  1. Military Policy of the North. The story of the war has here to be told from the point of view of the civilian administrator, the President; stirring incidents of combat and much else of interest must be neglected; episodes in the war which peculiarly concerned him, or have given rise to controversy about him, must be related lengthily. The President was an inexperienced man. It should be said, too—for respect requires perfect frankness—that he was one of an inexperienced people. The Americans had conquered their independence from Great Britain at the time when the ruling factions of our country had reached their utmost degree of inefficiency. They had fought an indecisive war with us in 1812-14, while our main business was to win at Salamanca and Vittoria. These experiences in some ways warped American ideas of war and politics, and their influence perhaps survives to this day. The extent of the President's authority and his position in regard to the advice he could obtain have been explained. An examination of the tangle in which military policy was first involved may make the chief incidents of the war throughout easier to follow. Immediately after Bull Run McClellan had been summoned to Washington to command the army of the Potomac. In November, Scott, worn out by infirmity, and finding his authority slighted by "my ambitious junior," retired, and thereupon McClellan, while retaining his immediate command upon the Potomac, was made for the time General-in-Chief over all the armies of the North. There were, it should be repeated, two other principal armies besides that of the Potomac: the army of the Ohio, of which General Buell was given command in July; and that of the West, to which General Halleck was appointed, though FrÉmont seems to have retained independent command in Missouri. All these armies were in an early stage of formation and training, and from a purely military point of view there could be no haste to undertake a movement of invasion with any of them. Three distinct views of military policy were presented to Lincoln in the early days. Scott, as soon as it was clear that the South meant real fighting, saw how serious its resistance would be. His military judgment was in favour of a strictly defensive attitude before Washington; of training the volunteers for at least four months in healthy camps; and of then pushing a large army right down the Mississippi valley to New Orleans, making the whole line of that river secure, and establishing a pressure on the South between this Western army and the naval blockade which must slowly have strangled the Confederacy. He was aware that public impatience might not allow a rigid adherence to his policy, and in fact, when his view was made public before Bull Run, "Scott's Anaconda," coiling itself round the Confederacy, was the subject of general derision. The view of the Northern public and of the influential men in Congress was in favour of speedy and, as it was hoped, decisive action, and this was understood as involving, whatever else was done, an attempt soon to capture Richmond. In McClellan's view, as in Scott's, the first object was the full preparation of the Army, but he would have wished to wait till he had a fully trained force of 273,000 men on the Potomac, and a powerful fleet with many transports to support his movements; and, when he had all this, to move southwards in irresistible force, both advancing direct into Virginia and landing at points on the coast, subduing each of the Atlantic States of the Confederacy in turn. If the indefinite delay and the overwhelming force which his fancy pictured could have been granted him, it is plain, the military critics have said, that "he could not have destroyed the Southern armies—they would have withdrawn inland, and the heart of the Confederacy would have remained untouched." But neither the time nor the force for which he wished could be allowed him. So he had to put aside his plan, but in some ways perhaps it still influenced him. It would have been impossible to disregard the wishes of those, who in the last resort were masters, for a vigorous attempt on Richmond, and the continually unsuccessful attempts that were made did serve a military purpose, for they kept up a constant drain upon the resources of the South. In any well-thought-out policy the objects both of Scott's plan and of the popular plan would have been borne in mind. That no such policy was consistently followed from the first was partly a result of the long-continued difficulty in finding any younger man who could adequately take the place of Scott; it was not for a want of clear ideas, right or wrong, on Lincoln's part. Only two days after the battle of Bull Run, he put on paper his own view as to the future employment of the three armies. He thought that one should "threaten" Richmond; that one should move from Cincinnati, in Ohio, by a pass called Cumberland Gap in Kentucky, upon Knoxville in Eastern Tennessee; and that the third, using Cairo on the Mississippi as its base, should advance upon Memphis, some 120 miles further south on that river. Apparently he did not at first wish to commit the army of the Potomac very deeply in its advance on Richmond, and he certainly wished throughout that it should cover Washington against any possible attack. Memphis was one of the three points at which the Southern railway system touched the great river and communicated with the States beyond—Vicksburg and New Orleans, much further south, were the others. Knoxville again is a point, by occupying which, the Northern forces would have cut the direct railway communication between Virginia and the West, but for this move into Eastern Tennessee Lincoln had other reasons nearer his heart. The people of that region were