by Bruce Catton
But it went beyond that. Loyalty to McClellan was built up in the army as deliberately as loyalty to a leader is built up in a political organization, and in much the same way. It came down from the top, actively generated by the officers, and one veteran saw the parallel clearly. “His generals,” wrote this man, “appointed and promoted through his influence, thoroughly infused a McClellan element into their commands. An army of generals bear very much the same relation to their chief that office holders do to the head of their party. By maintaining him in his position they insure their own, and in promoting his interests they promote themselves.” John Pope assured the governor of Illinois that “the praetorian system is as fully developed and in active operation in Washington as it ever was in ancient Rome”; and although Pope’s verdict is subject to discount he touched reality in his remark that to encamp a large army around Washington for the better part of a year was to risk corrupting both the army and the government. In its formative period this army had been kept too long too near the capital, and it had been incurably infected with politics. Abner Doubleday believed that Porter was the lieutenant through whom the McClellan influence was most actively promoted, and he wrote bitterly: “The history of everyone who opposed McClellan has been a history of the decline of individual fortunes.”3
Both by natural predisposition and by good management the army was deeply, passionately attached to its general, and the administration had to take this into account when it planned for the future. McClellan was advised of this while he was on his way up from the peninsula. Allan Pinkerton, who had given him such detailed information about Rebel manpower in front of Richmond, had been in Washington taking soundings, and on August 25 he sent McClellan an appreciation of the political situation. President Lincoln, he said, was already growing disillusioned with Pope—this of course was before the big battle at Bull Run made disillusion complete—and Pinkerton felt that “unless some other military genius appears soon they cannot do otherwise than appoint you to the command though there is no doubt but that this will be very unpalatable and greatly against the wishes of Lincoln, Stanton and Halleck.”
Pinkerton went on to underline the moral: “I learn that the rulers more than ever dread doing anything with you since the Army of the Potomac began to arrive at Alexandria. I find that many of the general officers are expressing themselves very strongly in favor of your having moved on Richmond instead of coming here … rumors from Alexandria say that the field and regimental officers are very outspoken on this point—all of which tends to increase the fears of Lincoln and his coadjutors, and this is the only point to hope from now.”4
With this advice in his pocket McClellan opened headquarters in Alexandria on August 27 (the day Jackson destroyed Pope’s supplies at Manassas) and wired a report of his arrival to Halleck, who was half a dozen miles away, in Washington; and during the rest of August the general-in-chief and the army commander carried on a long argument, by telegraph, over the matter of reinforcing Pope and making Washington safe. What gave this correspondence a slightly unreal quality was that it nowhere mentioned the one point that neither Halleck nor McClellan ever lost sight of—the question of what McClellan’s future status in the army was going to be.
Franklin’s army corps was in Alexandria and Sumner’s corps would arrive in twenty-four hours, and Halleck greatly wanted them sent on at once to help Pope. A twenty-five-mile march would accomplish this, and McClellan accepted the idea, in principle. Principle, however, was subject to delays. The march was ordered; then the order was countermanded; then it was ordered anew, and delayed again, while McClellan sent to Halleck a record of his doubts. Franklin had no cavalry, his artillery lacked horses; would he be of any use if, thus crippled, he did reach the front? Was Halleck quite sure he wanted him to march? Then McClellan reported that neither army corps was in shape to move and fight, and asked if Sumner should not be retained for the defense of Washington; after which he reported hearing that Lee was in Manassas and that 120,000 Confederates were about to move on Arlington. Again he wanted to know if the advance should be made.
Halleck sent peremptory orders. Franklin began to move, and then halted at Annandale, ten miles out. Halleck angrily told McClellan that “this is all contrary to my orders,” and McClellan took offense, icily requesting that he be given very specific instructions about movements henceforth because “it is not agreeable to me to be accused of disregarding orders when I have simply exercised the discretion you committed to me.”5
In the end, Pope was not reinforced; Franklin and Sumner got out too late to be of any use in battle; and after it was all over President Lincoln told John Hay that it really seemed to him that McClellan wanted Pope to fail. Attorney General Bates wrote to a friend: “The thing I complain of is a criminal tardiness, a fatuous apathy, a captious, bickering rivalry, among our commanders who seem so taken up with their quick made dignity that they overlook the lives of their people and the necessities of their country. They, in grotesque egotism, have so much reputation to take care of that they dare not risk it.”6 But by August 31 the bad news from Bull Run indicated that the moment for a general accounting had at last arrived, and McClellan moved for a showdown, sending this telegram to Halleck: “I am ready to afford you any assistance in my power, but you will readily perceive how difficult an undefined position, such as I now hold, must be. At what hour in the morning can I see you alone, either at your own house or the office?”7
McClellan’s position was not so much undefined as unstable. He was still commander of the Army of the Potomac, no order relieving him having been issued. By bits and pieces, this army had been sent to, or at least toward, General Pope, and if it was ever brought together again McClellan would presumably remain in charge of it. But a military catastrophe had taken place, and it was clear that somebody was going to be fired … and so it was time to touch base with the general-in-chief.
