of his volunteer troops from their comrades to act with a strange army,

and Halleck had not warned him of his intentions. Halleck soon applied

to Lincoln for the supreme command over the two Western armies with

Buell under him. This was given to him. Experience showed that one or

the other must command now that concerted action was necessary.

Nothing was known at Washington to set against Halleck's own claim of

the credit for the late successes. So Lincoln gave him the command,

though present knowledge shows clearly that Buell was the better man.

Grant had been left before Fort Donelson in a position of some danger

from the army under Albert Johnston; and, from needless fear of

Beauregard with a Confederate force under him yet further West, Halleck

let slip the chance of sending Grant in pursuit of Johnston, who was

falling back up the Cumberland valley. As it was, Johnston for a time

evacuated Nashville, further up the Cumberland, the chief town of

Tennessee and a great railway centre, which Buell promptly occupied;

Beauregard withdrew the Confederate troops from Columbus, a fortress of

great reputed strength on the Mississippi not far below Cairo, to

positions forty or fifty miles (as the crow flies) further down the

stream. Thus, as it was, some important steps had been gained in

securing that control of the navigation of the river which was one of

the great military objects of the North. Furthermore, successful work

was being done still further West by General Curtis in Missouri, who

drove an invading force back into Arkansas and inflicted a crushing

defeat upon them there in March. But a great stroke should now have

been struck. Buell, it is said, saw plainly that his forces and

Halleck's should have been concentrated as far up the Tennessee as

possible in an endeavour to seize upon the main railway system of the

Confederacy in the West. Halleck preferred, it would seem, to

concentrate upon nothing and to scatter his forces upon minor

enterprises, provided he did not risk any important engagement. An

important engagement with the hope of destroying an army of the enemy

was the very thing which, as Johnston's forces now stood, he should

have sought, but he appears to have been contented by the temporary

retirement of an unscathed enemy who would return again reinforced.

Buell was an unlucky man, and Halleck got quite all he deserved, so it

is possible that events have been described to us without enough regard

to Halleck's case as against Buell. But at any rate, while much should

have been happening, nothing very definite did happen till April 6,

when Albert Johnston, now strongly reinforced from the extreme South,

came upon Grant, who (it is not clear why) had lain encamped, without

entrenching, and not expecting immediate attack, near Shiloh, far up

the Tennessee River in the extreme south of Tennessee State. Buell at

the time, though without clear information as to Grant's danger, was on

his way to join him. There seems to have been negligence both on

Halleck's part and on Grant's. The battle of Shiloh is said to have

been highly characteristic of the combats of partly disciplined armies,

in which the individual qualities, good or bad, of the troops play a

conspicuous part. Direction on the part of Johnston or Grant was not

conspicuously seen, but the latter, whose troops were surprised and

driven back some distance, was intensely determined. In the course of

that afternoon Albert Johnston was killed. Rightly or wrongly

Jefferson Davis and his other friends regarded his death as the

greatest of calamities to the South. After the manner of many battles,

more especially in this war, the battle of Shiloh was the subject of

long subsequent dispute between friends of Grant and of Buell, and far

more bitter dispute between friends of Albert Johnston and Beauregard.

But it seems that the South was on the point of winning, till late on

the 6th the approach of the first reinforcements from Buell made it

useless to attempt more. By the following morning further large

reinforcements had come up; Grant in his turn attacked, and Beauregard

had difficulty in turning a precipitate retirement into an orderly

retreat upon Corinth, forty miles away, a junction upon the principal

railway line to be defended. The next day General Pope, who had some

time before been detached by Halleck for this purpose, after arduous

work in canal cutting, captured, with 7,000 prisoners, the northernmost

forts held by the Confederacy on the Mississippi. But Halleck's plans

required that his further advance should be stopped. Halleck himself,

in his own time, arrived at the front. In his own time, after being

joined by Pope, he advanced, carefully entrenching himself every night.

He covered in something over a month the forty miles route to Corinth,

which, to his surprise, was bloodlessly evacuated before him. He was

an engineer, and like some other engineers in the Civil War, was

overmuch set upon a methodical and cautious procedure. But his mere

advance to Corinth caused the Confederates to abandon yet another fort

on the Mississippi, and on June 6 the Northern troops were able to

occupy Memphis, for which Lincoln had long wished, while the flotilla

accompanying them destroyed a Confederate flotilla. Meanwhile, on May

1, Admiral Farragut, daringly running up the Mississippi, had captured

New Orleans, and a Northern force under Butler was able to establish

itself in Louisiana. The North had now gained the command of most of

the Mississippi, for only the hundred miles or so between Vicksburg far

south and Port Hudson, between that and New Orleans, was still held by

the South; and command by Northern gunboats of the chief tributaries of

the great river was also established. The Confederate armies in the

West were left intact, though with some severe losses, and would be

able before long to strike northward in a well-chosen direction; for

all that these were great and permanent gains. Yet the North was not

cheered. The great loss of life at Shiloh, the greatest battle in the

war so far, created a horrible impression. Halleck, under whom all

this progress had been made, properly enough received a credit, which

critics later have found to be excessive, though it is plain that he

had reorganised his army well; but Grant was felt to have been caught

napping at Shiloh; there were other rumours about him, too, and he fell

deep into general disfavour. The events of the Western war did not

pause for long, but, till the end of this year 1862, the North made no

further definite progress, and the South, though it was able to invade

the North, achieved no Important result. It will be well then here to

take up the story of events in the East and to follow them continuously

till May, 1863, when the dazzling fortune of the South in that theatre

if the war reached its highest point.

3. _The War in the East Up to May, 1863_.

The interest of this part of the Civil War lies chiefly in the

achievements of Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson. From the point of view of

the North, it was not only disastrous but forms a dreary and

controversial chapter. George McClellan came to Washington amid

overwhelming demonstrations of public confidence. His comparative

youth added to the interest taken in him; and he was spoken of as "the

young Napoleon." This ridiculous name for a man already thirty-four

was a sign that the people expected impossible things from him.

Letters to his wife, which have been injudiciously published, show him

to us delighting at first in the consideration paid to him by Lincoln

and Scott, proudly confident in his own powers, rather elated than

otherwise by a sense that the safety of the country rested on him

alone. "I shall carry the thing _en grande_, and crush the rebels in

one campaign." He soon had a magnificent army; he may be said to have

made it himself. Before, as he thought, the time had come to use it,

he had fallen from favour, and a dead set was being made against him in

Washington. A little later, at the crisis of his great venture, when,

as he claimed, the Confederate capital could have been taken, his

expedition was recalled. Then at a moment of deadly peril to the

country his services were again called in. He warded off the danger.