strongly for the Union; they were invaded by the Confederates and held down by severe coercion, and distressing appeals from them for help kept arriving through the autumn; could they have been succoured and their mountainous country occupied by the North, a great stronghold of the Union would, it seemed to Lincoln, have been planted securely far into the midst of the Confederacy. Therefore he persistently urged this part of his scheme on the attention of his generals. The chief military objection raised by Buell was that his army would have to advance 150 miles from the nearest base of supply upon a railway; (for 200 miles to the west of the Alleghanies there were no railways running from north to south). To meet this Lincoln, in September, urged upon a meeting of important Senators and Representatives the construction of a railway line from Lexington in Kentucky southwards, but his hearers, with their minds narrowed down to an advance on Richmond, seem to have thought the relatively small cost in time and money of this work too great. Lincoln still thought an expedition to Eastern Tennessee practicable at once, and it has been argued from the circumstances in which one was made nearly two years later that he was right. It would, one may suppose, have been unwise to separate the armies of the Ohio and of the West so widely; for the main army of the Confederates in the West, under their most trusted general, Albert Sidney Johnston, was from September onwards in South-western Kentucky, and could have struck at either of these two Northern armies; and this was in Buell's mind. On the other hand, Lincoln's object was a wise one in itself and would have been worth some postponement of the advance along the Mississippi if thereby the army in the West could have been used in support of it. However this may be, the fact is that Lincoln's plan, as it stood, was backed up by McClellan; McClellan was perhaps unduly anxious for Buell to move on Eastern Tennessee, because this would have supported the invasion of Virginia which he himself was now contemplating, and he was probably forgetful of the West; but he was Lincoln's highest military adviser and his capacity was still trusted. Buell's own view was that, when he moved, it should be towards Western Tennessee. He would have had a railway connection behind him all his way, and Albert Johnston's army would have lain before him. He wished that Halleck meanwhile should advance up the courses of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers; Eastern Tennessee (he may have thought) would be in the end more effectively succoured; their two armies would thus have converged on Johnston's. Halleck agreed with Buell to the extent of disagreeing with Lincoln and McClellan, but no further. He declined to move in concert with Buell. FrÉmont had disorganised the army of the West, and Halleck, till he had repaired the mischief, permitted only certain minor enterprises under his command. Each of the three generals, including the General-in-Chief, who was the Government's chief adviser, was set upon his own immediate purpose, and indisposed to understanding the situation of the others—Buell perhaps the least so. Each of them had at first a very sound reason, the unreadiness of his army, for being in no hurry to move, but then each of them soon appeared to be a slow or unenterprising commander. Buell was perhaps unlucky in this, for his whole conduct is the subject of some controversy; but he did appear slow, and the two others, it is universally agreed, really were so. As 1861 drew to a close, it became urgent that something should be done somewhere, even if it were not done in the best possible direction. The political pressure upon the Administration became as great as before Bull Run. The army of the Potomac had rapidly become a fine army, and its enemy, in no way superior, lay entrenching at Manassas, twenty miles in front of it. When Lincoln grew despondent and declared that "if something was not done soon, the bottom would drop out of the whole concern," soldiers remark that the military situation was really sound; but he was right, for a people can hardly be kept up to the pitch of a high enterprise if it is forced to think that nothing will happen. Before the end of the year 1861 military reasons for waiting were no longer being urged; McClellan had long been promising immediate action, Buell and Halleck seemed merely unable to agree. In later days when Lincoln had learnt much by experience it is hard to trace the signs of his influence in military matters, because, though he followed them closely, he was commonly in full agreement with his chief general and he invariably and rightly left him free. At this stage, when his position was more difficult, and his guidance came from common sense and the military books, of which, ever since Bull Run, he had been trying, amidst all his work, to tear out the heart, there is evidence on which to judge the intelligence which he applied to the war. Certainly he now and ever after looked at the matter as a whole and formed a clear view of it, which, for a civilian at any rate, was a reasonable view. Certainly also at this time and for long after no military adviser attempted, in correcting any error of his, to supply him with a better opinion equally clear and comprehensive. This is probably why some Northern military critics, when they came to read his correspondence with his generals, called him, as his chief biographers were tempted to think him, "the ablest strategist of the war." Grant and Sherman did not say this; they said, what is another thing, that his was the greatest intellectual force that they had met with. Strictly speaking, he could not be a strategist. If he were so judged, he would certainly be found