McClellan was not the only one who wanted a showdown. Secretary of War Stanton also wanted one and wanted it intensely. Since Halleck’s arrival Stanton had stuck to the administrative routine, but now he got back into action. To Halleck, on August 28, he sent a note asking what orders had been given McClellan regarding the return from Harrison’s Landing and the movement of people like Franklin, and requesting the general-in-chief to say whether these orders had been obeyed “as promptly as the national safety required”; after which the Secretary went to call on Secretary Chase to organize the cabinet in favor of putting a new man in charge of the Army of the Potomac. Halleck’s reply, which came in on August 30, enclosed copies of his correspondence with McClellan and contained Halleck’s official finding that McClellan, all things considered, had not moved as fast as he should have moved.
Stanton and Chase drew up a sort of round robin, which asserted that destruction of the armies, waste of national resources, and the overthrow of the government must inevitably follow McClellan’s retention in command. Then they set out to induce the rest of the cabinet to sign it. Attorney General Bates, after getting the document toned down slightly, gave his signature, as did Caleb Smith, Secretary of the Interior. Montgomery Blair was on McClellan’s side, Mr. Seward was out of the city (there were those who felt that the Secretary of State had concluded this was a good fight to stay out of) and Secretary Welles said that he was in favor of removing McClellan but would sign no paper putting pressure on the President. Still, a majority did sign; when presented, the paper would serve notice on Abraham Lincoln that he must either fire a general or lose most of his cabinet.8
Now came a contribution from General Pope. From his cheerless camp at Centreville he wrote to Halleck to say that “the unsoldierly and dangerous conduct” of certain Army of the Potomac officers had created an impossible situation. There were brigade and division commanders, he said, who kept saying “that the Army of the Potomac will not fight; that they are demoralized by the withdrawal from the peninsula, etc.” Pope correctly believed that this called for action at the top; he told Hallec
k, “You alone can stop it,” and he suggested that Halleck bring all of the troops back to Washington for a general overhaul and reorganization. He warned: “You may avoid great disaster by doing so.”9
The advice was good but tardy. The great disaster had already occurred. It had been cumulative, five months long, running from the first hesitant pause in front of Yorktown to the last blind battle in the thunderstorm at Chantilly. At the beginning of April it had seemed that the war was all but won; now, at the beginning of September, it began to seem that the war might be all but lost. It would unquestionably be lost unless General Lee, who was about to invade the North, could soon be beaten and driven back. And President Lincoln, whose responsibility it was to say which soldier should be given the task of meeting and defeating Lee, was obliged to recognize a very odd fact.
The most compelling reason for removing General McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac was precisely the reason that made his removal impossible. The gravest charge against him was at the same time his greatest asset.
It was being charged that McClellan had turned the Army of the Potomac into his own personal instrument. Both his friends and his enemies were saying that the army actually would not fight for anyone else, and this latest dispatch from General Pope could be taken as evidence from a man who had been through the mill. Pope had suggested a remedy, but there was no time to apply it: General Lee was in a hurry, and the Federal Army—not for the last time, either—was going to have to march in step with Lee’s drums. If General McClellan, for whatever reason or combination of reasons, was the only man the army would follow, then he must lead it. If to give him the army was to gamble on an integrity that some men doubted and an aggressiveness that had never yet been in evidence—well, Mr. Lincoln could gamble, just as General Lee could do. There was in fact no other course open.
When McClellan met with Halleck on September 1, President Lincoln was present. He had seen Pope’s dispatch, and he brought the matter up—not to administer a rebuke but simply to ask McClellan to use his influence with his friends so that they would loyally serve any superior the government happened to put over them. McClellan gave him what he wanted, and that evening he sent a dispatch to General Porter—as singular a message, from one general to another, as the annals of American wars contain. It went thus:
“I ask of you for my sake, that of the country, and of the old Army of the Potomac, that you and all my friends will lend the fullest and most cordial co-operation to General Pope in all the operations now going on. The destinies of our country, the honor of our arms, are at stake, and all depends now upon the cheerful co-operation of all in the field. This week is the crisis of our fate. Say the same thing to my friends in the Army of the Potomac, and that the last request I have to make of them is that, for their country’s sake, they will extend to General Pope the same support they ever have to me.
“I am in charge of the defenses of Washington, and am doing all I can do to render your retreat safe should that become necessary.”10
The final sentence outweighed all of the verbiage ahead of it. It said that McClellan had won. Putting him in charge of the defenses of Washington, Mr. Lincoln was in effect giving him Pope’s army as well as his own. The arrangement was still makeshift, but it would quickly be made formal. On the following day Halleck telegraphed Pope to bring everyone back inside the Washington lines, telling him that McClellan was in charge and that “you will consider any direction as to disposition of the troops as they arrive, given by him, as coming from me.”11
On September 2 McClellan rode out to take possession of the returning troops and Abraham Lincoln went to a cabinet meeting.
