MCCLELLAN'S PENINSULAR ADVANCE
We have already seen from his own reports what McClellan thought of the
force he was called upon to command at and near Washington after the
disastrous defeat of McDowell at Manassas. There was, he said, "no army
to command--a mere collection of regiments, cowering on the banks of
the Potomac, some perfectly raw, others dispirited by recent defeat,
others going home.... Washington was crowded with straggling officers
and men absent from their stations without authority."
Slowly, patiently, painfully, McClellan brought order out of this chaos
of demoralization. Out of the broken and utterly dispirited fragments
of McDowell's army and out of the new, raw levies sent to him he
created that Army of the Potomac which fought the great campaigns of
the war.
In the meantime an ignorant and impatient popular clamor and an
unintelligent press "opinion"--for there is a certain type of newspaper
editor who is apt to regard his own hasty and ill-informed judgment of
things that he knows little or nothing about, as an "opinion"--hounded
and persecuted the man who was expected to retrieve the Manassas
defeat. Even Mr. Lincoln, with all his patience, became impatient of
McClellan's inaction--which was excessive perhaps--and almost angrily
urged him to action. He called the general's attention to the fact that
he had under his command a force greatly superior in numbers to any
that the Confederates could muster and that the country was impatient
for an advance.
McClellan seems to have had no thought of making his way to Richmond
by the route of Centreville and Manassas, where Johnston lay behind
impregnable fortifications. He knew the easier road of approach up
the James river from Fortress Monroe as a base of operations. But,
at all hazards, the Government, the press and the people insisted,
Washington city must be covered and protected, and so McClellan's
first care was to feel of the works at Centreville and Manassas
before transferring his army down the Potomac and the Chesapeake to
Fortress Monroe. Accordingly, on the tenth of March, 1862, he pushed
a column forward toward Centreville and Manassas only to find those
strongly fortified positions already abandoned. General Johnston had
interpreted McClellan's plans aright, and was transferring his army
to the Peninsula east of Richmond in order to meet his adversary's
confidently-expected advance in that quarter.
There was nothing now, neither defended works nor an opposing army, to
forbid McClellan's march upon Richmond by the Manassas route, while
it was certain that Johnston was fortifying Williamsburg and other
defensible points upon the other route and concentrating his forces
there to meet McClellan's advance when it should come.
But McClellan was above all things a man of orderly and methodic
mind, a man not to be turned from a pre-arranged plan of action by
the offering of any opportunity, however advantageous it might be. So
instead of pushing on towards Richmond by the route which his enemy
had thus left undefended, he turned about, sent his army by water to
Fortress Monroe, and confronted his adversary where that adversary was
best prepared at all points to meet him.
In the meanwhile General Burnside had completed the occupation of the
southern coast by the seizure of Beaufort, Roanoke, Newberne and Fort
Macon, and another Federal force a little later, on the eleventh of
April, captured Fort Pulaski, near the mouth of the Savannah river.
After great urgency on the part of Mr. Lincoln, who, in his homely
phrase, feared that McClellan's army might "take root" around
Washington, that officer at last transferred one hundred and twenty-one
thousand men to the neighborhood of Fortress Monroe, with every
adjunctive aid that an army could require or make useful. His force
outnumbered the Confederates nearly two to one, but it was McClellan's
habit of mind to exaggerate the strength of his enemy. It was also
his bad habit, as it was Halleck's, to proceed with an exaggerated
respect for military "regularity." So instead of pushing forward up the
peninsula that lay between the James and the York rivers, and simply
running over the vastly inferior forces of his enemy, as a general of
enterprising mind would have done, he advanced "scientifically" and
with scientific slowness.
The first point of contact was at Yorktown, where General Magruder
lay with 13,000 Confederates, McClellan's army of assault--i.e., his
advance force--numbered no less than 58,000 men and 100 guns. According
to his custom McClellan enormously overestimated the strength of
his adversary, and instead of hurling his superior force upon the
Confederate works, or using his fleet to pass them by, as General
Johnston expected him to do, he sat down before Yorktown and instituted
a regular siege approach by parallels.
Reinforcements came to him daily and even hourly, until he had
nearly 120,000 men and more than a hundred guns with which to assail
Magruder's scant 13,000 men and less than thirty guns.
But he did not make the assault. Instead he remained inactive for
nearly a month before Yorktown with about nine men under his command
to his adversary's one, doing nothing energetic or determined. When at
last he advanced upon the works which he might have run over on the day
of his arrival before them, he found no force defending them and only
"dummy" guns in the shape of painted logs occupying their embrasures.
