detail by George B. McClellan, a brilliant young officer, who had been
called to Washington and appointed a major-general.
McClellan was a graduate of West Point, had served with distinction in
the Mexican War, had been a member of a military commission to inspect
the armies of Europe, had observed the conduct of the Crimean War, had
been engaged in various scientific and diplomatic duties, had resigned
from the army to become Chief Engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad
when only thirty-one years old, was elected its Vice-President at
thirty-two, and made President of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad
when he was thirty-four. He had made a brief but dashing campaign
in West Virginia, and was credited with saving that State to the
Union. His brilliant professional attainments, the executive ability
he had displayed in railway management, combined with attractive
personal qualities and influential social connections, made him the
most conspicuous officer in the Union army and naturally excited
the confidence of the President, who gave him a cordial welcome and
intrusted him with the most responsible duties, making him second only
to General Scott in command.
Unfortunately, however, the honors which were showered upon McClellan
turned his head, and the young commander not only failed to comprehend
the situation and his relations to the President and General Scott, but
very soon developed signs of vanity and insubordination which caused
the President great concern. He saw himself followed and flattered by
statesmen, politicians, and soldiers of twice his age and experience.
The members of the Cabinet and even the President himself came to his
residence to ask his advice, and the venerable hero of the Mexican
War deferred to his judgment and accepted his suggestions without
hesitation. McClellan was the idol of the army and a magnet that
attracted all the interest, influence, and ambition that were centred at
Washington at that period of the war. His state of mind and weakness of
character were exhibited in letters he wrote to his family at this time,
which, by a lamentable error of judgment, were afterwards printed in his
biography.
On July 27 he wrote his wife, "I find myself in a new and strange
position here, President, Cabinet, General Scott and all deferring to
me. By some strange operation of magic I seem to have become the power
of the land."
A little later he wrote, "They give me my way in everything, full swing
and unbounded confidence. Who would have thought when we were married
that I should so soon be called upon to save my country?" Ten days after
his appointment he declared, "I would cheerfully take the dictatorship
and agree to lay down my life when the country is saved."
Very soon, however, the tone of his letters began to change. The
President, General Scott, and the Cabinet had evidently begun to detect
his weakness and egotism and no longer accepted his own estimate of his
ability and importance. To the President's profound disappointment, he
realized within a few days that McClellan was not a staff that could
be leaned upon, while General Scott's admiration and confidence in his
young lieutenant were shaken at their first interview.
With the air of an emperor McClellan began to issue extraordinary
demands upon the President, the War Department, and the Treasury. It
soon became apparent that he desired and expected to be placed in
command of the greatest army of history; that he intended to organize
and equip it according to the most advanced scientific theories; and
when the President, the Secretary of War, and General Scott objected
to the magnitude of his plans, pointed out their impracticability,
and urged him to do something to check the alarming movements of the
Confederates, he was seized with a delusion which remained with him to
the end, that they were endeavoring to thwart and embarrass him. The
tone of his letters to his wife was radically changed.
"I am here in a terrible place," he said; "the enemy have from three to
four times my force; the President and the old General will not see the
true state of affairs."
"I am weary of all this," he said a week later, "and disgusted with this
administration,--perfectly sick of it;" and he declared that he remained
at the head of affairs only because he had become convinced that he
was alone the salvation of the country. He expressed especial contempt
for the President, and said, "There are some of the greatest geese in
the Cabinet I have ever seen,--enough to tax the patience of Job." The
incompetence and stupidity of the President, he wrote, was "sickening in
the extreme, and makes me feel heavy at heart when I see the weakness
and unfitness of the poor beings who control the destinies of this
country."
He wrote other friends that his wisdom alone must save the country, that
he spent his time "trying to get the government to do its duty, and was
thwarted and deceived by these incapables at every turn." He demanded
that all recruits be sent to his army and that all supplies be issued
to him, as if the armies in the Mississippi Valley could take care of
themselves. He demanded that "the whole of the regular army, old and
new, be at once ordered to report here," and that the trained officers
be assigned to him. "It is the task of the Army of the Potomac to decide
the question at issue," he declared. When advice and suggestions were
offered him he rejected them contemptuously, and announced that whenever
orders were issued to him he exercised his own judgment as to obedience.
General McClellan's vanity and presumption might have been overlooked
by General Scott, but his insulting remarks could not be excused. Their
relations reached an acute stage in August, 1861, notwithstanding the
President's efforts at reconciliation. Again and again he apologized
for and explained away the rudeness of the younger officer towards his
superior; and General Scott, realizing the President's embarrassment,
begged to be relieved from active command because of his age and
infirmities. Perhaps it would have been wiser if the wishes of the aged
general had been complied with, for he was now practically helpless,
fretful, and forgetful, and his sensitiveness made it necessary to
consult him upon every proposition and admit him to every conference.
