by Bruce Catton
Then, strangely, the President and the Secretary grew hopeful. They had heard no more from McClellan, but they had been looking at the map, rereading McClellan’s original battle plan, and reflecting on the strategic possibilities, and they apparently concluded that everything that had happened so far was more or less incidental to McClellan’s promised assault on Richmond. On June 29, Mr. Lincoln told Secretary Seward, “I think we have had the better of it,” and Stanton agreed, adding the bright prediction that McClellan “will probably be in Richmond within two days.” On the following day Mr. Lincoln said that as far as he could see things were going according to plan and that lack of news was the chief reason for worry, although he did remark that McClellan “had a severe engagement in getting the part of his army on this side of the Chickahominy over to the other side.” Stanton notified General Wool at Baltimore that McClellan at last had his entire army across the Chickahominy, asserting: “The position is favorable and looks more like taking Richmond than any time before.” When General Halleck reported that he would send the 25,000 men he had been told to send but that this would mean giving up his projected advance on Chattanooga, both the President and the Secretary told him to send nobody: to get into East Tennessee and possess the railroad line to Virginia was as important as taking Richmond itself. Obviously the intense anxiety created by McClellan’s midnight telegram after the battle of Gaines’s Mill had died down.14
It returned quickly enough. At 7 P.M. on June 30, McClellan got a telegram through to Stanton. He had reached the James and had boarded a gunboat, and his words made it clear that no attack on Richmond was anywhere in sight:
“Another day of desperate fighting. We are hard pressed by superior numbers. I fear I shall be forced to abandon my material to save my men under cover of the gunboats. You must send us very large re-enforcements by way of Fort Monroe, and they must come very promptly. My army has behaved superbly, and have done all that men can do. If none of us escape, we shall at least have done honor to the country. I shall do my best to save the army. Send more gunboats.”15
The army was safe. General Lee, winning an improbable victory that was changing the current of the war, was in fact feeling somewhat frustrated. He was a perfectionist; he had had a chance to destroy McClellan’s army and the chance had eluded him—chiefly, when all is said and done, because the military machine he was operating was still too new and too imperfectly fitted together to function smoothly. It could fight like all the furies, but it could not shift its weight quickly; its footwork was poor and its muscular co-ordination was defective, and so an enemy that might have been killed got away alive—bloodied, badly beaten, but nevertheless alive and capable of full revival.
On June 28, the day after the Gaines’s Mill fight, McClellan got his army started on the march to Harrison’s Landing, abandoning the base at White House, sending the transports off, destroying an immense quantity of supplies that could not be moved—a staff officer mentioned the loss of millions of rations and hundreds of tons of ammunition—and breaking the bridges that crossed the Chickahominy.16 Temporarily, Lee lost contact with him, except for an unsuccessful assault made by some of Magruder’s men on the Golding farm position, and for a time it was not clear whether McClellan was going to try to regain his lost base at White House, march down the Chickahominy to the lower peninsula, or move directly to the James. Altogether, the Army of the Potomac got a twenty-four-hour head start, and it was just enough. Lee’s army was never able to make up for the lost time, and the great battle of annihilation did not take place.
Not quite … the opportunity was there. McClellan’s army had to go along a narrow roadway, and the column was very long, encumbered by a wagon train and a shambling herd of 2500 beef cattle, unable either to retreat with speed or to turn and fight with all its strength. Theoretically, it was possible for part of Lee’s army to circle around south of the Chickahominy and smite the head of this column while another part struck the flank and the remainder assailed the rear, and this is what Lee tried to do. If all had gone as he hoped, the Army of the Potomac would have ceased to exist. But nothing went quite right for him. Magruder proved an inexpert tactician, Huger moved much too slowly, and Jackson, most inexplicably, missed a crucial assignment. Although it had to fight on June 29 at Savage Station and on June 30 at Glendale—the latter engagement was as vicious a battle as either army ever fought, but Lee could not get more than two of his six divisions into action—the Army of the Potomac could not be brought to a stand. By July 1 the head of the column had reached Harrison’s Landing and the protecting gunboats, and McClellan had Porter plant abundant infantry and an overpowering array of guns on high ground at Malvern Hill, overlooking the James, to indicate that the army was ready for one more fight.