guilty of having, till Grant came to Washington, unduly scattered his forces. He could pick out the main objects; but as to how to economise effort, what force and how composed and equipped was necessary for a particular enterprise, whether in given conditions of roads, weather, supplies, and previous fatigue, a movement was practicable, and how long it would take any clever subaltern with actual experience of campaigning ought to have been a better judge than he. The test, which the reader must be asked to apply to his conduct of the war, is whether he followed, duly or unduly his own imperfect judgment, whether, on the whole, he gave in whenever it was wise to the generals under him, and whether he did so without losing his broad view or surrendering his ultimate purpose. It is really no small proof of strength that, with the definite judgments which he constantly formed, he very rarely indeed gave imperative orders as Commander-in-Chief, which he was, to any general. The circumstances, all of which will soon appear, in which he was tempted or obliged to do so, are only the few marked exceptions to his habitual conduct. There are significant contrary instances in which he abstained even from seeking to know his general's precise intentions. At the time which has just been reviewed, when the scheme of the war was in the making, his correspondence with Buell and Halleck shows his fundamental intention. He emphatically abstains from forcing them; he lucidly, though not so tactfully as later, urges his own view upon the consideration of his general, begging him, not necessarily to act upon it, but at least to see the point, and if he will not do what is wished, to form and explain as clearly a plan for doing something better. 2. The War in the West Up to May, 1862. The pressure upon McClellan to move grew stronger and indeed more justifiable month after month, and when at last, in March, 1862, McClellan did move, the story of the severest adversity to the North, of Lincoln's sorest trials, and, some still say, his gravest failures, began. Its details will concern us more than those of any other part of the war. But events in the West began earlier, proceeded faster, and should be told first. Buell could not obtain from McClellan permission to carry out his own scheme. He did, however, obtain permission for Halleck, if he consented, to send flotillas up the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers to make a diversion while Buell, as Lincoln had proposed and as McClellan had now ordered, marched upon Eastern Tennessee. Halleck would not move. Buell prepared to move alone, and in January, 1862, sent forward a small force under Thomas to meet an equally small Confederate force that had advanced through Cumberland Gap into Eastern Kentucky. Thomas won a complete victory, most welcome as the first success since the defeat of Bull Run, at a place called Mill Springs, far up the Cumberland River towards the mountains. But at the end of January, while Buell was following up with his forces rather widely dispersed because he expected no support from Halleck, he was brought to a stop, for Halleck, without warning, did make an important movement of his own, in which he would need Buell's support. The Cumberland and the Tennessee are navigable rivers which in their lower course flow parallel in a northerly or north-westerly direction to join the Ohio not far above its junction with the Mississippi at Cairo. Fort Henry was a Confederate fort guarding the navigation of the Tennessee near the northern boundary of the State of that name, Fort Donelson was another on the Cumberland not far off. Ulysses Simpson Grant, who had served with real distinction in the Mexican War, had retired from the Army and had been more or less employed about his father's leather store in Illinois and in the gloomy pursuit of intoxication and of raising small sums from reluctant friends when he met them. On the outbreak of the Civil War he suddenly pulled himself together, and with some difficulty got employment from the Governor of Illinois as a Major-General in the State Militia (obtaining Army rank later). Since then, while serving under Halleck, he had shown sense and promptitude in seizing an important point on the Ohio, upon which the Confederates had designs. He had a quick eye for seeing important points. Grant was now ordered or obtained permission from Halleck to capture Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. By the sudden movements of Grant and of the flotilla acting with him, the Confederates were forced to abandon Fort Henry on February 6, 1862. Ten days later Fort Donelson surrendered with nearly 10,000 prisoners, after a brilliant and nearly successful sortie by the garrison, in which Grant showed, further, tenacity and a collected mind under the pressure of imminent calamity. Halleck had given Grant little help. Buell was reluctant to detach any of his volunteer troops from their comrades to act with a strange army, and Halleck had not warned him of his intentions. Halleck soon applied to Lincoln for the supreme command over the two Western armies with Buell under him. This was given to him. Experience showed that one or the other must command now that concerted action was necessary. Nothing was known at Washington to set against Halleck's own claim of the credit for the late successes. So Lincoln gave him the command, though present knowledge shows clearly that Buell was the better man. Grant had been left before Fort Donelson in a position of some danger from the army under Albert Johnston; and, from needless fear of Beauregard with a Confederate force under him yet further West, Halleck let slip the chance of sending Grant in pursuit of Johnston, who was falling back up the Cumberland