Finally, McClellan's contemptuous indifference, persistent disrespect,
and continual disobedience provoked General Scott beyond endurance, and
on the last day of October he asked that his name be placed on the list
of army officers retired from active service.
"For more than three years," he wrote, "I have been unable from a
hurt to mount a horse or to walk more than a few paces at a time and
that with much pain. Other and new infirmities, dropsy, and vertigo,
admonish me that repose of mind and body are necessary to add a little
more to a life already protracted much beyond the usual span of man."
Lincoln, however, continued to consult him, and in June, 1862, made a
visit to West Point for the purpose of asking his advice upon certain
military movements then in contemplation. General Scott outlived him,
and was the most distinguished figure at the obsequies of the martyred
President at New York City in April, 1865.
After General Scott's retirement McClellan assumed even greater
importance in his own eyes, and treated the President in the same
contemptuous manner; yet the latter's indulgence was inexhaustible,
and he would not even allow personal indignity to himself to interfere
with his relations with the commander of his army. He was accustomed
to visit army head-quarters and General McClellan's residence in the
most informal manner, entering both without notification of his coming,
and, if the general was not in, returning to the White House; but one
night in November, 1861, he called at General McClellan's residence on a
matter so important that he decided to await the latter's return from a
wedding. Although informed that the President had been waiting an hour,
McClellan went directly by the drawing-room upstairs, and when a servant
went to remind him that the President wished to see him, the general
sent down word that he was retiring and would like to be excused.
Lincoln did not mention the insult. No one could have detected any
difference in his treatment of General McClellan thereafter, except that
he never entered his house again, and after that date when he wanted
to see him sent for him to come to the Executive Mansion. On another
occasion when the young general treated him with similar arrogance,
Governor Dennison, of Ohio, and General Mitchell remonstrated, but the
President replied cheerfully,--
"Never mind; I will hold McClellan's horse if he will only bring us
success."
But he did not bring success, and the public as well as both Houses
of Congress became very impatient about the idleness and delay of the
Army of the Potomac. McClellan's "All quiet on the Potomac" became a
slang phrase as notorious as General Butler's "contraband." Newspaper
artists and cartoonists made him the subject of ridicule, committees
of Senators and Representatives waited upon him, Legislatures passed
resolutions, but he was no more affected by those promptings than he had
been by the entreaties and admonitions of the President. When positive
orders were issued, McClellan refused to obey them, or obeyed them in
such a manner as to defeat their purpose. A committee of Congress was
appointed to make an investigation. The President began to lose his
patience, and declared that "if something were not done the bottom would
drop out of the whole affair. If McClellan did not want to use the army
he would like to borrow it, provided he could see how it could be made
to do something." McClellan replied that his forces were insufficient;
that he was outnumbered by the enemy. Finally, at a conference with the
Cabinet, Secretary Chase, who had been his most enthusiastic admirer,
but had lost all confidence in McClellan, asked the general point-blank
what he intended to do and when he intended to do it. McClellan refused
to answer the question unless the President ordered him to do so. The
latter, with his usual consideration, attempted to protect the general,
and in a conciliatory way asked whether he had resolved in his own mind
when he would be able to make a forward movement. McClellan replied in
the affirmative, but would give no further information. The President
urged him to do so, but he continued to refuse, whereupon the former
remarked,--
"Then I will adjourn the meeting."
The President waited a few weeks longer, and, as nothing was done,
issued his famous Special War Order No. 1, in which he ordered the
celebration of Washington's birthday, 1862, by a general movement of all
the land and naval forces of the United States; but even then McClellan
reported that he would be obliged to fall back until he could construct
a railway.
"What does this mean?" asked the President, when Secretary Stanton read
him the despatch.
"It means that it is a damn fizzle!" exclaimed the Secretary of War. "It
means that he does not intend to do anything."
The President then issued General War Order No. 2, reorganizing the Army
of the Potomac, and followed it with General War Order No. 3, which
directed a movement in ten days; but still McClellan blocked the way,
and continued to drill his troops, dig entrenchments, and write insolent
letters to the President and Secretary of War.
"Had I twenty thousand or even ten thousand fresh troops to use
to-morrow I could take Richmond," he telegraphed Secretary Stanton. "If
I save this country now I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you
or any other person in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice
this army."