Yet a little while and his services were discarded for ever. This

summary, which is the truth, but not the whole truth, must enlist a

certain sympathy for him. The chief fact of his later life should at

once be added. In 1864, when a Presidential election was approaching

and despondency prevailed widely in the North, he was selected as the

champion of a great party. The Democrats adopted a "platform" which

expressed neither more nor less than a desire to end the war on any

terms. In accordance with the invariable tradition of party opposition

in war time, they chose a war hero as their candidate for the

Presidency. McClellan publicly repudiated their principles, and no

doubt he meant it, but he became their candidate--their master or their

servant as it might prove. That he was Lincoln's opponent in the

election of that year ensured that his merits and his misfortunes would

be long remembered, but his action then may suggest to any one the

doubtful point in his career all along.

Some estimate of his curious yet by no means uncommon type of character

is necessary, if Lincoln's relations with him are to be understood at

all. The devotion to him shown by his troops proves that he had great

titles to confidence, besides, what he also had, a certain faculty of

parade, with his handsome charger, his imposing staff and the rest. He

was a great trainer of soldiers, and with some strange lapses, a good

organiser. He was careful for the welfare of his men; and his almost

tender carefulness of their lives contrasted afterwards with what

appeared the ruthless carelessness of Grant. Unlike some of his

successors, he could never be called an incapable commander. His great

opponent, Lee, who had known him of old, was wont to calculate on his

extraordinary want of enterprise, but he spoke of him on the whole in

terms of ample respect--also, by the way, he sympathised with him like

a soldier when, as he naturally assumed, he became a victim to scheming

politicians; and Lee confided this feeling to the ready ears of another

great soldier, Wolseley. As he showed himself in civil life, McClellan

was an attractive gentleman of genial address; it was voted that he was

"magnetic," and his private life was so entirely irreproachable as to

afford lively satisfaction. More than this, it may be conjectured that

to a certain standard of honour, loyalty, and patriotism, which he set

consciously before himself, he would always have been devotedly true.

But if it be asked further whether McClellan was the desired instrument

for Lincoln's and the country's needs, and whether, as the saying is,

he was a man to go tiger-hunting with, something very much against him,

though hard to define, appears in every part of his record (except

indeed, one performance in his Peninsular Campaign). Did he ever do

his best to beat the enemy? Did he ever, except for a moment,

concentrate himself singly upon any great object? Were even his

preparations thorough? Was his information ever accurate? Was his

purpose in the war ever definite, and, if so, made plain to his

Government? Was he often betrayed into marked frankness, or into

marked generosity? No one would be ready to answer yes to any of these

questions. McClellan fills so memorable a place in American history

that he demands such a label as can be given to him. In the most

moving and the most authentic of all Visions of Judgment, men were not

set on the right hand or the left according as they were of

irreproachable or reproachable character; they were divided into those

who did and those who did not. In the provisional judgment which men,

if they make it modestly, should at times make with decision,

McClellan's place is clear. The quality, "spiacente a Dio ed ai nemici

suoi," of the men who did not, ran through and through him.

Lincoln required first a general who would make no fatal blunder, but

he required too, when he could find him, a general of undaunted

enterprise; he did not wish to expose the North to disaster, but he did

mean to conquer the South. There was some security in employing

McClellan, though employing him did at one time throw on Lincoln's

unfit shoulders the task of defending Washington. It proved very hard

to find another general equally trustworthy. But, in the light of

facts which Lincoln came to perceive, it proved impossible to consider

McClellan as the man to finish the war.

We need only notice the doings of the main armies in this theatre of

the war and take no account of various minor affairs at outlying posts.

From the battle of Bull Run, which was on July 21, 1861, to March 5,

1862, the Southern army under Joseph Johnston lay quietly drilling at

Manassas. It, of course, entrenched its position, but to add to the

appearance of its strength, it constructed embrasures for more than its

number of guns and had dummy guns to show in them. At one moment there

was a prospect that it might move. Johnston and the general with him

had no idea of attacking the army of the Potomac where it lay, but they

did think that with a further 50,000 or 60,000 they might successfully

invade Maryland, crossing higher up the Potomac, and by drawing

McClellan away from his present position, get a chance of defeating

him. The Southern President came to Manassas, at their invitation, on

October 1, but he did not think well to withdraw the trained men whom

he could have sent to Johnston from the various points in the South at

which they were stationed; he may have had good reasons but it is

likely that he sacrificed one of the best chances of the South.

McClellan's army was soon in as good a state of preparation as

Johnston's. Early in October McClellan had, on his own statement, over

147,000 men at his disposal; Joseph Johnston, on his own statement,

under 47,000. Johnston was well informed as to McClellan's

numbers--very likely he could get information from Maryland more easily

than McClellan from Virginia. The two armies lay not twenty-five miles

apart. The weather and the roads were good to the end of December; the

roads were practicable by March and they seem to have been so all the

time. As spring approached, it appeared to the Southern generals that

McClellan must soon advance. Johnston thought that his right flank was

liable to be turned and the railway communications south of Manassas

liable to be cut. In the course of February it was realised that his

position was too dangerous; the large stores accumulated there were

removed; and when, early in March, there were reports of unusual

activity in the Northern camp, Johnston, still expecting attack from

the same direction, began his retreat. On March 9 it was learned in

Washington that Manassas had been completely evacuated. McClellan

marched his whole army there, and marched it back. Johnston withdrew

quietly behind the Rapidan River, some 30 miles further south, and to

his surprise was left free from any pursuit.

For months past the incessant report in the papers, "all quiet upon the

Potomac," had been getting upon the nerves of the North. The gradual

conversion of their pride in an imposing army into puzzled rage at its

inactivity has left a deeper impression on Northern memories than the

shock of disappointment at Bull Run. Public men of weight had been

pressing for an advance in November, and when the Joint Committee of

Congress, an arbitrary and meddlesome, but able and perhaps on the

whole useful body, was set up in December, it brought its full

influence to bear on the President. Lincoln was already anxious

enough; he wished to rouse McClellan himself to activity, while he

screened him against excessive impatience or interference with his

plans. It is impossible to say what was McClellan's real mind. Quite

early he seems to have held out hopes to Lincoln that he would soon

attack, but he was writing to his wife that he expected to be attacked

by superior numbers. It is certain, however, that he was possessed now

and always by a delusion as to the enemy's strength. For instance

Lincoln at last felt bound to work out for himself definite prospects

for a forward movement; it is sufficient to say of this layman's effort

that he proposed substantially the line of advance which Johnston a

little later began to dread most; Lincoln's plan was submitted for

McClellan's consideration; McClellan rejected it, and his reasons were

based on his assertion that he would have to meet nearly equal numbers.