valley. As it was, Johnston for a time evacuated Nashville, further up the Cumberland, the chief town of Tennessee and a great railway centre, which Buell promptly occupied; Beauregard withdrew the Confederate troops from Columbus, a fortress of great reputed strength on the Mississippi not far below Cairo, to positions forty or fifty miles (as the crow flies) further down the stream. Thus, as it was, some important steps had been gained in securing that control of the navigation of the river which was one of the great military objects of the North. Furthermore, successful work was being done still further West by General Curtis in Missouri, who drove an invading force back into Arkansas and inflicted a crushing defeat upon them there in March. But a great stroke should now have been struck. Buell, it is said, saw plainly that his forces and Halleck's should have been concentrated as far up the Tennessee as possible in an endeavour to seize upon the main railway system of the Confederacy in the West. Halleck preferred, it would seem, to concentrate upon nothing and to scatter his forces upon minor enterprises, provided he did not risk any important engagement. An important engagement with the hope of destroying an army of the enemy was the very thing which, as Johnston's forces now stood, he should have sought, but he appears to have been contented by the temporary retirement of an unscathed enemy who would return again reinforced. Buell was an unlucky man, and Halleck got quite all he deserved, so it is possible that events have been described to us without enough regard to Halleck's case as against Buell. But at any rate, while much should have been happening, nothing very definite did happen till April 6, when Albert Johnston, now strongly reinforced from the extreme South, came upon Grant, who (it is not clear why) had lain encamped, without entrenching, and not expecting immediate attack, near Shiloh, far up the Tennessee River in the extreme south of Tennessee State. Buell at the time, though without clear information as to Grant's danger, was on his way to join him. There seems to have been negligence both on Halleck's part and on Grant's. The battle of Shiloh is said to have been highly characteristic of the combats of partly disciplined armies, in which the individual qualities, good or bad, of the troops play a conspicuous part. Direction on the part of Johnston or Grant was not conspicuously seen, but the latter, whose troops were surprised and driven back some distance, was intensely determined. In the course of that afternoon Albert Johnston was killed. Rightly or wrongly Jefferson Davis and his other friends regarded his death as the greatest of calamities to the South. After the manner of many battles, more especially in this war, the battle of Shiloh was the subject of long subsequent dispute between friends of Grant and of Buell, and far more bitter dispute between friends of Albert Johnston and Beauregard. But it seems that the South was on the point of winning, till late on the 6th the approach of the first reinforcements from Buell made it useless to attempt more. By the following morning further large reinforcements had come up; Grant in his turn attacked, and Beauregard had difficulty in turning a precipitate retirement into an orderly retreat upon Corinth, forty miles away, a junction upon the principal railway line to be defended. The next day General Pope, who had some time before been detached by Halleck for this purpose, after arduous work in canal cutting, captured, with 7,000 prisoners, the northernmost forts held by the Confederacy on the Mississippi. But Halleck's plans required that his further advance should be stopped. Halleck himself, in his own time, arrived at the front. In his own time, after being joined by Pope, he advanced, carefully entrenching himself every night. He covered in something over a month the forty miles route to Corinth, which, to his surprise, was bloodlessly evacuated before him. He was an engineer, and like some other engineers in the Civil War, was overmuch set upon a methodical and cautious procedure. But his mere advance to Corinth caused the Confederates to abandon yet another fort on the Mississippi, and on June 6 the Northern troops were able to occupy Memphis, for which Lincoln had long wished, while the flotilla accompanying them destroyed a Confederate flotilla. Meanwhile, on May 1, Admiral Farragut, daringly running up the Mississippi, had captured New Orleans, and a Northern force under Butler was able to establish itself in Louisiana. The North had now gained the command of most of the Mississippi, for only the hundred miles or so between Vicksburg far south and Port Hudson, between that and New Orleans, was still held by the South; and command by Northern gunboats of the chief tributaries of the great river was also established. The Confederate armies in the West were left intact, though with some severe losses, and would be able before long to strike northward in a well-chosen direction; for all that these were great and permanent gains. Yet the North was not cheered. The great loss of life at Shiloh, the greatest battle in the war so far, created a horrible impression. Halleck, under whom all this progress had been made, properly enough received a credit, which critics later have found to be excessive, though it is plain that he had reorganised his army well; but Grant was felt to have been caught napping at Shiloh; there were other rumours about him, too, and he fell deep into general disfavour. The events of the Western war did not pause for long, but, till the end of this year 1862, the North made no further definite progress, and the South, though it was able to invade the North, achieved no Important result. It will be well then here to take up the story of events in the East and to follow them continuously till May, 1863, when the dazzling fortune of the South in that theatre if the war reached its highest point. 