by Larry Tagg
In mid-May, as McClellan crept westward toward Richmond with the Army of the Potomac, Lincoln planned to march McDowell’s 1st Corps, now 41,000 strong, south from Fredericksburg on the Rappahannock River to link up with McClellan’s army on the outskirts of the rebel capital. There, combined, the two forces would launch a final assault. This was exactly what General Robert E. Lee and the military men in Richmond dreaded. They knew that if McDowell completed his march and accomplished his junction with McClellan’s army in front of Richmond, the defenders would be overwhelmed and it would simply a matter of time before the capital fell. Lee, however, spotted an opportunity in Lincoln’s fractured command. On April 21 he wrote to General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson that, “in the present divided condition of the enemy’s forces,” if he could strike hard in the Shenandoah Valley, “it will prove a great relief to the pressure [from McDowell].” Commander-in-Chief Lincoln unwittingly helped Jackson on May 1 by ordering General Shields and his 10,000-man division, now in the Shenandoah Valley with Banks, to return to Fredericksburg—about 50 miles to the southeast—to join McDowell for the 40-mile march south to Richmond.
Jackson, who had collected an army of some 17,000 men, timed his plunge down the Valley (that is, north, toward the Potomac) to take advantage of Shields’ departure, On May 21 he attacked Banks, who had divided his remaining 9,000 men into three isolated posts. Banks and his tiny army broke and ran down the Valley for safety, not stopping until they were on the north side of the Potomac.
Washington convulsed with terror over Jackson’s approach. Out of a desire to cut off the enemy general, trap him, and remove him from the map once and for all, Lincoln now contrived the most unfortunate stroke in his unfortunate season as acting General-in-Chief. On May 24 he sent an order to McDowell halting his march south to Richmond—the second time he had prevented him from joining McClellan—and ordered McDowell instead to send Shields’ division back to the Shenandoah Valley to form a pincers with Frémont, who would hurry over from the mountains in the west. Between them they would bag Jackson.
McDowell, who was just then contemplating winning the war with a triumphant promenade into Richmond, was heartsick at the sudden change in plans. He immediately telegraphed Lincoln, “This is a crushing blow to us,” and later that day wired a more complete protest to the President, pointing out that “I am entirely beyond helping distance of General Banks,” and that “by a glance at the map it will be seen that the line of retreat of the enemy’s force up the valley is shorter than mine to go against him.” It was his expert opinion that “I shall gain nothing for you there, and shall lose much for you here.” McDowell knew that it was folly to use the telegraph office to maneuver forces separated by hundreds of miles and expect them to cover long distances over rocky, muddy, rutted roads in wind and rain, and meet like ballet dancers at center stage. His protests, however, were in vain, and Shields’ footsore men were soon traversing again, in reverse, the same stony tracks they had just taken from the Valley.
The inevitable blunders and delays—“friction,” in military parlance— started immediately. To the west, Frémont misunderstood his orders and started the wrong way, and his tardy approach to the rendezvous with Shields was ruined in the end by a roaring thunderstorm, mud, and the exhaustion of his men and horses. Jackson and his army, now fairly flying south along the one paved highway on the Valley floor to escape the trap, passed through at the last hour, just before the jaws closed. Stonewall then turned about and bloodied both Union commands in twin battles—one against Frémont at Cross Keys on June 8 and the other against Shields at Port Republic on June 9—before disappearing into the countryside.
In the wake of this crushing disappointment, Lincoln again ordered McDowell to march south and link up with McClellan in front of the rebel capital. But McDowell’s third order to march on Richmond was doomed, just as the first two had been. Shields’ exhausted division was blown, unable to move any farther. And on June 20, with Jackson’s whereabouts unknown, Lincoln held back two more of McDowell’s divisions to guard the empty scenery.