He, in fact, out-numbered the enemy by more than three to one. If we

find the President later setting aside the general's judgment on

grounds that are not fully explained, we must recall McClellan's vast

and persistent miscalculations of an enemy resident in his

neighbourhood. And the distrust which he thus created was aggravated

by another propensity of his vague mind. His illusory fear was the

companion of an extravagant hope; the Confederate army was invincible

when all the world expected him to attack it then and there, but the

blow which he would deal it in his own place and his own time was to

have decisive results, which were indeed impossible; the enemy was to

"pass beneath the Caudine Forks." The demands which he made on the

Administration for men and supplies seemed to have no finality about

them; his tone in regard to them seemed to degenerate into a chronic

grumble. The War Department certainly did not intend to stint him in

any way; but he was an unsatisfactory man to deal with in these

matters. There was a great mystery as to what became of the men sent

to him. In the idyllic phrase, which Lincoln once used of him or of

some other general, sending troops to him was "like shifting fleas

across a barn floor with a shovel--not half of them ever get there."

But his fault was graver than this; utterly ignoring the needs of the

West, he tried, as General-in-Chief, to divert to his own army the

recruits and the stores required for the other armies.

The difficulty with him went yet further; McClellan himself

deliberately set to work to destroy personal harmony between himself

and his Government. It counts for little that in private he soon set

down all the civil authorities as the "greatest set of incapables," and

so forth, but it counts for more that he was personally insolent to the

President. Lincoln had been in the habit, mistaken in this case but

natural in a chief who desires to be friendly, of calling at

McClellan's house rather than summoning him to his own. McClellan

acquired a habit of avoiding him, he treated his enquiries as idle

curiosity, and he probably thought, not without a grain of reason, that

Lincoln's way of discussing matters with many people led him into

indiscretion. So one evening when Lincoln and Seward were waiting at

the general's house for his return, McClellan came in and went

upstairs; a message was sent that the President would be glad to see

him; he said he was tired and would rather be excused that night.

Lincoln damped down his friends' indignation at this; he would, he once

said, "hold General McClellan's stirrup for him if he will only win us

victories." But he called no more at McClellan's, and a curious

abruptness in some of his orders later marks his unsuccessful effort to

deal with McClellan in another way. The slightly ridiculous light in

which the story shows Lincoln would not obscure to any soldier the full

gravity of such an incident. It was not merely foolish to treat a kind

superior rudely; a general who thus drew down a curtain between his own

mind and that of the Government evidently went a very long way to

ensure failure in war.

Lincoln had failed to move McClellan early in December. For part of

that month and January McClellan was very ill. Consultations were held

with other generals, including McDowell, who could not be given the

chief command because the troops did not trust him. McDowell and the

rest were in agreement with Lincoln. Then McClellan suddenly recovered

and was present at a renewed consultation. He snubbed McDowell; the

inadequacy of his force to meet, in fact, less than a third of its

number was "so plain that a blind man could see it"; he was severely

and abruptly tackled as to his own plans by Secretary Chase; Lincoln

intervened to shield him, got from him a distinct statement that he had

in his mind a definite time for moving, and adjourned the meeting.

Stanton, one of the friends to whom McClellan had confided his

grievances, was now at the War Department and was at one with the Joint

Committee of Congress in his impatience that McClellan should move. At

last, on January 27, Lincoln published a "General War Order" that a

forward movement was to be made by the army of the Potomac and the

Western armies on February 22. It seems a blundering step, but it

roused McClellan. For a time he even thought of acting as Lincoln

wished; he would move straight against Johnston, and "in ten days," he

told Chase on February 13, "I shall be in Richmond." But he quickly

returned to the plan which he seems to have been forming before but

which he only now revealed to the Government, and it was a plan which

involved further delay. When February 22 passed and nothing was done,

the Joint Committee were indignant that Lincoln still stood by

McClellan. But McClellan now was proposing definite action; apart from

the difficulty of finding a better man, there was the fact that

McClellan had made his army and was beloved by it; above all, Lincoln

had not lost all the belief he had formed at first in McClellan's

capacity; he believed that "if he could once get McClellan started" he

would do well. Professional criticism, alive to McClellan's military

faults, has justified Lincoln in this, and it was for something other

than professional failure that Lincoln at last removed him.

McClellan had determined to move his army by sea to some point further

down the coast of the Chesapeake Bay. The questions which Lincoln

wrote to him requesting a written answer have never been adequately

answered. Did McClellan's plan, he asked, require less time or money

than Lincoln's? Did it make victory more certain? Did it make it more

valuable? In case of disaster, did it make retreat more easy? The one

point for consideration in McClellan's reply to him is that the enemy

did not expect such a movement. This was quite true; but the enemy was

able to meet it, and McClellan was far too deliberate to reap any

advantage from a surprise. His original plan was to land near a place

called Urbana on the estuary of the Rappahannock, not fifty miles east

of Richmond. When he heard that Johnston had retreated further south,

he assumed, and ever after declared, that this was to anticipate his

design upon Urbana, which, he said, must have reached the enemy's ears

through the loose chattering of the Administration. As has been seen,

this was quite untrue. His project of going to Urbana was now changed,

by himself or the Government, upon the unanimous advice of his chief

subordinate generals, into a movement to Fort Monroe, which he had even

before regarded as preferable to a direct advance southwards. A few

days after Johnston's retreat, the War Department began the embarkation

of his troops for this point. Fort Monroe is at the end of the

peninsula which lies between the estuaries of the York River on the

north and the James on the south. Near the base of this projection of

land, seventy-five miles from Fort Monroe, stands Richmond. On April

2, 1862, McClellan himself landed to begin the celebrated Peninsula

Campaign which was to close in disappointment at the end of July.

