_Camp near Warrenton--Stability of the Republic--Measures, not Men,
regarded by the Public--Removal of McClellan--Division Head-Quarters a
House of Mourning--A Pigeon-hole General and his West Point
Patent-Leather Cartridge-Box--Head-Quarter Murmurings and
Mutterings--Departure of Little Mac and the Prince--Cheering by Word of
Command--The Southern Saratoga--Rebel Regret at McClellan's Departure._
Writers prone to treat of the instability of Republics, will find
serious matter to combat in the array of events that culminated at
Warrenton. Without the blood that has usually characterized similar
events in the history of Monarchies, in fact with scarcely a ripple upon
the surface of our national affairs, a great military chieftain, or to
speak truly, a commander who had endeavored, and who had the grandest of
opportunities to become such, passed from his proud position as the
leader of the chief army of the Republic, to the obscurity of private
life. Proffered to a public, pliant, because anxious that its
representatives in the field should have a worthy Commander, by an
Administration eager to repair the disaster of Bull Run,--puffed into
favor by almost the entire press of the country, the day had been when
the loyalty of the citizen was measured by his admiration of General
McClellan.
Never did a military leader assume command so auspiciously. The
resources of a mighty nation were lavishly contributed to the materiel
of his army. Its best blood stood in his ranks. Indulged to an almost
criminal extent by an Administration that in accordance with the wishes
of the masses it represented, bowed at his beck and was overly
solicitous to do his bidding, no wonder that this ordinary mind became
unduly inflated. He could model his army upon the precedents set by the
great Napoleon; he could surround himself by an immense Staff--the
talent of which, however, but poorly represented the vigor of his
army,--for nepotism and favoritism interfered to prevent that, as they
will with common men; drill and discipline could make his army
efficient,--for his subordinates were thorough and competent, and his
men were apt pupils; but he himself could not add to all these the
crowning glories of the field. Every thing was there but genius, that
God-given gift; and that he did not prove to be a Napoleon resulted
alone from a lack of brains.
Now that the glare of the rocket has passed from our sky, and its stick
has fallen quietly enough among the pines of New Jersey, citizens have
opportunity for calm reflection. We are not justified, perhaps, in
attributing to McClellan all the evils and errors that disfigure his
tenure of office. Intellect equal to the position he could not create
for himself, and ninety-nine out of one hundred men of average ability
would not have descended from his balloon-like elevation with any better
grace. It is in the last degree unjust to brand with disloyalty, conduct
that seems to be a result natural enough to incompetency. That upon
certain occasions he may have been used for disloyal purposes by
designing men, may be the consequence of lack of discrimination rather
than of patriotism.
Whatever might have induced his conduct of the war, the nation has
learned a lesson for all time. Generals who had grown grey in honorable
service were rudely set aside for a Commander whose principal merit
consisted in his having published moderately well compiled military
books. Their acquiescence redounds to their credit; but their continued
and comparatively calm submission in after times, when that General,
regardless of soldierly merit, placed in high and honorable positions
relatives and intimate friends, who could be but mere place-men,
dependent entirely upon him for their honors, and committed to his
interests, is strong proof of devoted patriotism. Slight hold had these
neophytes upon the stern matter-of-fact fighting Generals, or the
equally devoted and patriotic masses in ranks. In their vain glory they
murmured and muttered during and subsequent to this week at Warrenton,
as they had threatened previously, in regard to the removal of
McClellan. They knew not the Power that backed the Bayonet. In the eye
of the unreserved and determined loyalty of the masses, success was the
test of popularity with any Commander. Not the shadow of an excuse
existed for any other issue. Our resources of the materiel of war were
well nigh infinite. Men could be had almost without number, at least
equal to the Rebels in courage. There was, then, no excuse for inaction,
and none knew it better than our reflecting rank and file.