The Secretary's rage may be imagined, and he would have had McClellan
arrested and sent before a court-martial; but Lincoln's patience yet
prevailed, and he crossed the Potomac for a personal conference with
his insubordinate commander, urging him to make a forward movement.
The members of the Cabinet drew up an indignant protest demanding the
immediate removal of McClellan from command, but decided not to hand it
to the President.
Finally, the Army of the Potomac was compelled to follow Lee northward,
and after the battle of Antietam the President telegraphed McClellan:
"Please do not let him [the enemy] get off without being hurt."
Two weeks later he again visited the camp, and, after reviewing and
inspecting the troops, remarked,--
"It is called the Army of the Potomac, but is only McClellan's
body-guard."
President Lincoln's warmest defenders cannot excuse his procrastination
with McClellan upon any other ground than excessive caution. They
know that he acted against his own judgment; that he was convinced of
McClellan's unfitness within three months after he had placed him in
command, and that the conviction grew upon him daily, but his fear of
offending public opinion and wounding McClellan's vanity led him to
sacrifice the interests of the government and unnecessarily prolong the
war. The same criticism can be made of his treatment of other generals
intrusted with the command of the army. Of all his officers, no one ever
possessed the full confidence of the President except General Grant.
While McClellan was in command Lincoln studied the military situation
with characteristic thoroughness and penetration, and drew up memoranda
in detail as to the movements of the army. He also gave his opinion as
to what the enemy would do under the circumstances. These memoranda were
rejected by McClellan in a contemptuous manner, but since they have
become public they have commanded the respect and admiration of the
ablest military critics.
The President's troubles were not confined to the Army of the Potomac,
nor were they bounded by the Alleghany Mountains, but extended wherever
there were military movements; wherever there were offices to be
filled the same conditions existed; the same jealousies, rivalries,
and incompetence interfered with the proper administration of the
government. And the most popular heroes, the idols of the public,
invariably caused the most confusion and showed the most flagrant
indiscretion and incompetence. Second only in popularity to McClellan,
perhaps even higher in the esteem of the Republican party, was John C.
Frémont, the first candidate of that party for the Presidency, a man
whose adventures as an explorer had excited the admiring interest of
every school-boy, and whose activity in making California a state had
given him a reputation for romance, gallantry, and patriotism. He was
"the Pathfinder," and second only to Daniel Boone as a frontier hero.
Seward had pressed him for appointment as Secretary of War; at one time
Lincoln put him down on the slate as minister to France, and when the
war broke out his name was among the first to suggest itself to the
people as that of a savior of the country. He had been in France during
the winter, and had sailed for home when Sumter was fired upon.
Upon his arrival in New York he was handed a commission as major-general
in the regular army and orders to take command in the Mississippi
Valley. It was an opportunity that any soldier might have envied, and
the President expected him to proceed at once to his head-quarters at
St. Louis, where his presence was imperatively needed; but the ovations
he received in the East and the adulation that was paid him everywhere
were too gratifying for his self-denial, and it was not until he
received peremptory orders, twenty-five days after his appointment, that
he proceeded leisurely westward to find his department in a state of
the greatest confusion and apprehension. Instead, however, of devoting
himself to the task of organization and getting an army into the field
to quell disloyal uprisings and exterminate the bushwhackers who were
burning towns, plundering farm-houses, tearing up railroads, murdering
loyal citizens, and committing other crimes, he remained in St. Louis,
taking more interest in political than in military questions, issuing
commissions to his friends, and giving contracts with such a lavish
hand and in such an irregular way as to provoke protest from the
accounting officers of the government. Political intrigue and distrust
were so prevalent that Frémont was accused of an ambition to lead a new
secession movement, separate the Western States from the Union, and
establish an empire under his own sovereignty similar to that of which
Aaron Burr is supposed to have dreamed.
President Lincoln watched with anxiety and sorrow the dethronement of
another popular idol, and defended and protected Frémont with the same
charity and patience he had shown to McClellan. Instead of removing him
from command, as he should have done, he endeavored to shield him from
the consequences of his mismanagement, and sent General David Hunter,
an old friend and veteran officer in whom he had great confidence, this
request:
"General Frémont needs assistance which is difficult to give him. He
is losing the confidence of men near him, whose support any man in his
position must have to be successful.... He needs to have by his side a
man of large experience. Will you not for me take that place? Your rank
is one grade too high to be ordered to it; but will you not serve your
country and oblige me by taking it voluntarily."