Before the troops were sent to the Peninsula several things were to be

done. An expedition to restore communication westward by the Baltimore

and Ohio Rail way involved bridging the Potomac with boats which were

to be brought by canal. It collapsed because McClellan's boats were

six inches too wide for the canal locks. Then Lincoln had insisted

that the navigation of the lower Potomac should be made free from the

menace of Confederate batteries which, if McClellan would have

co-operated with the Navy Department, would have been cleared away long

before. This was now done, and though a new peril to the

transportation of McClellan's army suddenly and dramatically disclosed

itself, it was as suddenly and dramatically removed. In the hasty

abandonment of Norfolk harbour on the south of the James estuary by the

North, a screw steamer called the _Merrimac_ had been partly burnt and

scuttled by the North. On March 1 she steamed out of the harbour in

sight of the North. The Confederates had raised her and converted her

into an ironclad. Three wooden ships of the North gave gallant but

useless fight to her and were destroyed that day; and the news spread

consternation in every Northern port. On the very next morning there

came into the mouth of the James the rival product of the Northern Navy

Department and of the Swedish engineer Ericsson's invention. She was

compared to a "cheesebox on a raft"; she was named the _Monitor_, and

was the parent of a type of vessel so called which has been heard of

much more recently. The _Merrimac_ and the _Monitor_ forthwith fought

a three hours' duel; then each retired into harbour without fatal

damage. But the _Merrimac_ never came out again; she was destroyed by

the Confederates when McClellan had advanced some way up the Peninsula;

and it will be unnecessary to speak of the several similar efforts of

the South, which nearly but not quite achieved very important successes

later.

Before and after his arrival at the Peninsula, McClellan received

several mortifications. Immediately after the humiliation of the

enemy's escape from Manassas, he was without warning relieved of his

command as General-in-Chief. This would in any case have followed

naturally upon his expedition away from Washington; it was in public

put on that ground alone; and he took it well. He had been urged to

appoint corps commanders, for so large a force as his could not remain

organised only in divisions; he preferred to wait till he had made

trial of the generals under him; Lincoln would not have this delay, and

appointed corps commanders chosen by himself because he believed them

to be fighting men. The manner in which these and some other

preparatory steps were taken were, without a doubt, intended to make

McClellan feel the whip. They mark a departure, not quite happy at

first, from Lincoln's formerly too gentle manner. A worse shock to

McClellan followed. The President had been emphatic in his orders that

a sufficient force should be left to make Washington safe, and supposed

that he had come to a precise understanding on this point. He suddenly

discovered that McClellan, who had now left for Fort Monroe, had

ordered McDowell to follow him with a force so large that it would not

leave the required number behind. Lincoln immediately ordered McDowell

and his whole corps to remain, though he subsequently sent a part of it

to McClellan. McClellan's story later gives reason for thinking that

he had intended no deception; but if so, he had expressed himself with

unpardonable vagueness, and he had not in fact left Washington secure.

Now and throughout this campaign Lincoln took the line that Washington

must be kept safe--safe in the judgment of all the best military

authorities available.

McClellan's progress up the Peninsula was slow. He had not informed

himself correctly as to the geography; he found the enemy not so

unprepared as he had supposed; he wasted, it is agreed, a month in

regular approaches to their thinly-manned fortifications at Yorktown,

when he might have carried them by assault. He was soon confronted by

Joseph Johnston, and he seems both to have exaggerated Johnston's

numbers again and to have been unprepared for his movements. The

Administration does not seem to have spared any effort to support him.

In addition to the 100,000 troops he took with him, 40,000 altogether

were before long despatched to him. He was operating in a very

difficult country, but he was opposed at first by not half his own

number. Lincoln, in friendly letters, urged upon him that delay

enabled the enemy to strengthen himself both in numbers and in

fortifications. The War Department did its best for him. The whole of

his incessant complaints on this score are rendered unconvincing by the

language of his private letters about that "sink of iniquity,

Washington," "those treacherous hounds," the civil authorities, who

were at least honest and intelligent men, and the "Abolitionists and

other scoundrels," who, he supposed, wished the destruction of his

army. The criticism in Congress of himself and his generals was no

doubt free, but so, as Lincoln reminded him, was the criticism of

Lincoln himself. Justly or not, there were complaints of his relations

with corps commanders. Lincoln gave no weight to them, but wrote him a

manly and a kindly warning. The points of controversy which McClellan

bequeathed to writers on the Civil War are innumerable, but no one can

read his correspondence at this stage without concluding that he was

almost impossible to deal with, and that the whole of his evidence in

his own case was vitiated by a sheer hallucination that people wished

him to fail. He had been nearly two months in the Peninsula when he

was attacked at a disadvantage by Johnston, but defeated him on May 31

and June 1 in a battle which gave confidence and prestige to the

Northern side, but which he did not follow up. A part of his army

pursued the enemy to within four miles of Richmond, and it has been

contended that if he had acted with energy he could at this time have

taken that city. His delay, to whatever it was due, gave the enemy

time to strengthen himself greatly both in men and in fortifications.

The capable Johnston was severely wounded in the battle, and was

replaced by the inspired Lee. According to McClellan's own account,

which English writers have followed, his movements had been greatly

embarrassed by the false hope given him that McDowell was now to march

overland and join him. His statement that he was influenced by this is

refuted by his own letters at the time. McClellan, however, suffered a

great disappointment. The front of Washington was now clear of the

enemy and Lincoln had determined to send McDowell when he was induced

to keep him back by a diversion in the war which he had not expected,

and which indeed McClellan had advised him not to expect.

"Stonewall" Jackson's most famous campaign happened at this juncture,

and to save Washington, Lincoln and Stanton placed themselves, or were

placed, in the trying position of actually directing movements of

troops. There were to the south and south-west of Washington, besides

the troops under McDowell's command, two Northern forces respectively

commanded by Generals Banks and Frémont. These two men were among the

chief examples of those "political generals," the use of whom in this

early and necessarily blundering stage of the war has been the subject

of much comment. Banks was certainly a politician, a self-made man,

who had worked in a factory and who had risen to be at one time Speaker

of the House. He was now a general because as a powerful man in the

patriotic State of Massachusetts he brought with him many men, and

these were ready to obey him. On the other hand, he on several

occasions showed good judgment both in military matters and in the

questions of civil administration which came under him; his heart was

in his duty; and, though he held high commands almost to the end of the

war, want of competence was never imputed to him till the failure of a

very difficult enterprise on which he was despatched in 1864. He was

now in the lower valley of the Shenandoah, keeping a watch over a much

smaller force under Jackson higher up the valley. Frémont was in some

sense a soldier, but after his record in Missouri he should never have

been employed. His new appointment was one of Lincoln's greatest

mistakes, and it was a mistake of a characteristic kind. It will

easily be understood that there were real political reasons for not

leaving this popular champion of freedom unused and unrecognized.