No public announcement of his action in respect to McClellan had been made, and the cabinet ministers knew nothing for certain, although horrid rumors had been circulating. Not until the President himself came into the room and told them what had been done did the men who had prepared that round robin realize that they had been outmaneuvered. Mr. Welles wrote that there was “a more disturbed and desponding feeling” than he had ever seen in a cabinet meeting; Mr. Lincoln was “greatly distressed,” but was unyielding. Mr. Chase, who had told Welles that McClellan ought to be shot, warned that what the President was doing was equivalent to making McClellan temporary commander-in-chief, and said that it might be uncommonly hard to get the man out, later on; to all of which the President made the obvious reply—he had to use the Army of the Potomac, and so he had to use McClellan. What he did not say, and never thereafter needed to say, was that army commanders would be named by the President and not by the cabinet. The round robin was not delivered.12
McClellan felt that he had done the administration a favor. He told Mrs. McClellan that Halleck had written, “begging me to help him out of his scrape and take command here,” and he went on: “Of course I could not refuse, so I came over this morning, mad as a March hare”—what he really meant was that he was angry—“and had a pretty plain talk with him & Abe—a still plainer one this evening. The result is that I have reluctantly consented to take command here & try to save the capital.” Secretary Welles was disturbed, a few days later, to note that when a big draft from the Army of the Potomac had to march through Washington it was routed past McClellan’s house at 15th and H Streets so that the men could cheer the general, rather than past the White House, where the President would get the cheers. At about the same time Mr. Lincoln told Hay that “McClellan is working like a beaver,” and said that “the sort of snubbing he got last week” seemed to have been good for him.13
The President did give Halleck a chance to come to his rescue. Late on the evening of September 3 he wrote out and gave to Secretary Stanton, who promptly sent it on to Halleck, a directive instructing Halleck to “proceed with all possible dispatch to organize an army for active operations” against Lee. By its wording, this order was the broadest hint that Halleck himself could take command of field operations if he chose. But Halleck would not do this. He transmitted the order to McClellan, revising it just enough to indicate that the command would be McClellan’s; and a few days later, as the reorganization proceeded, Pope’s army was formally consolidated into the Army of the Potomac, Pope was relieved and sent out west to Minnesota to fight the Indians, and the rest was definitely up to McClellan.14
Pope departed, protesting with extraordinary bitterness and with some logic; unquestionably, the man had been given a hard deal. But nothing could be done about it; the army just was not big enough to contain both Pope and McClellan, it was necessary now to use McClellan, and Pope would have to make the best of it, which he did with very bad grace. He sent long letters to Halleck, denouncing that officer and President Lincoln in unmeasured terms, and Halleck (who was being paid to handle this sort of thing) wrote long, soothing replies in which Pope found little healing. The eastern theater of the war saw John Pope no more.15
Meanwhile, President Lincoln was under two great pressures.
In his desk was a paper which undertook to proclaim freedom for Negro slaves—a document which would transform the war and change the future course of American history, if it ever got out, but which would only be a piece of paper unless the Federal Army speedily won a victory; and Lee was north of the Potomac with an army that had never been beaten and was beginning to look unbeatable, moving northwest across Maryland, bent on nothing less than the destruction of the Army of the Potomac.
Lee had raised his sights. He had written to Mr. Davis to say that at the least his move into Maryland would get the war out of Virginia and provide a breathing space, but as he moved he was thinking again in terms of an all-out offensive. (Lee had this hallmark of a great soldier; if he had the slightest warrant for doing so he planned in terms of complete victory.) He had received reinforcements which slightly more than made up for the 9000 men he had lost at Bull Run, and he crossed the Potomac near Leesburg on September 5, moved up to the town of Frederick, Maryland, and planned a new maneuver. Off to his left and rear, posted where it could i
nterrupt his communications with Virginia, was a detachment of 10,000 Federals at Harper’s Ferry. Lee proposed to move his army beyond the sheltering screen of South Mountain—that long extension of the Blue Ridge which runs northeast from Harper’s Ferry into Pennsylvania—and send Jackson down to capture this annoying outpost. Then he would reassemble his army, seek out McClellan, bring him to battle and defeat him.
Once again he would be taking a long chance. His army was weaker now than at any other time in the war until the final, doomed retreat to Appomattox. It was worn-out, thousands of men had no shoes, other thousands considered that they had enlisted to defend the South and not to invade the North, and Lee had temporarily lost more men by straggling than he had recently lost in battle; all in all, when the time for fighting came he would actually have fewer than 50,000 men of all arms. McClellan, who was slowly moving toward him, might have twice that many, certainly would outnumber him heavily, and the Federals would be much better equipped and supplied. To divide the army in the presence of the enemy was the greatest of risks; it had worked against Pope—would it work against McClellan?
Lee believed that it would. He had supreme confidence in himself and in his soldiers, he knew that McClellan always moved slowly, and he believed that McClellan’s army was more or less demoralized. After the war he told a friend that “I intended then to attack McClellan, hoping the best results from the state of my troops and those of the enemy,” and another post-war interviewer wrote that Lee said that if he could have kept the Federals in the dark about his own movements for a few days longer “he did not doubt then (nor has he changed his opinion since) that he could have crushed the army of McClellan.” Once more, Lee was risking everything in order to win everything.16