The effort to inspire popularity for McClellan had been untiring by his
devotees in position in the army. In the outset it was successful. Like
their friends at home, the men in ranks, during the dark days that
succeeded Bull Run, eagerly caught at a name that received such
honorable mention. That this flush of popularity did not increase until
it became a steady flame like that which burned within the breasts of
the veterans of the old French Empire, is because its subject lacked the
commanding ability, decision of character, and fiery energy, that made
statesmen do reverence, turned the tide of battle to advantage, and
swept with resistless force over the plains of Italy and the mountains
of Tyrol.
It was with mingled feelings of pleasure and uncertainty, caused by the
change, that the Regiment broke to the front in column of company, and
encamped on a beautifully wooded ridge about two miles north of
Warrenton. Pleasure upon account of the change--as any change must be
for the better,--uncertainty, as to its character and extent. In their
doubtful future, Generals shifted position, and succeeded each other,
very much as dark specks appear and pass before unsteady vision. Who
would be the successor? Would the change be radical? were questions that
were discussed in all possible bearings around cheerful camp-fires.
Whatever the satisfaction among subordinate officers and the ranks,
Division Head-quarters was a house of mourning. To the General removed
solely it owed its existence. Connected with his choice Corps, it had
basked in the sunshine of his favor. With the removal already ordered,
"the dread of something worse"--a removal nearer home was apprehended.
As a Field Commander, the officer upon whose shoulders rested the
responsibilities of the Division, was entirely unknown previously to his
assuming command. His life hitherto had been of such a nature as not to
add to his capacity as a Commander. Years of quiet clerkly duty in the
Topographical Department may, and doubtless did in his case, make an
excellent engineer or draughtsman, but they afford few men opportunities
for improvement in generalship. During the McClellan regime this source
furnished a heavy proportion of our superior officers. Why, would be
difficult to say on any other hypothesis than that of favoritism. Their
educational influences tend to a defensive policy, which history proves
Generals of ability to have indulged in only upon the severest
necessity. To inability to rise above these strictures of the school,
may be traced the policy which has portrayed upon the historic page, to
our lasting disgrace as a nation, the humiliating spectacle of a mighty
and brave people, with resources almost unlimited, compelled for nearly
two years to defend their Capital against armies greatly inferior to
their own in men and means.
Independently of these educational defects, as they must be called,
there was nothing in either the character or person of the Division
Commander to command respect or inspire fear. Eccentric to a most
whimsical degree, his oddities were the jest of the Division, while they
were not in the least relieved by his extreme nervousness and fidgety
habits of body. That there was nothing to inspire fear is, however,
subject to exception, as his whims kept subordinates in a continual
fever. The art of being practical--adapting himself to circumstances--he
had never learned. It belongs to the department of Common Sense, in
which, unfortunately, there has never been a professor at West Point.
His after life does not seem to have been favorable to its acquirement.
Withal, the hauteur characteristic to Cadets clung to him, and on many
occasions rendered him unfortunate in his intercourse with volunteer
officers. Politeness with him, assumed the airs and grimaces of a French
dancing-master, which personage he was not unfrequently and not inaptly
said to resemble. Displeasure he would manifest by the oddest of
gestures and volleys of the latest oaths, uttered in a nervous, half
stuttering manner. Socially, his extensive educational acquirements made
him a pleasant companion, and with a friend it was said he would drink
as deep and long as any man in the Army of the Potomac. Once crossed,
however, his malignity would be manifested by the most intolerable and
petty persecution.
"He has no judgment," said a Field-Officer of a Regiment of his command;
a remark which, by the way, was a good summary of his character.
"Why?" replied the officer to whom he was speaking.
"I was out on picket duty," rejoined the other, "yesterday. We had an
unnecessarily heavy Reserve, and one half of the men in it were allowed
to rest without their belts and boxes. The General in the afternoon paid
us a visit, and seeing this found fault, that the men were not kept
equipped; observing at the same time that they could rest equally well
with their cartridge boxes on; that when he was a Cadet at West Point he
had ascertained by actual practice that it could be done."
"Do you recollect, General," I remarked, "whether you had forty rounds
of ball cartridge in your box then?"
"He said he did not know that that made any difference."