Lee and Jackson had measured Lincoln exactly. Jackson and his tiny Valley army had tied up four times their number, in three military departments, as Lincoln chased him across the landscape. As a result of Lincoln’s weeks in command, tens of thousands of Union troops would never arrive in front of Richmond where they were needed and could have been used. When Lee and Davis had dreaded a march toward Richmond, Lincoln had marched McDowell away from it. He had shifted McDowell’s men to strike first one way and then the other, with the result that, in the end, they struck nowhere.
McClellan had clearly seen Lee and Jackson’s design. When he got Lincoln’s message halting McDowell’s move toward Richmond in the attempt to trap Jackson, he had exploded, incredulous. “Heaven save a country governed by such counsels!” he wrote to his wife. “It is perfectly sickening to deal with such people … . I get more sick of them every day—for every day brings with it only additional proofs of their hypocrisy, knavery & folly.” Lincoln and the other amateurs in Washington were, he said, “a precious lot of fools.” In vain he telegraphed Lincoln, “The object of enemy’s movement is probably to prevent reinforcements being sent to me.”
McClellan knew that the best defense of Washington was an all-out attack on Richmond. Disheartened by what he perceived as Lincoln’s betrayals, however, he could not bring himself to make it. June on the Peninsula became a month of inaction, of constant pouring rain and of day-to-day promises from McClellan to make the final assault. His best chance was in mid-June, when the rain subsided. He had been reinforced to a strength of 150,000 men, the largest army ever gathered on the continent, and with Jackson detached the rebel defenders were weak. Even then, however, McClellan hesitated, writing to his friend Barlow on June 23, “I dare not risk this Army on which I feel the fate of the nation depends.”
While he waited, Jackson and his men returned from the Valley to join Lee, who had learned that the right wing of McClellan’s army was “in the air”— vulnerable—extending north in the vain hope of linking up with McDowell. Lee pushed Jackson beyond the exposed flank, turning and crushing it while the balance of his army north of the Chickahominy pounded the Federals from the front. Ever audacious, Lee left only a skeleton force opposite the Federal left to defend Richmond. If McClellan had been so inclined, he could have pushed aggressively and likely driven into the rebel capital itself. After two days of attacks by Lee and his lieutenant that collapsed his right flank and drove it toward the James River, McClellan’s overwhelming impulse was to shift the blame to Lincoln’s government. Just after midnight on June 28, he wired the War Department:
I know that a few thousand men more would have changed this battle from a defeat to a victory—as it is the Govt must not & cannot hold me responsible for the result.
I feel too earnestly tonight—I have seen too many dead & wounded comrades to feel otherwise than that the Govt has not sustained this Army. If you do not do so now the game is lost.
If I save this Army now I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or any other persons in Washington—you have done your best to sacrifice this Army.
The Confederate assaults—complex, confusing, and usually delivered in piecemeal fashion—spanned nearly a full week, during which the officers and men in the ranks of the Army of the Potomac improvised a masterful fighting retreat, inflicting heavy casualties on Lee’s army. A final grand Confederate attack at Malvern Hill just above the James River on July 1 was beaten back in a magnificent defensive effort. McClellan’s army was now protected at Harrison’s Landing along the James about twenty-five miles from Richmond, supplied by sea and defensible on all sides against any additional attacks. There the soldiers, still unbowed, enjoyed their first full rest in many weeks.
* * *
At first, it was unclear whether Harrison’s Landing was the end of the Peninsula campaign, or just a pause before another drive on Richmond. McClellan immediately wired,
“I need 50,000 more men, and with them I will retrieve our fortunes.’’ Then two days later he asked for 100,000. McClellan had hit on a viable strategy: he would use the James River as a supply artery, ferry his men to the south bank of the river, and move inland to capture lightly-defended Petersburg, cutting Richmond’s supply lines from the south. This strategy would help win the war when applied by Grant two years later. But Grant had the killer instinct, the confidence of Lincoln, and an exhausted foe. McClellan had none of these.