These reasons should not have, and probably would not have, prevailed.

But Lincoln's personal reluctance to resist all entreaties on behalf of

his own forerunner and his own rival was great; and then Frémont came

to Lincoln and proposed to him a knight-errant's adventure to succour

the oppressed Unionists of Tennessee by an expedition through West

Virginia. So he was now to proceed there, but was kept for the present

in the mountains near the Shenandoah valley. The way in which the

forces under McDowell, Banks and Frémont were scattered on various

errands was unscientific; what could be done by Jackson, in

correspondence with Lee, was certainly unforeseen. At the beginning of

May, Jackson, who earlier in the spring had achieved some minor

successes in the Shenandoah valley and had raided West Virginia, began

a series of movements of which the brilliant skill and daring are

recorded in Colonel Henderson's famous book. With a small force,

surrounded by other forces, each of which, if concentrated, should have

outnumbered him, he caught each in turn at a disadvantage, inflicted on

them several damaging blows, and put the startled President and

Secretary of War in fear for the safety of Washington. There seemed to

be no one available who could immediately be charged with the supreme

command of these three Northern forces, unless McDowell could have been

spared from where he was; so Lincoln with Stanton's help took upon

himself to ensure the co-operation of their three commanders by orders

from Washington. His self-reliance had now begun to reach its full

stature, his military good sense in comparison with McClellan's was

proving greater than he had supposed, and he had probably not

discovered its limitations. Presumably his plans now were, like an

amateur's, too complicated, and it is not worth while to discuss them.

But he was trying to cope with newly revealed military genius, and, so

far as can be told, he was only prevented from crushing the adventurous

Jackson by a piece of flat disobedience on the part of Frémont.

Frémont, having thus appropriately punished Lincoln, was removed, this

time finally, from command. Jackson, having successfully kept McDowell

from McClellan, had before the end of June escaped safe southward.

McClellan was nearing Richmond. Lee, by this time, had been set free

from Jefferson Davis' office and had taken over the command of Joseph

Johnston's army. Lincoln must have learnt a great deal, and he fully

realised that the forces not under McClellan in the East should be

under some single commander. Pope, an experienced soldier, had

succeeded well in the West; he was no longer necessary there, and there

was no adverse criticism upon him. He was in all respects a proper

choice, and he was now summoned to take command of what was to be

called the army of Virginia. A few days later, upon the advice, as it

seems, of Scott, Halleck himself was called from the West. His old

command was left to Grant and he himself was made General-in-Chief and

continued at Washington to the end of the war as an adviser of the

Government. All the progress in the West had been made under Halleck's

supervision, and his despatches had given an exaggerated impression of

his own achievement at Corinth. He had not seen active service before

the war, but he had a great name as an accomplished military writer; in

after years he was well known as a writer on international law. He is

not thought to have justified his appointment by showing sound judgment

about war, and Lincoln upon some later emergency told him in his direct

way that his military knowledge was useless if he could not give a

definite decision in doubtful circumstances. But whether Halleck's

abilities were great or small, Lincoln continued to use them, because

he found him "wholly for the service," without personal favour or

prejudice.

McClellan was slowly but steadily nearing Richmond. From June 26 to

July 2 there took place a series of engagements between Lee and

McClellan, or rather the commanders under him, known as the Seven Days'

Battles. The fortunes of the fighting varied greatly, but the upshot

is that, though the corps on McClellan's left won a strong position not

far from Richmond, the sudden approach of Jackson's forces upon

McClellan's right flank, which began on the 26th, placed him in what

appears to have been, as he himself thought it, a situation of great

danger. Lee is said to have "read McClellan like an open book,"

playing upon his caution, which made him, while his subordinates

fought, more anxious to secure their retreat than to seize upon any

advantage they gained. But Lee's reading deceived him in one respect.

He had counted upon McClellan's retreating, but thought he would

retreat under difficulties right down the Peninsula to his original

base and be thoroughly cut up on the way. But on July 2 McClellan with

great skill withdrew his whole army to Harrison's Landing far up the

James estuary, having effected with the Navy a complete transference of

his base. Here his army lay in a position of security; they might yet

threaten Richmond, and McClellan's soldiers still believed in him. But

the South was led by a great commander and had now learned to give him

unbounded confidence; there was some excuse for a panic in Wall Street,

and every reason for dejection in the North.

On the third of the Seven Days, McClellan, much moved by the sight of

dead and wounded comrades, sent a gloomy telegram to the Secretary of

War, appealing with excessive eloquence for more men. "I only wish to

say to the President," he remarked in it, "that I think he is wrong in

regarding me as ungenerous when I said that my force was too weak." He

concluded: "If I save the army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no

thanks to you nor to any other persons in Washington. You have done

your best to sacrifice this army." Stanton still expressed the

extraordinary hope that Richmond would fall in a day or two. He had

lately committed the folly of suspending enlistment, an act which,

though of course there is an explanation of it, must rank as the one

first-rate blunder of Lincoln's Administration. He was now negotiating

through the astute Seward for offers from the State Governors of a levy

of 300,000 men to follow up McClellan's success. Lincoln, as was his

way, feared the worst. He seems at one moment to have had fears for

McClellan's sanity. But he telegraphed, himself, an answer to him,

which affords as fair an example as can be given of his characteristic

manner. "Save your army at all events. Will send reinforcements as

fast as we can. Of course they cannot reach you to-day or to-morrow,

or next day. I have not said you were ungenerous for saying you needed

reinforcements. I thought you were ungenerous in assuming that I did

not send them as fast as I could. I feel any misfortune to you and

your army quite as keenly as you feel it yourself. If you have had a

drawn battle or repulse, it is the price we pay for the enemy not being

in Washington. We protected Washington and the enemy concentrated on

you. Had we stripped Washington, he would have been upon us before the

troops could have gotten to you. Less than a week ago you notified us

reinforcements were leaving Richmond to come in front of us. It is

the nature of the case, and neither you nor the Government are to

blame. Please tell me at once the present condition and aspect of

things."