"Now considering that the fact of the boxes being filled makes all the
difference, I say," continued the officer, "that the man who makes a
remark such a the General made, is devoid of judgment."
But he was connected both by ties of friendship and consanguinity with
the hitherto Commander of the Army of the Potomac. His Adjutant-General
was related to the same personage. The position of the latter, for which
he was totally unfitted by his habits, was perhaps a condition precedent
to the appointment of the General of Division.
The fifth of November, a day destined to become celebrated hereafter in
American as in English history, dawned not less inauspiciously upon the
Head-quarters of the Corps. They too could not appreciate the dry humor
of the order that commanded Little Mac to report at Trenton. They
thought alone of the unwelcome reality--that it was but an American way
of sending him to Coventry. The Commander of the Corps had been a great
favorite at the Head-quarters of the army--perhaps because in this old
West Point instructor the haughty dignity and prejudice against
volunteers which characterized too many Regular officers, had its
fullest personification. His Corps embraced the largest number of
Regular officers. In some Regiments they were ridiculously, and for
Uncle Sam expensively, plentiful,--some Companies having two or three
Captains, two or three First or Second Lieutenants,--while perhaps the
enlisted men in the Regiment did not number two hundred. But these
supernumeraries were Fitz John's favorites, and whether they performed
any other labor than sporting shoulder straps, regularly visiting the
Paymasters, adjusting paper collars and cultivating moustaches, was a
matter of seemingly small consequence, though during depressed national
finances.
The little patriotism that animated many of the officers attached to
both of these Head-quarters, did not restrain curses deep if not loud.
Pay and position kept them in the army at the outbreak of the
Rebellion; and pay and position alone prevented their taking the same
train from Warrenton that carried away their favorite Commander. A
telegram of the Associated Press stated a few days later that a list of
eighty had been prepared for dismissal. What evil genius averted this
benefit to the country, the War Department best knows. It required no
vision of the night, nor gift of soothsaying, to foretell the trouble
that would result from allowing officers in important positions to
remain in the army, who were under the strongest obligations to the
General removed, devotedly attached to him, and completely identified
with, and subservient to, his interests. It might at least be supposed
that his policy would be persevered in, and that his interests would not
suffer. So far the reform was not radical.
"Colonel," said one of these martinets who occupied a prominent position
upon the Staff of Prince Fitz John, as with a look of mingled contempt
and astonishment he pointed to a Lieutenant who stood a few rods distant
engaged in conversation with two privates of his command, "do you allow
commissioned officers to converse with privates?"
"Why not, sir? Those three men were intimate acquaintances at home. In
fact, the Lieutenant was a clerk in a dry-goods establishment in which
one of the privates was a junior partner."
"All wrong, sir," replied the martinet. "They should approach a
commissioned officer through a Sergeant. The Inspecting Officer will
report you for laxity of discipline in case it continues, and place you
under arrest."
The Brigadier, when he heard of this conversation, intimated that should
the Inspecting Officer attempt it, he would leave the Brigade limits
under guard; and it was not attempted.
Nonsense such as this is not only contemptible but criminal, when
contrasted with the kind fellowship of Washington for his men,--his
solicitude for their sufferings at Valley Forge,--Putnam sharing his
scanty meals with privates of his command,--Napoleon learning the wants
of his veterans from their own lips, and tapping a Grenadier familiarly
upon the shoulder to ask the favor of a pinch from his snuff-box. Those
worthies may rest assured that marquees pitched at Regulation distance,
and access through non-commissioned officers, will not, if natural
dignity be wanting, create respect. How greatly would the efficiency of
the army have been increased, had the true gentility that characterized
the noble soul of Colonel Simmons, who fell at Gaines' Mills, and that
will always command reverence, been more general among his brother
officers of the Regular Army.