One more fight it immediately got. The position at Malvern Hill was really far too strong to attack with any hope of success, but the Federals had been getting whipped and retreating day after day and if Lee suspected that one more battle would finish them it is easy to see why he felt that way. Besides, this would be the last chance to strike a blow, and Lee was a fighter; and that afternoon and evening saw one of the most tragic and hopeless attacks of the war, with Magruder’s and D. H. Hill’s divisions and elements from other commands trying heroically to do the impossible. Up the long slope they went, brigade after brigade, and the Federal guns knocked their lines all apart and covered the hillside with broken bodies; this was one of the few battles in the Civil War in which most of the casualties were inflicted by artillery. At Gaines’s Mill an afternoon of failure had been followed by an almost miraculous moment when everything suddenly worked, and a victory had been gained, with the triumphant Rebel yell tingling across the twilight. That did not happen at Malvern Hill. Night came, the killing ended and the Federals were unshaken; and as the crash of the guns stopped the dusk throbbed with the pathetic cries of thousands of wounded men who wanted somebody to come out and help them.17
Victorious at last, but nevertheless beaten, the Army of the Potomac withdrew during the night and made its camp at the new base of Harrison’s Landing, with warships in the river to stand guard.
6: Letter from Harrison’s Landing
A newspaper correspondent who reached Harrison’s Landing on July 2 wrote that the Army of the Potomac seemed to be “more dead than alive.” The soldiers who had been fighting and marching in the swamps for a week were unutterably dirty, plastered with mud from head to foot, and hundreds of them stood knee-deep in the James trying to scrape the clay off of their uniforms with sticks. At least one field hospital was so jammed that an army surgeon was unable to get inside and go to work, and the correspondent remembered seeing a wounded officer, his face streaked with blood and mud, wandering about offering five dollars to anyone who would give him something to eat and getting no takers. Yet when one talked to the soldiers they seemed to be in good spirits, all things considered, and most of them said they were ready to “go at them again” as soon as reinforcements arrived. They were not entirely sure what had happened, and one enlisted man doubtless spoke for many when he admitted that he did not know whether “we have made an inglorious skedaddle or a brilliant retreat,” but at least the marching and fighting had ended and there was a chance for tired soldiers to get a little rest. McClellan wrote to his wife: “I have still very great confidence in them, and they in me. The dear fellows cheer me as of old.”1
No one in Richmond had the least doubt what had happened: the Confederacy had won a mighty victory. General Lee wrote soberly that “under ordinary circumstances the Federal Army should have been destroyed,” but he remarked that “regret that more was not accomplished gives way to gratitude to the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe for the results achieved,” and he spelled these results out with unemotional accuracy: the siege of Richmond had been raised, the whole Federal campaign had been completely frustrated, thousands of prisoners had been taken, fifty-two pieces of artillery and more than 35,000 stands of small arms had been captured
, and stores and supplies of great value had been taken although these were “but small in comparison with those destroyed by the enemy.” Secretary Mallory assured his wife that the Seven Days made up “a series of the grandest Battles that was ever fought on the American continent,” and exulted that “the Great McClelland the young Napoleon now like a whipped cur lies on the banks of the James River crouched under his Gun Boats.”2