McClellan, it was clear, would not move without heavy reinforcements. And, because of Stanton’s monumental blunder of stopping recruiting three months earlier, there were no reinforcements to be had. Lincoln considered bringing men from elsewhere, but it made little sense to give up gains in the West to reinforce losses in the East. It became clear to Lincoln by the middle of July that, despite his army’s bravura display of engineering and fighting skill, the Peninsula campaign was the most magnificent defeat in the nation’s history. “It seems unreasonable that a series of successes [in the West], extending through half-a-year, and clearing more than a hundred thousand square miles of country, should help us so little, while a single half-defeat should hurt us so much,” he moaned.
Asked later if he had ever despaired of the country, Lincoln said, “When the Peninsula campaign terminated at Harrison’s Landing, I was as nearly inconsolable as I could be and live.” Mary Lincoln told friends of his sleepless nights. Those who saw him were shocked by his careworn appearance. George Julian mentioned that he looked “thin and haggard.” Illinois friend Henry C. Whitney remembered:
On Saturday, July 12th, 1862, I reached Washington on some business, and was the guest of one of the White House secretaries… . Presently Mr. Lincoln came slowly down-stairs; but oh! How haggard and dejected he looked. I had not seen him for nine months; and the change was frightful to behold. He looked the picture of heart-felt anguish—from which every ray of hope had forever fled… . Lincoln spoke to me and shook hands quite mechanically—he was absent-minded: he did not know me at all—he was oblivious of my presence, or of any one’s presence.
Another Illinois friend who saw him then, Senator Orville Browning, wrote in his diary:
[Lincoln] was in his Library writing, with directions to deny him to every body. I went in a moment. He looked weary, care-worn and troubled. I shook hands with him, and asked how he was. He said “tolerably well.” I remarked that I felt concerned about him—regretted that troubles crowded so heavily upon him, and feared his health was suffering. He held me by the hand, pressed it, and said in a very tender and touching tone—“Browning I must die sometime.” I replied, “Your fortunes Mr. President are bound up with those of the Country, and disaster to one would be disaster to the other, and I hope you will do all you can to preserve your health and life.” He looked very sad, and there was a cadence of deep sadness in his voice. We parted I believe both of us with tears in our eyes.
Lincoln had taken on himself the anguish of the entire country, which now slowly became aware that the most anticipated campaign in its history had failed. In the West, too, things had stalled. The peak of public optimism in May had been so recent and so lofty that the slough of despond in July seemed that much deeper. Criticism of the administration came from every side.
There was a panic on Wall Street. People hoarded gold and shunned government bonds out of a lack of confidence in the future of the nation. Count Gurowski wrote that the Fourth of July was “the gloomiest since the birth of this republic. Never was the country so low, and after such sacrifices of blood, of time, and of money.”
The soldiers in the Army of the Potomac generally shared McClellan’s conviction that they had lost because Lincoln and the selfish politicians in Washington had refused to reinforce them. Artillery officer Alexander Webb spoke for many when he wrote to his father on July 10 that McClellan “stands higher this moment than he ever did before. In him all credit & damn the authorities who withheld reinforcements… .” Outside the army, many saw things the same way. Historian George Bancroft wrote to his son that the public was becoming aware of Lincoln’s “successive, hasty, & contradictory acts of interference.”
Even Greeley’s staunch Republican—and anti-McClellan—New York Tribune agreed. On July 3, its correspondent with the Army of the Potomac termed the army’s plight a “crime against the nation… . This crime is the refusal to reenforce McClellan.” He went on, “I say that the blackest crime that Power can commit is to stalk upon the field of peril and say, ‘Soldiers, I have no faith in your commander! Let your martyrdom proceed!’”