Demands for an impossible number of reinforcements continued. Lincoln

explained to McClellan a few days later that they were impossible, and

added: "If in your frequent mention of responsibility you have the

impression that I blame you for not doing more than you can, please be

relieved of such an impression. I only beg that, in like manner, you

will not ask impossibilities of me." Much argument upon Lincoln's next

important act may be saved by the simple observations that the problem

in regard to the defence of Washington was real, that McClellan's

propensity to ask for the impossible was also real, and that Lincoln's

patient and loyal attitude to him was real too.

Five days after his arrival at Harrison's Landing, McClellan wrote

Lincoln a long letter. It was a treatise upon Lincoln's political

duties. It was written as "on the brink of eternity." He was not then

in fact in any danger, and possibly he had composed it seven days

before as his political testament; and apprehensions, free from

personal fear, excuse, without quite redeeming, its inappropriateness.

The President is before all things not to abandon the cause. But the

cause should be fought for upon Christian principles. Christian

principles exclude warfare on private property. More especially do

they exclude measures for emancipating slaves. And if the President

gives way to radical views on slavery, he will get no soldiers. Then

follows a mandate to the President to appoint a Commander-in-Chief, not

necessarily the writer. Such a summary does injustice to a certain

elevation of tone in the letter, but that elevation is itself slightly

strained. McClellan, whatever his private opinions, had not meddled

with politics before he left Washington. The question why in this

military crisis he should have written what a Democratic politician

might have composed as a party manifesto must later have caused Lincoln

some thought, but it apparently did not enter into the decision he next

took. He arrived himself at Harrison's Landing next day. McClellan

handed him the letter. Lincoln read it, and said that he was obliged

to him. McClellan sent a copy to his wife as "a very important record."

Lincoln had come in order to learn the views of McClellan and all his

corps commanders. They differed a good deal on important points, but a

majority of them were naturally anxious to stay and fight there.

Lincoln was left in some anxiety as to how the health of the troops

would stand the climate of the coming months if they had to wait long

where they were. He was also disturbed by McClellan's vagueness about

the number of his men, for he now returned as present for duty a number

which far exceeded that which some of his recent telegrams had given

and yet fell short of the number sent him by an amount which no

reasonable estimate of killed, wounded, and sick could explain. This

added to Lincoln's doubt on the main question presented to him.

McClellan believed that he could take Richmond, but he demanded for

this very large reinforcements. Some part of them were already being

collected, but the rest could by no means be given him without leaving

Washington with far fewer troops to defend it than McClellan or anybody

else had hitherto thought necessary.

On July 24, the day after his arrival at Washington, Halleck was sent

to consult with McClellan and his generals. The record of their

consultations sufficiently shows the intricacy of the problem to be

decided. The question of the health of the climate in August weighed

much with Halleck, but the most striking feature of their conversation

was the fluctuation of McClellan's own opinion upon each important

point--at one moment he even gave Halleck the impression that he wished

under all the circumstances to withdraw and to join Pope. When Halleck

returned to Washington McClellan telegraphed in passionate anxiety to

be left in the Peninsula and reinforced. On the other hand, some of

the officers of highest rank with him wrote strongly urging withdrawal.

This latter was the course on which Lincoln and Halleck decided. In

the circumstances it was certainly the simplest course to concentrate

all available forces in an attack upon the enemy from the direction of

Washington which would keep that capital covered all the while. It was

in any case no hasty and no indefensible decision, nor is there any

justification for the frequent assertion that some malignant influence

brought it about. It is one of the steps taken by Lincoln which have

been the most often lamented. But if McClellan had had all he demanded

to take Richmond and had made good his promise, what would Lee have

done? Lee's own answer to a similar question later was, "We would swap

queens"; that is, he would have taken Washington. If so the

Confederacy would not have fallen, but in all probability the North

would have collapsed, and European Powers would at the least have

recognised the Confederacy.

Lincoln indeed had acted as any prudent civilian Minister would then

have acted. But disaster followed, or rather there followed, with

brief interruption, a succession of disasters which, after this long

tale of hesitation, can be quickly told. It would be easy to represent

them as a judgment upon the Administration which had rejected the

guidance of McClellan. But in the true perspective of the war, the

point which has now been reached marks the final election by the North

of the policy by which it won the war. McClellan, even if he had taken

Richmond while Washington remained safe, would have concentrated the

efforts of the North upon a line of advance which gave little promise

of finally reducing the Confederacy. It is evident to-day that the

right course for the North was to keep the threatening of Richmond and

the recurrent hammering at the Southern forces on that front duly

related to that continual process by which the vitals of the Southern

country were being eaten into from the west. This policy, it has been

seen, was present to Lincoln's mind from an early day; the temptation

to depart from it was now once for all rejected. On the other hand,

the three great Southern victories, the second battle of Bull Run,

Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, which followed within the next

nine months, had no lasting influence. Jefferson Davis might perhaps

have done well if he had neglected all else and massed every man he

could gather to pursue the advantage which these battles gave him. He

did not--perhaps could not--do this. But he concentrated his greatest

resource of all, the genius of Lee, upon a point at which the real

danger did not lie.