3. The War in the East Up to May, 1863. The interest of this part of the Civil War lies chiefly in the achievements of Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson. From the point of view of the North, it was not only disastrous but forms a dreary and controversial chapter. George McClellan came to Washington amid overwhelming demonstrations of public confidence. His comparative youth added to the interest taken in him; and he was spoken of as "the young Napoleon." This ridiculous name for a man already thirty-four was a sign that the people expected impossible things from him. Letters to his wife, which have been injudiciously published, show him to us delighting at first in the consideration paid to him by Lincoln and Scott, proudly confident in his own powers, rather elated than otherwise by a sense that the safety of the country rested on him alone. "I shall carry the thing en grande, and crush the rebels in one campaign." He soon had a magnificent army; he may be said to have made it himself. Before, as he thought, the time had come to use it, he had fallen from favour, and a dead set was being made against him in Washington. A little later, at the crisis of his great venture, when, as he claimed, the Confederate capital could have been taken, his expedition was recalled. Then at a moment of deadly peril to the country his services were again called in. He warded off the danger. Yet a little while and his services were discarded for ever. This summary, which is the truth, but not the whole truth, must enlist a certain sympathy for him. The chief fact of his later life should at once be added. In 1864, when a Presidential election was approaching and despondency prevailed widely in the North, he was selected as the champion of a great party. The Democrats adopted a "platform" which expressed neither more nor less than a desire to end the war on any terms. In accordance with the invariable tradition of party opposition in war time, they chose a war hero as their candidate for the Presidency. McClellan publicly repudiated their principles, and no doubt he meant it, but he became their candidate—their master or their servant as it might prove. That he was Lincoln's opponent in the election of that year ensured that his merits and his misfortunes would be long remembered, but his action then may suggest to any one the doubtful point in his career all along. Some estimate of his curious yet by no means uncommon type of character is necessary, if Lincoln's relations with him are to be understood at all. The devotion to him shown by his troops proves that he had great titles to confidence, besides, what he also had, a certain faculty of parade, with his handsome charger, his imposing staff and the rest. He was a great trainer of soldiers, and with some strange lapses, a good organiser. He was careful for the welfare of his men; and his almost tender carefulness of their lives contrasted afterwards with what appeared the ruthless carelessness of Grant. Unlike some of his successors, he could never be called an incapable commander. His great opponent, Lee, who had known him of old, was wont to calculate on his extraordinary want of enterprise, but he spoke of him on the whole in terms of ample respect—also, by the way, he sympathised with him like a soldier when, as he naturally assumed, he became a victim to scheming politicians; and Lee confided this feeling to the ready ears of another great soldier, Wolseley. As he showed himself in civil life, McClellan was an attractive gentleman of genial address; it was voted that he was "magnetic," and his private life was so entirely irreproachable as to afford lively satisfaction. More than this, it may be conjectured that to a certain standard of honour, loyalty, and patriotism, which he set consciously before himself, he would always have been devotedly true. But if it be asked further whether McClellan was the desired instrument for Lincoln's and the country's needs, and whether, as the saying is, he was a man to go tiger-hunting with, something very much against him, though hard to define, appears in every part of his record (except indeed, one performance in his Peninsular Campaign). Did he ever do his best to beat the enemy? Did he ever, except for a moment, concentrate himself singly upon any great object? Were even his preparations thorough? Was his information ever accurate? Was his purpose in the war ever definite, and, if so, made plain to his Government? Was he often betrayed into marked frankness, or into marked generosity? No one would be ready to answer yes to any of these questions. McClellan fills so memorable a place in American history that he demands such a label as can be given to him. In the most moving and the most authentic of all Visions of Judgment, men were not set on the right hand or the left according as they were of irreproachable or reproachable character; they were divided into those who did and those who did not. In the provisional judgment which men, if they make it modestly, should at times make with decision, McClellan's place is clear. The quality, "spiacente a Dio ed ai nemici suoi," of the men who did not, ran through and through him. Lincoln required first a general who would make no fatal blunder, but he required too, when he could find him, a general of undaunted enterprise; he did not wish to expose the North to disaster, but he did mean to conquer the South. There was some security in employing McClellan, though employing him did at one time throw on Lincoln's unfit shoulders the task of defending Washington. It