The cost of this achievement had been high. Lee’s army had lost 3286 men killed and 15,090 wounded, with somewhere between 900 and 1000 men recorded as missing, for a total casualty list of slightly more than 20,000: very close to one fourth of all of the men Lee had in his command when the Seven Days began. (Federal losses had been smaller: 1734 killed and 8062 wounded, with the dismaying number of 6053 missing in action. Most of the “missing” had been taken prisoner, as had a great many of the wounded men.) Over the long pull, the Confederacy could not afford such casualties; there was a grim hint here that the aggressive strategy which had saved Richmond might be altogether too expensive for regular use.3 From afar, Beauregard wrote that Lee’s feat in concentrating forces against McClellan’s exposed right was “a master-stroke of policy,” although he considered that if McClellan had not “lost his presence of mind” he might well have broken through Magruder’s carefully staged defenses and taken Richmond.4
McClellan was sorting out his own impressions. He was justly proud of the fighting his troops had done and he assured the President that once the men had had a little rest they would be as spirited and as vigorous as ever; his immediate plan was to make the camp on the James perfectly secure, but he believed that if he had more men he might make a new campaign. Early on July 1, before the fighting began at Malvern Hill, he telegraphed Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas that if the government planned to reinforce him at all it should do so at once, and liberally: “I need 50,000 more men, and with them I will retrieve our fortunes. More would be well, but that number sent me at once will, I think, enable me to assume the offensive.” Even a few thousand fresh men, if they came quickly, “will do much toward relieving and encouraging this wearied army.” On July 2, after Mr. Lincoln and Secretary Stanton told him that moderate reinforcements were on the way, McClellan reported that he would have the army “ready to repulse the enemy tomorrow,” and he assured the President that “every 1,000 men you send at once will help me much.”5
Then the picture began to look darker. His chief engineer officer, Brigadier General J. G. Barnard, warned McClellan that “the only salvation is for this army to be ready promptly to resume the offensive”; it must advance speedily “or we are bagged.” It could do nothing of the kind, however, unless it were greatly strengthened, and the administration (said General Barnard) was most unlikely to do much because if it revealed the size of the crisis it could not conceal its own blunders. Let McClellan, therefore, send a trusted emissary to lay the case before President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton; the mere fact that such a man was sent would show the country that something was wrong. In General Barnard’s opinion, “We need 200,000 more men to fill up the ranks and form new regiments.”
McClellan forthwith sent his chief-of-staff, General Marcy, off to Washington, notifying Mr. Stanton that Marcy would give him “a perfect understanding of the exact condition of this army.” He was much more pessimistic now than he had been forty-eight hours earlier, and he explained that it was vital to get his army into proper shape “before the enemy can attack again.” Then he gave the Secretary the bad news: “I doubt whether there are today more than 50,000 men with the colors. To accomplish the great task of capturing Richmond and putting an end to this rebellion re-enforcements should be sent to me rather much over than much less than 100,000 men. I beg that you will be fully impressed by the magnitude of the crisis in which we are placed.”6
At this point General McClellan heard from President Lincoln, who wrote that the government just did not possess, east of the mountains and outside of McClellan’s army, more than 75,000 men altogether.
“Thus,” said Mr. Lincoln, “the idea of sending you fifty thousand, or any other considerable force promptly, is simply absurd. 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 impression. I only beg that in like manner you will not ask impossibilities of me. If you think you are not strong enough to take Richmond just now, I do not ask you to try just now. Save the Army, material and personal; and I will strengthen you for the offensive again, as fast as I can. The Governors of 18 states offer me a new levy of three hundred thousand, which I accept.”7
The disaster in front of Richmond was bringing results that could be seen more clearly in Washington than at Harrison’s Landing, and Mr. Lincoln was responding to them. He was moving very carefully, because an abrupt right-angle turn could not be taken at high speed and also because it was very hard to see what sort of road lay beyond the turn.