Comic opera itself has few situations more ridiculous than was this
of McClellan at the end of his month's "siege" of Yorktown, defended
through a large part of the siege by less than one man to his nine, and
at the last defended only by "quaker" guns, with no men at all behind
them.
Finding that the position against which he had so elaborately provided
siege appliances was vacated by his enemy, McClellan advanced to
Williamsburg, where he encountered actual resistance on the fourth of
May and the days following.
Here was one of those situations, of which the war presented so many,
which it is difficult to reconcile with our accepted estimates of the
military capacity of the generals on either side.
McClellan was moving up the Peninsula, threatening Richmond with about
120,000 men--official reports say 119,965. He had left 70,000 men at
or near Washington to protect the capital, and the authorities there
had detained 10,000 or 15,000 more for safety. McDowell, with 40,000
men of this force had been pushed forward to Fredericksburg on the
Potomac, with the intent that he should make a junction with McClellan
before Richmond, swelling that general's force to about 160,000 men.
Jackson having been driven back in the valley of Virginia the danger to
Washington seemed for the moment past, and Franklin's division had been
sent to strengthen McClellan's main column.
In brief, McClellan had almost exactly 120,000 men immediately with
him, while 40,000 more under McDowell were moving unopposed from
Fredericksburg to join him and swell his army to about 160,000. As
McDowell was presently called back for the defense of Washington, in
view of the renewal of "Stonewall" Jackson's threatening operations
in the Shenandoah Valley, it is only fair to reckon McClellan's force
at the 120,000, which his morning reports showed that he had with him
below Richmond. Johnston in command at Richmond had rather less than
50,000 men with which to oppose this force.
Deeply feeling his responsibility and the enormous disadvantage at
which he was placed, the Confederate general asked for reinforcements.
He proposed that all the troops in the Carolinas, where they were in no
wise needed, and all in the valley of Virginia, and all at Norfolk and
other points from which they could be spared, should be concentrated
under his command in front of Richmond, in order that with an adequate
force he might assail McClellan, who was in a vulnerable position, and,
overcoming him, turn about and crush McDowell.
A council of war, of which General Robert E. Lee was the dominant
member, overruled this apparently wise proposal, for reasons that have
never been made clear. Thus Johnston, with 50,000 men, was left to
defend Richmond against the double advance of McClellan's 120,000 from
the east and McDowell's 40,000 from the north.
To do that successfully he must, of course, fall back to the
neighborhood of the city and concentrate his force behind the strongest
earthworks he could construct. The aggressive measures which he desired
to take were wholly out of the question for the time at least.
Nevertheless Magruder made a stubborn stand at Williamsburg, giving
Johnston time to fortify. It was only after two days of very severe
fighting, and with a loss of 2,200 men against a Confederate loss of
1,800 that McClellan at last forced the Confederate detachment--for
it was only a detachment and not a very strong one at that--to fall
back from Williamsburg to the main line of defense and join itself to
Johnston's army, of which it was a part.
The battle of Williamsburg was strategically of no consequence except
as a part of a campaign of delay. It would be an idle waste of space, a
needless taxing of the reader's attention, to recount its strategy in
detail. It is sufficient to say that after delaying McClellan's advance
for two days and inflicting a heavy loss upon him, the Confederates
withdrew in good order to the main defenses of Richmond.
McClellan now sent Franklin's division on transports to the White House
at the head of the York river, to establish there a secure base of
supplies. The whole army followed and by the sixteenth of May it was
concentrated there.
This was then the situation. McClellan lay at the White House within
twenty-four miles of Richmond. He had more nearly three than two men
to his adversary's one under his immediate command and he had an army
nearly equal to his enemy's, within two or three days' march ready to
reinforce him, or better still, to assail his adversary in flank.
A general of such enterprise as General Sheridan, or General Sherman,
or General Grant, or General Thomas, placed in such circumstances,
would unquestionably have pressed forward to the assault.
But McClellan's timid imagination swelled Johnston's force of 50,000 or
less to 120,000 or more and he hesitated. Instead of pushing forward
by the shortest roads to Richmond he scientifically "developed" his
force along the Chickahominy river to the north of Richmond, and, after
fortifying, made a requisition for reinforcements.
In the meanwhile "Stonewall" Jackson had achieved some brilliant
successes in the Shenandoah Valley which so far seemed to threaten
Washington with assault, that McDowell's force of 40,000 men was
recalled from its march to reinforce McClellan and sent to ward off
the danger of an advance upon the Federal capital by that peculiarly
energetic and enterprising commander.