These evil results should not, however, lead to a wholesome condemnation
of West Point. The advantages of the Institution have been abused, or
rather neglected, by the great masses of the Loyal States. In our moral
matter-of-fact business communities it has been too generally the case,
that cadets have been the appointees of political favoritism, regardless
of merit; and that the wild and often worthless son of influential and
wealthy parents, who had grown beyond home restraint, and who gave
little indication of a life of honor or usefulness, would be turned into
the public inclosure at West Point to square his morals and his toes at
the same time at public expense, and the act rejoiced at as a good
family riddance. Thus in the Loyal States, the profession of arms had
fallen greatly into disrepute previously to the outbreak of the
Rebellion, and instead of being known as a respectable vocation, was
considered as none at all. Had military training to some extent been
connected with the common school education of the land, we would have
gained in health, and would have been provided with an able array of
officers for our noble army of Volunteers. Among other preparations for
their infamous revolt, the Rebels did not fail to give this especial
prominence. The Northern States have been great in peace; the material
is being rapidly educated that will make them correspondingly great in
war.
"November's surly blasts" were baring the forests of foliage, when the
order for the last Review by McClellan was read to the Troops. Mutinies
and rumors of mutinies "from the most reliable sources" had been
suspended above the Administration, like the threatening sword of
Damocles; but Abraham's foot was down at last, and beyond murmurings and
mutterings at disaffected Head-Quarters no unsoldierly conduct marked
the reception of the order. So far from the "heavens being hung with
black," as a few man-worshippers in their mad devotion would have
wished, nature smiled beautifully fair. Such a sight could only be
realized in Republican America. A military Commander of the greatest
army upon the Continent, elevated in the vain-glory of dependent
subordinates into a quasi-Dictatorship, was suddenly lowered from his
high position, and his late Troops march to this last Review with the
quiet formality of a dress parade. What cared those stern,
self-sacrificing men in ranks, from whose bayonets that brilliant sun
glistened in diamond splendor, for the magic of a name--the majesty of a
Staff, gorgeous, although not clothed in the uniform desired by its late
Chief. The measure of payment for toil and sacrifice with them, was
progress in the prosecution of their holy cause. The thunders of the
artillery that welcomed _him_ with the honor due to his rank, reminded
_them_ to how little purpose, through shortcomings upon his part, those
same pieces had thundered upon the Peninsula and at Antietam.
Massed in close columns by division along the main road leading to
Warrenton, the troops awaited the last of the grand pageants that had
made the Army of the Potomac famous for reviews. Its late Commander, as
he gracefully sat his bay, had not the nonchalance of manner that he
manifested while reading a note and accompanying our earnest President
in a former review at Sharpsburg; nor was the quiet dignity that he
usually exhibited when at the head of his Staff, apparent. His manner
seemed nervous, his look doubly anxious; troubled in the present, and
solicitous as to the future. Conscious, too, doubtless, as he faced a
nation's Representatives in arms, how he had "kept the word of promise
to the ear," and how "he had broken it to the hope;" how while his
reviews had revealed a mighty army of undoubted ability and eagerness
for the fight, his indecision or proneness to delay had made its
campaigns the laughing-stock of the world. His brilliant Staff clattered
at his heels; but glittering surroundings were powerless to avert the
memories of a winter's inactivity at Manassas, the delay at Yorktown,
the blunders on the Chickahominy, or the disgrace of the day after
Antietam. How closely such memories thronged upon this thinking
soldiery, and how little men who leave families and business for the
field, from the necessity of the case, care for men if their measures
are unsuccessful, may be imagined, when the fact is known that this
same Little Mac, once so great a favorite through efforts of the Press
and officers with whom he had peopled the places in his gift, received
his last cheers from some Divisions of that same Army by word of
command.
"A long farewell to all his greatness."
Imbecile in politics as in war, he cannot retrieve it by cringing to
party purposes. The desire that actuates our masses and demands able and
earnest leaders has long since dissolved party lines.
This leave-taking was followed a few days later by that of the Corps
Commander. Troubled looks, shadows that preceded his dark future, were
plainly visible as the Prince passed up and down the lines of his late
command.