With this letter General Hunter went to St. Louis to try and save
Frémont, but it was too late. Frémont's principal political backing came
from the Blair family, who were also his warmest personal friends; but,
when they endeavored to advise and restrain him, a quarrel broke out
and Frémont placed General Frank P. Blair under arrest. Blair preferred
formal charges against his commander; and his father and brother, the
latter being Postmaster-General, demanded Frémont's removal on account
of incapacity. Then, to increase Lincoln's anxieties and perplexities,
Mrs. Jessie Benton Frémont, the daughter of Senator Benton and a
romantic figure in American history, appeared in Washington to conduct
her husband's side of the quarrel, denouncing the Blairs and all other
critics with unmeasured contempt and earnestness.
The President confesses that he was exasperated almost beyond endurance.
Mrs. Frémont, he says, "sought an audience with me at midnight, and
attacked me so violently with many things that I had to exercise all the
awkward tact I had to avoid quarrelling with her. She more than once
intimated that if General Frémont should decide to try conclusions with
me, he could set up for himself."
While the weary President was spending sleepless nights planning the
reorganization of the Army of the Potomac and an offensive campaign to
satisfy public clamor, he endeavored to arbitrate the quarrel between
Frémont and the Blairs. In the midst of his efforts at conciliation,
General Frémont startled the country and almost paralyzed the President
by issuing an emancipation proclamation and an order that all persons
found with arms in their hands should be shot. The President wrote
him a gentle but firm remonstrance, "in a spirit of caution and not
of censure," he said, and sent it by special messenger to St. Louis,
"in order that it may certainly and speedily reach you." Mrs. Frémont
brought the reply to Washington. It was an apology mixed with defiance.
Frémont asserted that he had acted from convictions of duty with
full deliberation, and proceeded at length to argue the justice and
expediency of the step; and he was as much encouraged in his defiance as
Lincoln was embarrassed by the radical Republican leaders and newspapers
of the North. Frémont's proclamation was revoked by order of the
President, but it was not so easy to correct the mistakes he had made in
administration. Finally, after long deliberation and upon the advice of
three experienced officers in whom he had great confidence and who had
been with Frémont and were familiar with his conduct and the political
and military situation, the President relieved him from command.
Frémont accepted the inevitable with dignity. He issued a farewell
address to his army, was given ovations by radical Republicans in
different parts of the country, but was not again intrusted with an
independent command.
After he arose from his sleepless bed the morning following the battle
of Bull Run, Lincoln devoted every spare moment to the study of the
map of the seat of war and to reading military history. A shelf in his
private library was filled with books on tactics, the histories of great
campaigns, and such military authorities upon the science of warfare
as might afford him ideas, valuable information, and suggestions. He
undertook the preparation of a plan of campaign precisely as he had been
accustomed to prepare for a trial in court, and before many days his
quick perceptions, his retentive memory, and his reasoning powers had
given him wider knowledge than was possessed by any of his generals.
He did not fail to consult every person in whom he had confidence
both upon abstract military questions and geographical and political
conditions, and before long he developed a plan which he submitted
to the military committees of Congress a few days after Congress
assembled in December, 1861. Several of the most influential Senators
and Representatives who did not belong to the committees were invited
to be present. He proposed, first to maintain the military force along
the Potomac to menace Richmond; second, to move an army from Cairo
southward within easy communication of a flotilla upon the Mississippi;
and, third, to send an army from Cincinnati eastward to Cumberland
Gap in East Tennessee. Preliminary to the latter movement he proposed
the construction of a railway from Cincinnati to Knoxville by way of
Lexington, Kentucky, in order to avoid the difficulties and delays of
transportation through the mountains, and military authorities now
agree that if his advice had been followed the war would have been
shortened at least two years. Mr. Nicolay, his private secretary,
reports the substance of the President's appeal to Congress, as he stood
before a map of Tennessee in the President's room at the Capitol:
"I am thoroughly convinced that the closing struggle of the war will
occur somewhere in this mountain country. By our superior numbers
and strength we will everywhere drive the rebel armies back from the
level districts lying along the coast, from those lying south of
the Ohio River, and from those lying east of the Mississippi River.
Yielding to our superior force, they will gradually retreat to the
more defensible mountain districts, and make their final stand in that
part of the South where the seven States of Virginia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia come
together. The population there is overwhelmingly and devotedly loyal to
the Union. The despatches from Brigadier-General Thomas of October 28
and November 5 show that, with four additional good regiments, he is
willing to undertake the campaign and is confident he can take immediate
possession. Once established, the people will rally to his support, and
by building a railroad, over which to forward him regular supplies and
needed reinforcements from time to time, we can hold it against all
attempts to dislodge us, and at the same time menace the enemy in any
one of the States I have named."