Pope had now set vigorously to work collecting and pulling together his

forces, which had previously been scattered under different commanders

in the north of Virginia. He was guilty of a General Order which

shocked people by its boastfulness, insulted the Eastern soldiers by a

comparison with their Western comrades, and threatened harsh and most

unjust treatment of the civil population of Virginia. But upon the

whole he created confidence, for he was an officer well trained in his

profession as well as an energetic man. The problem was now to effect

as quickly as possible the union of Pope's troops and McClellan's in an

overwhelming force. Pope was anxious to keep McClellan unmolested

while he embarked his men. So, to occupy the enemy, he pushed boldly

into Virginia; he pushed too far, placed himself in great danger from

the lightning movements which Lee now habitually employed Jackson to

execute, but extricated himself with much promptitude, though with some

considerable losses. McClellan had not been deprived of command; he

was in the curious and annoying position of having to transfer troops

to Pope till, for a moment, not a man remained under him, but the

process of embarking and transferring them gave full scope for energy

and skill. McClellan, as it appeared to Lincoln, performed his task

very slowly. This was not the judgment of impatience, for McClellan

caused the delay by repeated and perverse disobedience to Halleck's

orders. But the day drew near when 150,000 men might be concentrated

under Pope against Lee's 55,000. The stroke which Lee now struck after

earnest consultation with Jackson has been said to have been "perhaps

the most daring in the history of warfare." He divided his army almost

under the enemy's eyes and sent Jackson by a circuitous route to cut

Pope's communications with Washington. Then followed an intricate

tactical game, in which each side was bewildered as to the movements of

the other. Pope became exasperated and abandoned his prudence. He

turned on his enemy when he should and could have withdrawn to a safe

position and waited. On August 29 and 30, in the ominous neighbourhood

of the Bull Run and of Manassas, he sustained a heavy defeat. Then he

abandoned hope before he need have done so, and, alleging that his men

were demoralised, begged to be withdrawn within the defences of

Washington, where he arrived on September 3, and, as was inevitable in

the condition of his army, was relieved of his command. McClellan, in

Lincoln's opinion, had now been guilty of the offence which that

generous mind would find it hardest to forgive. He had not bestirred

himself to get his men to Pope. In Lincoln's belief at the time he had

wished Pope to fail. McClellan, who reached Washington at the crisis

of Pope's difficulties, was consulted, and said to Lincoln that Pope

must be left to get out of his scrape as best he could. It was perhaps

only an awkward phrase, but it did not soften Lincoln.

Washington was now too strongly held to be attacked, but Lee determined

to invade Maryland. At least this would keep Virginia safe during

harvest time. It might win him many recruits in Maryland. It would

frighten the North, all the more because a Confederate force further

west was at that same time invading Kentucky; it might accomplish there

was no saying how much. This much, one may gather from the "Life of

Lord John Russell," any great victory of the South on Northern soil

would probably have accomplished: the Confederacy would have been

recognised, as Jefferson Davis longed for it to be, by European Powers.

Lincoln now acted in total disregard of his Cabinet and of all

Washington, and in equal disregard of any false notions of dignity. By

word of mouth he directed McClellan to take command of all the troops

at Washington. His opinion of McClellan had not altered, but, as he

said to his private secretaries, if McClellan could not fight himself,

he excelled in making others ready to fight. No other step could have

succeeded so quickly in restoring order and confidence to the Army.

Few or no instructions were given to McClellan. He was simply allowed

the freest possible hand, and was watched with keen solicitude as to

how he would rise to his opportunity.

Lee, in his advance, expected his opponent to be slow. He actually

again divided his small army, leaving Jackson with a part of it behind

for a while to capture, as he did, the Northern fort at Harper's Ferry.

A Northern private picked up a packet of cigars dropped by some

Southern officer with a piece of paper round it. The paper was a copy

of an order of Lee's which revealed to McClellan the opportunity now

given him of crushing Lee in detail. But he did not rouse himself. He

was somewhat hampered by lack of cavalry, and his greatest quality in

the field was his care not to give chances to the enemy. His want of

energy allowed Lee time to discover what, had happened and fall back a

little towards Harper's Ferry. Yet Lee dared, without having yet

reunited his forces, to stop at a point where McClellan must be tempted

to give him battle, and where, if he could only stand against

McClellan, Jackson would be in a position to deliver a deadly

counter-stroke. Lee knew that for the South the chance of rapid

success was worth any risk. McClellan, however, moved so slowly that

Jackson was able to join Lee before the battle. The Northern army came

up with them near the north bank of the Potomac on the Antietam Creek,

a small tributary of that river, about sixty miles north-east of

Washington. There, on September 17, 1862, McClellan ordered an attack,

to which he did not attempt to give his personal direction. His corps

commanders led assaults on Lee's position at different times and in so

disconnected a manner that each was repulsed singly. But on the

following morning Lee found himself in a situation which determined him

to retreat.

As a military success the battle of Antietam demanded to be followed

up. Reinforcements had now come to McClellan, and Lincoln telegraphed,

"Please do not let him get off without being hurt." Lee was between

the broad Potomac and a Northern army fully twice as large as his own,

with other large forces near. McClellan's subordinates urged him to

renew the attack and drive Lee into the river. But Lee was allowed to

cross the river, and McClellan lay camped on the Antietam battlefield

for a fortnight. He may have been dissatisfied with the condition of

his army and its supplies. Some of his men wanted new boots; many of

Lee's were limping barefoot. He certainly, as often before,

exaggerated the strength of his enemy. Lee recrossed the Potomac

little damaged. Lincoln, occupied in those days over the most

momentous act of his political life, watched McClellan eagerly, and

came to the Antietam to see things for himself. He came back in the

full belief that McClellan would move at once. Once more undeceived,

he pressed him with letters and telegrams from himself and Halleck. He

was convinced that McClellan, if he tried, could cut off Lee from

Richmond. Hearing of the fatigue of McClellan's horses, he telegraphed

about the middle of October, "Will you pardon me for asking what your

horses have done since the battle of Antietam that tires anything."

This was unkind; McClellan indeed should have seen about cavalry in the

days when he was organising in Washington, but at this moment the

Southern horse had just raided right round his lines and got safe back,

and his own much inferior cavalry was probably worn out with vain

pursuit of them. On the same day Lincoln wrote more kindly, "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

cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing? Change positions with

the enemy, and think you not, he would break your communications with

Richmond within the next twenty-four hours." And after a brief

analysis of the situation, which seems conclusive, he ends: "I say

'try'; if we never try we shall never succeed. . . . If we cannot beat

him now when he bears the wastage of coming to us, we never can when we

bear the wastage of going to him." His patience was nearing a limit

which he had already fixed in his own mind. On October 28, more than

five weeks after the battle, McClellan began to cross the Potomac, and

took a week in the process. On November 5, McClellan was removed from

his command, and General Burnside appointed in his place.

Lincoln had longed for the clear victory that he thought McClellan

would win; he gloomily foreboded that he might not find a better man to

put in his place; he felt sadly how he would be accused, as he has been

ever since, of displacing McClellan because he was a Democrat. "In

considering military merit," he wrote privately, "the world has

abundant evidence that I disregard politics." A friend, a Republican

general, wrote to him a week or so after McClellan had been removed to

urge that all the generals ought to be men in thorough sympathy with

the Administration. He received a crushing reply (to be followed in a

day or two by a friendly invitation) indignantly proving that Democrats

served as well in the field as Republicans. But in regard to McClellan

himself we now know that a grave suspicion had entered Lincoln's mind.