Another day passed, and with light hearts the men brightened their
muskets for a Review by their new Commander, Major-General Burnside, or
"Burney," as they popularly called the Hero of Carolina celebrity.
But the day did not seem to be at hand that should have completed the
reform by sweeping and garnishing disaffected, not to say disloyal
Head-Quarters--removing from command men who were merely martinets, and
who were in addition committed body and soul to the interests of their
late Commander, and who, had they been in receipt of compensation from
Richmond, could not have more completely labored by their half-hearted,
inefficient, and tyrannizing course, to crush the spirit of our
soldiery.
"What's the matter with Old Pigey?" inquired a Sergeant, detailed on
guard duty at Division Head-Quarters, as he saluted his Captain, on one
of these evenings at Warrenton.
"Why?" rejoined the Captain.
"The General," continued the Sergeant, "was walking up and down in front
of his marquee almost all of last night, talking to himself, muttering,
and at almost every other step stamping and swearing. He had a bully old
mad on, I tell you, Captain. He went it in something of this style."
And the sergeant himself strode up and down, muttering and stamping and
swearing, to the great amusement of the Captain and some bystanders.
The unwillingness to bow to the dictation of the President as
Commander-in-Chief in his most righteous removal of their favorite,
caused much heart-burning, and gave rise to much disloyal conduct. That
it was tolerated at all was owing to the unappreciated indulgence or
hesitation of the Administration, lest it should undertake too much. The
operation, to have been skilful and complete, required nerve. That
article so necessary for this crisis is in the ranks, and let us trust
that for the future it will be found in greater abundance at Washington.
The Southern Saratoga, as Warrenton has been styled among the
fashionables of the South, has much to commend it in situation and
scenery, as a place of residence. The town itself is an odd jumble of
old and new buildings, and is badly laid out, or rather not laid out at
all, as the streets make all possible angles with each other. Yankee
enterprise appears to have had something to do with the erection of the
later buildings. Like other towns of that neighborhood its cemetery is
heavily peopled with Rebel dead. At the time of our occupancy many of
its larger buildings were still occupied as hospitals.
On the day of McClellan's departure the streets were crowded with
officers and men, and the sympathies of the Rebel residents seemed
strangely in unison with those of the chieftain's favorites. The
representatives of the clannish attachments which made McClellanism a
species of Masonry in the army, were there in force. In these banded
interests brotherly love took the place of patriotism. Little wonder!
looking at the record of the McClellan campaigns, that the Rebels
present fraternized with these devotees in their grief.
"You have thrown away your ablest commander," said an elderly man, of
intelligent and gentlemanly appearance, clad in the uniform of a surgeon
of the Rebel army, who stood conversing with one of our own surgeons, on
the sidewalk of the main street of the place, while the crowd gathered
to witness the departure of the General.
"Do you really think so?" rejoined the Union Surgeon, as he earnestly
eyed the speaker.
"Yes, sir," said the Rebel, emphatically. "It is not only my opinion but
the opinion of our Generals of ability, that in parting with McClellan
you lose the only General you have who has shown any strategic ability."
"If that be your opinion, sir," was the decided reply, "the sooner we
are rid of him the better."
And to this reply the country says, Amen!
"But what a shame it is that military genius is so little appreciated by
the Administration, and that he is removed just at this time! Why, I
heard our Colonel say that he had heard the General say, that in a few
days more, he would have won a decisive victory," remarked a young
officer, in a jaunty blue jacket, to a companion, gesticulating as he
spoke, with a cigar between the first and second fingers of his right
hand.
An older officer, who overheard the remark, observed, drily:--"He was
not removed for what he would do, but for what he had done."
"And for what he had not done," truthfully added another.
Never had General, burdened with so many sins of omission and
commission, as the conversation indicated, been so leniently dealt with,
now that the Rebels in their favorite, and with him successful game of
hide and seek, had again given him the slip, and were only in his front
to annoy. As they had it completely in their power to prevent a general
engagement at that point, his remark as to what would have been done was
a very rotten twig, caught at in the vain hope of breaking his fall.