Private citizens from every Northern state told their gloom to public men with influence. “Public sentiment is … deep and bitter … against Mr. Lincoln because he is looked upon as an obstacle in the way of closing up this war,” an Ohioan warned Salmon Chase; “Men are losing all respect for him and … for the office he holds and in these days of revolution God only knows what may come forth if the people get grounded in the belief that the inertia … of the President is … sapping the life of the Government.” Instead of “inspiring the people, he represses their ardor,” complained a Wisconsin man to his senator. General Benjamin Butler received a post from a Massachusetts congressman who predicted that “Unless Richmond is occupied before winter by the federal Army, Mr. Lincoln cannot complete his term of office.” George Templeton Strong reported in his diary, “Prevailing color of people’s talk is blue. What’s very bad, we begin to lose faith in Uncle Abe.” People saw Lincoln, he wrote, as “most honest and true, thoroughly sensible but without the decision and the energy the country wants.” Among the most strident was abolitionist Wendell Phillips, who told Senator Charles Sumner, “Lincoln is doing twice as much today to break this Union as Davis is. We are paying … [the] penalty for having a timid & ignorant President, all the more injurious because honest.”
Writing at this time, the elite British correspondent Edward Dicey, who had spent the first six months of 1862 traveling in America for London’s The Spectator, noted that,
With regard to the President himself, everybody spoke with an almost brutal frankness. Politically, at that time, Lincoln was regarded as a failure. Why he, individually, was elected, or rather, selected [nominated], nobody, to this day, seems to know… . A shrewd, hard-headed, self-educated man, with sense enough to perceive his own deficiencies, but without the instinctive genius which supplies the place of learning, he is influenced by men whom he sees through, but yet cannot detect… . [W]hen you have called the President “Honest Abe Lincoln,” according to the favorite phrase of the American press, you have said a great deal, doubtless, but you have also said all that can be said in his favor. He works hard, and does little; and unites a painful sense of responsibility to a still more painful sense, perhaps, that his work is too great for him to grapple with.
In the North, the opposition press was silent no longer. Democratic editors, just starting to look ahead to the mid-term elections in the fall of 1862, began to emerge after spending the past year hunkering down. McClellan’s reverse in front of Richmond required that they come to his defense and resume their places as critics of Lincoln’s government. On July 16, 1862, the Brooklyn Eagle sounded its displeasure and signaled the start of the election season:
The treasure, the life of the nation, was unhesitatingly placed at the disposal of the authorities… . With means absolutely limitless, and with an army as large as any nation ever raised—what has been done? … Who can claim that those vast elements of power placed in the hands of the administration have secured all that was justly expected of them? … Surely the country had a right to expect, after an expenditure of five hundred million dollars, after a loss of over one hundred thousand men something more than this… . It is evident to the people, it is evident to the whole world, that we have secured nothing commensurate with the sacrifices we have made… . The nation is bleeding to death.
What the nation wants is leading men; men fit to meet the crisis;
men adequate to wield the great elements of power still intact.
After hearing the Democratic tom-toms in July, Republicans began to look with concern toward the approaching fall elections. Lincoln, however, was listening only to the click of the telegraph key in the War Office tapping out the fate of McClellan’s army. On July 7, he clambered aboard the USS Ariel and steamed to Harrison’s Landing on the James River to see the army’s condition for himself. When he arrived, McClellan, still confident in his notion that Lincoln deferred to him—that Lincoln “was always much influenced by me when we were together,” as he had told his wife—came aboard the Ariel and handed the President a letter dictating to him what should be the guiding principles of the war. It was Little Mac’s most spectacular insubordination, reminiscent of Seward’s “Thoughts for Your Consideration” at the height of the Sumter crisis.
As with Seward earlier, McClellan mistook himself to be the maker of national policy. In the letter, which became famous as the “Harrison’s Landing Letter,” McClellan instructed Lincoln that the war “should be conducted upon the highest principles known to Christian Civilization.” It should not be a war of subjugation. The confiscation of Southern property or freeing Southern slaves or any other such “radical views” must not “be contemplated for a moment.” Such views, especially for the emancipation of slaves, “will rapidly disintegrate our present Armies,” he insisted. Lincoln read the letter in McClellan’s presence and then put it in his pocket without a word. The next day he steamed back to Washington with a fuller knowledge of the political pretensions of his top general.