But even without McDowell's expected reinforcement, McClellan had
greatly more than twice his adversary's force. It is impossible to
doubt that if he had been moved by anything like Grant's habitual and
determined impulse to "press things" he would promptly have hurled his
overwhelming force against his adversary's defensive lines.
McClellan, however, was not Grant nor such as he. He had a superior
skill in the theoretical science of war but an immeasurably inferior
capacity for war's practical work.
North of Richmond and from five to seven miles distant the Chickahominy
river runs in a course almost due east from its source. McClellan
placed his main force north of that erratic and uncertain stream and
there awaited the reinforcements for which he was clamorously calling.
But he threw his left wing across the river to the Richmond side of
it. Unless he were prepared to advance at once with all his force and
assail the Confederate works this was an exceedingly dangerous thing
to do, for the Chickahominy is a phenomenally uncertain and erratic
river. In dry weather it is scarcely more than a brook, but in periods
of rain--and spring in Virginia is a rainy season--it swells suddenly
and quickly to almost impassable proportions, while the swamps that
form its banks become morasses in which it is difficult to find even
a foothold, and impossible to discover a fit camping place for troops.
When McClellan established his left wing south of the river the stream
presented no obstacle to its prompt reinforcement from the other side
in case of need. But presently the windows of heaven were opened and
the fountains of the great deep were broken up. The floods came, and
this isolated left wing was cut off and left mainly to its own devices
for self-maintenance.
The Confederate General Johnston was quick to see and seize this
opportunity. On the morning of the thirty-first of May, he assailed the
detached left wing and there resulted the two-days' battle called Fair
Oaks at the North, and Seven Pines at the South.
Johnston's force scarcely, if at all, outnumbered the detached left
wing of McClellan's army, but his hope was, by determined fighting to
cut off that part of McClellan's army from the main body that lay north
of the river, and to crush and destroy it before it could be reinforced.
In his first assaults he was conspicuously successful, and had his
expectation been realized that McClellan would be unable to reinforce
his detached left wing from the other side of the river it is probable
that Johnston's operation would have made prisoners of that wing of
McClellan's army which lay south of the turbulent river. But two events
stood in the way. One of the many frail bridges across the Chickahominy
remained, in spite of the floods, as an available means of crossing.
Some of its supports had given way under pressure of the waters and it
was manifestly tottering to its fall. But General Sumner, ordered to
support the imperiled force south of the river, heroically disregarded
the danger and pushed his force across the frail and tottering
structure, ordering his men to "break step" in the passage in order
that the swing of the cadenced step might not cause the bridge to sway
and fall. Thus perilously, he crossed, just in time to meet and defeat
a Confederate effort to gain control of the bridge and destroy it, thus
completely cutting off communication between the two wings of the Union
Army.
The second event of importance in this battle was the very serious
wounding of General Johnston. He received in his body a bullet, which
incapacitated him for months to come for any active service. This was
only one of thirteen wounds that Johnston had received during his
military career. General Scott had described him as "a most capable
officer, who has the bad habit of getting himself wounded," and here
again he had indulged in that bad habit to the serious detriment of the
cause he served. For when he was wounded the command passed into the
hands of General Gustavus W. Smith, ex-Street Commissioner of New York
City, whose fitness for so high a command was, to say the very least,
problematical. Under his direction the movement by which Johnston had
hoped to achieve so much came to naught.
Two days later Robert E. Lee assumed direct command of the Confederate
Army at Richmond, and from that hour forth the war took on a new
character. One of the two great master minds--Lee and Grant--was at
last in control of the means with which the struggle was to be fought
out to a finish. The other of those two great master minds was still
under the control of distinctly inferior "superiors."
With the advent of Lee to direct command, the terms of the war problem
were set anew. He made of the Virginia army such a fighting machine
as has rarely been known in the history of the world. It was not
until nearly two years later that Grant was permitted to act upon his
conviction, repeatedly formulated, that the strength of the Confederacy
and the danger to the Union lay, not in the possession of strategic
positions, but in the fighting force of that Army of Northern Virginia
which responded to every demand of Lee for heroic self-sacrifice, as
the needle responds to the attraction of the pole. In the meanwhile Lee
and his army were a ceaseless menace to the Federal capital and the
Federal cause. From the moment of his accession to command until the
hour in which he met Grant at the Wilderness, Lee dictated the course
and conduct of the war, and in an extraordinary degree dominated its
events.