He might, perhaps, in the fear of finding no one better, have tolerated

his "over-cautiousness"; he did not care what line an officer who did

his duty might in civil life take politically; but he would not take

the risk of entrusting the war further to a general who let his

politics govern his strategy, and who, as he put it simply, "did not

want to hurt the enemy." This, he had begun to believe, was the cause

of McClellan's lack of energy. He resolved to treat McClellan's

conduct now, in fighting Lee or in letting him escape South, as the

test of whether his own suspicion about him was justified or not. Lee

did get clear away, and Lincoln dismissed McClellan in the full belief,

right or wrong, that he was not sorry for Lee's escape.

It is not known exactly what further evidence Lincoln then had for his

belief, but information which seems to have come later made him think

afterwards that he had been right. The following story was told him by

the Governor of Vermont, whose brother, a certain General Smith, served

under McClellan and was long his intimate friend. Lincoln believed the

story; so may we. The Mayor of New York, a shifty demagogue named

Fernando Wood, had visited McClellan in the Peninsula with a proposal

that he should become the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, and

with a view to this should pledge himself to certain Democratic

politicians to conduct the war in a way that should conciliate the

South, which to Lincoln's mind meant an "inefficient" way. McClellan,

after some days of unusual reserve, told Smith of this and showed him a

letter which he had drafted giving the desired pledge. On Smith's

earnest remonstrance that this "looked like treason," he did not send

the letter then. But Wood came again after the battle of Antietam, and

this time McClellan sent a letter in the same sense. This he

afterwards confessed to Smith, showing him a copy of the letter. Smith

and other generals asked, after this, to be relieved from service under

him. If, as can hardly be doubted, McClellan did this, there can be no

serious excuse for him, and no serious question that Lincoln was right

when he concluded it was unsafe to employ him. McClellan, according to

all evidence except his own letters, was a nice man, and was not likely

to harbour a thought of what to him seemed treason; it is honourable to

him that he wished later to serve under Grant but was refused by him.

But, to one of his views, the political situation before and after

Antietam was alarming, and it is certain that to his inconclusive mind

and character an attitude of half loyalty would be easy. He may not

have wished that Lee should escape, but he had no ardent desire that he

should not. Right or wrong, such was the ground of Lincoln's

independent and conscientiously deliberate decision.

The result again did not reward him. His choice of Burnside was a

mistake. There were corps commanders under McClellan who had earned

special confidence, but they were all rather old. General Burnside,

who was the senior among the rest, had lately succeeded in operations

in connection with the Navy on the North Carolina coast, whereby

certain harbours were permanently closed to the South. He had since

served under McClellan at the Antietam, but had not earned much credit.

He was a loyal friend to McClellan and very modest about his own

capacity. Perhaps both these things prejudiced Lincoln in his favour.

He continued in active service till nearly the end of the war, when a

failure led to his retirement; and he was always popular and respected.

At this juncture he failed disastrously. On December 11 and 12, 1862,

Lee's army lay strongly posted on the south of the Rappahannock.

Burnside, in spite, as it appears, of express warnings from Lincoln,

attacked Lee at precisely the point, near the town of Fredericksburg,

where his position was really impregnable. The defeat of the Northern

army was bloody and overwhelming. Burnside's army became all but

mutinous; his corps commanders, especially General Hooker, were loud in

complaint. He was tempted to persist, in spite of all protests, in

some further effort of rashness. Lincoln endeavoured to restrain him.

Halleck, whom Lincoln begged to give a definite military opinion,

upholding or overriding Burnside's, had nothing more useful to offer

than his own resignation. After discussions and recriminations among

all officers concerned, Burnside offered his resignation. Lincoln was

by no means disposed to remove a general upon a first failure or to

side with his subordinates against him, and refused to accept it.

Burnside then offered the impossible alternative of the dismissal of

all his corps commanders for disaffection to him, and on January 25,

1863, his resignation was accepted.

There was much discussion in the Cabinet as to the choice of his

successor. It was thought unwise to give the Eastern army a commander

from the West again. At Chase's instance [Transcriber's note:

insistance?] the senior corps commander who was not too old, General

Hooker, sometimes called "Fighting Joe Hooker," was appointed. He

received a letter, often quoted as the letter of a man much altered

from the Lincoln who had been groping a year earlier after the right

way of treating McClellan: "I have placed you," wrote Lincoln, "at the

head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what

appear to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you

to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite

satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skilful soldier,

which of course I like. I also believe that you do not mix politics

with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in

yourself, which is a valuable, if not indispensable, quality. You are

ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm;

but I think that during General Burnside's command of the army you have

taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted him as much as you could,

in which you did a great wrong to the country, and to a most

meritorious and honourable brother officer. I have heard, in such a

way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and

the Government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but

in spite of it, that I gave you the command. Only those generals who

gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military

success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The Government will support

you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than

it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the

spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising

their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon

you. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any

good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it; and now beware

of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless

vigilance go forward and give us victories."

"He talks to me like a father," exclaimed Hooker, enchanted with a

rebuke such as this. He was a fine, frank, soldierly fellow, with a

noble figure, with "a grand fighting head," fresh complexion and bright

blue eyes. He was a good organiser; he put a stop to the constant

desertions; he felt the need of improving the Northern cavalry; and he

groaned at the spirit with which McClellan had infected his army, a

curious collective inertness among men who individually were daring.

He seems to have been highly strung; the very little wine that he drank

perceptibly affected him; he gave it up altogether in his campaigns.

And he cannot have been very clever, for the handsomest beating that

Lee could give him left him unaware that Lee was a general. In the end

of April he crossed the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, which still

divided the two armies, and in the first week of May, 1863, a brief

campaign, full of stirring incident, came to a close with the three

days' battle of Chancellorsville, in which Hooker, hurt and dazed with

pain, lost control and presence of mind, and, with heavy loss, drew

back across the Rappahannock. The South had won another amazing

victory; but "Stonewall" Jackson, at the age of thirty-nine, had fallen

in the battle.

Abroad, this crowning disaster to the North seemed to presage the full

triumph of the Confederacy; and it was a gloomy time enough for Lincoln

and his Ministers. A second and more serious invasion by Lee was

impending, and the lingering progress of events in the West, of which

the story must soon be resumed, caused protracted and deepening

anxiety. But the tide turned soon. Moreover, Lincoln's military

perplexities, which have demanded our detailed attention during these

particular campaigns, were very nearly at an end. We have here to turn

back to the political problem of his Presidency, for the bloody and

inconclusive battle upon the Antietam, more than seven months before,

had led strangely to political consequences which were great and

memorable.