So far the Northern war effort had gone on its original momentum. Save-the-Union patriotism plus the fury born of defeat at Bull Run had put 637,000 men in the army and there had been an impressive list of victories; the order that stopped recruiting in April had been born of the general belief that the war would soon be won. But the old momentum was gone. The western army had gone to Corinth at a crawl, letting its opponent escape virtually unhurt. The eastern army had been equally slow in its approach to Richmond and had at last met cruel defeat. In May the War Department quietly urged Northern governors to raise some new regiments, and in June it reopened the recruiting stations, but the harvest was very thin. From western Virginia, where the response was more or less typical, Governor F. H. Pierpoint reported that the men who might enlist “have engaged in other pursuits for the season,” and even the all-out-war stalwart, Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts, confessed that this unexpected plea for more men “finds me without materials for an intelligent reply.”8 The administration could not suddenly call for more volunteers without confessing error and ruinous defeat—General Barnard’s appraisal had been tolerably acute—but more volunteers it had to have, and a slightly involved political approach had been devised.
Secretary Seward went off to New York at about the time the Seven Days fight was beginning. He was to take certain political soundings, and he bore a letter from Mr. Lincoln, to be shown wherever it might be helpful. Mr. Lincoln explained the military necessities as of that hour: hold all that had been won in the west, open the Mississippi, take Chattanooga and eastern Tennessee, and raise at least 100,000 new troops so that Richmond could be captured. This would substantially end the war, the President believed; and then, characteristically, he went on to adorn this instrument of political maneuver with a frank statement of his own bedrock determination:
“I expect to maintain this contest until successful, or till I die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or Congress or the country forsake me; and I would publicly appeal to the country for this new force, were it not that I fear a general panic and stampede would follow—so hard is it to have a thing understood as it really is. I think the new force should be all, or nearly all, infantry, principally because such can be raised most cheaply and quickly.”
Using this, Secretary Seward persuaded the Northern governors to sign an appeal (which, most thoughtfully, he himself had drafted in advance) expressing the patriotic hope that “the recent successes of the Federal arms may be followed up by measures which must insure the speedy restoration of the Union.” The time had come for “prompt and vigorous measures to be adopted by the people”; Mr. Lincoln accordingly was urged to call upon the states for such numbers of volunteers as might be needed to win final and lasting victory. This appeal, which won approval on June 30, was then pre-dated to June 28 and sent to the White House, and, on July 2, Mr. Lincoln made it public together with a formal call on the states for 300,000 more recruits.9 Thus, as he told General McClellan, he had been “offered” a huge new body of men, and he had accepted the offer.
The North would get on with the war.
It was hard, as Mr. Lincoln said, to get a genuine understanding of reality. The reality here was that the war had grown larger than it had been, and that a larger effort would be required to win it. This larger effort would come from a people who were just learning that the energy which had won part of the war was not enough to win all of it; and the effort would be called for by a President who had just defined his will to win as absolute. Here was the clearest possible warning that with this man in the White House there would not be a peace without victory, that a restored union would be fought for but not bartered for, that whatever needed to be done would be done. The device by which the 300,000 men were to be got might be a devious political trick, but the important thing was that the government was going to get them. In the end the shock of the Seven Days would be as significant a turning point as the shock of Bull Run had been a year earlier.
On July 8 Mr. Lincoln showed up at Harrison’s Landing to have a talk with General McClellan.
The general’s mood seemed to be good. On July 4 he sent a soldierly reply to the President’s message about reinforcements: “I will do the best I can with such force as I have and such aid as you can give me.… If the capital be threatened, I will move this army at whatever hazard in such direction as will best divert the enemy.” He went on to say that the whole army was drawn up for an Independence Day review, with bands playing and everything looking good; and on July 5 he notified Adjutant General Thomas that he had his army satisfactorily placed for all defensive purposes and that the position also “enables me at any time to resume the offensive, which I hope soon to be in a condition to do.” This message crossed a letter from Mr. Lincoln, who said that he had talked with General Marcy and understood the whole situation, and that for the immediate future the defensive must be McClellan’s primary concern. McClellan himself, said the President, must be the judge of what he could or could not do at Harrison’s Landing, but a significant postscript gave the admonition: “If, at any time, you feel able to take the offensive, you are not restrained from doing so.”10 For the first time in weeks, the general and the President seemed to be in complete harmony.