proved very hard to find another general equally trustworthy. But, in the light of facts which Lincoln came to perceive, it proved impossible to consider McClellan as the man to finish the war. We need only notice the doings of the main armies in this theatre of the war and take no account of various minor affairs at outlying posts. From the battle of Bull Run, which was on July 21, 1861, to March 5, 1862, the Southern army under Joseph Johnston lay quietly drilling at Manassas. It, of course, entrenched its position, but to add to the appearance of its strength, it constructed embrasures for more than its number of guns and had dummy guns to show in them. At one moment there was a prospect that it might move. Johnston and the general with him had no idea of attacking the army of the Potomac where it lay, but they did think that with a further 50,000 or 60,000 they might successfully invade Maryland, crossing higher up the Potomac, and by drawing McClellan away from his present position, get a chance of defeating him. The Southern President came to Manassas, at their invitation, on October 1, but he did not think well to withdraw the trained men whom he could have sent to Johnston from the various points in the South at which they were stationed; he may have had good reasons but it is likely that he sacrificed one of the best chances of the South. McClellan's army was soon in as good a state of preparation as Johnston's. Early in October McClellan had, on his own statement, over 147,000 men at his disposal; Joseph Johnston, on his own statement, under 47,000. Johnston was well informed as to McClellan's numbers—very likely he could get information from Maryland more easily than McClellan from Virginia. The two armies lay not twenty-five miles apart. The weather and the roads were good to the end of December; the roads were practicable by March and they seem to have been so all the time. As spring approached, it appeared to the Southern generals that McClellan must soon advance. Johnston thought that his right flank was liable to be turned and the railway communications south of Manassas liable to be cut. In the course of February it was realised that his position was too dangerous; the large stores accumulated there were removed; and when, early in March, there were reports of unusual activity in the Northern camp, Johnston, still expecting attack from the same direction, began his retreat. On March 9 it was learned in Washington that Manassas had been completely evacuated. McClellan marched his whole army there, and marched it back. Johnston withdrew quietly behind the Rapidan River, some 30 miles further south, and to his surprise was left free from any pursuit. For months past the incessant report in the papers, "all quiet upon the Potomac," had been getting upon the nerves of the North. The gradual conversion of their pride in an imposing army into puzzled rage at its inactivity has left a deeper impression on Northern memories than the shock of disappointment at Bull Run. Public men of weight had been pressing for an advance in November, and when the Joint Committee of Congress, an arbitrary and meddlesome, but able and perhaps on the whole useful body, was set up in December, it brought its full influence to bear on the President. Lincoln was already anxious enough; he wished to rouse McClellan himself to activity, while he screened him against excessive impatience or interference with his plans. It is impossible to say what was McClellan's real mind. Quite early he seems to have held out hopes to Lincoln that he would soon attack, but he was writing to his wife that he expected to be attacked by superior numbers. It is certain, however, that he was possessed now and always by a delusion as to the enemy's strength. For instance Lincoln at last felt bound to work out for himself definite prospects for a forward movement; it is sufficient to say of this layman's effort that he proposed substantially the line of advance which Johnston a little later began to dread most; Lincoln's plan was submitted for McClellan's consideration; McClellan rejected it, and his reasons were based on his assertion that he would have to meet nearly equal numbers. He, in fact, out-numbered the enemy by more than three to one. If we find the President later setting aside the general's judgment on grounds that are not fully explained, we must recall McClellan's vast and persistent miscalculations of an enemy resident in his neighbourhood. And the distrust which he thus created was aggravated by another propensity of his vague mind. His illusory fear was the companion of an extravagant hope; the Confederate army was invincible when all the world expected him to attack it then and there, but the blow which he would deal it in his own place and his own time was to have decisive results, which were indeed impossible; the enemy was to "pass beneath the Caudine Forks." The demands which he made on the Administration for men and supplies seemed to have no finality about them; his tone in regard to them seemed to degenerate into a chronic grumble. The War Department certainly did not intend to stint him in any way; but he was an unsatisfactory man to deal with in these matters. There was a great mystery as to what became of the men sent to him. In the idyllic phrase, which Lincoln once used of him or of some other general, sending troops to him was "like shifting fleas across a barn floor with a shovel—not half of them ever get there." But his fault was graver than this; utterly ignoring the needs of the West, he tried, as General-in-Chief, to divert to his own army the recruits and the stores required for the other armies. The difficulty with him went yet further; McClellan himself deliberately set to work to destroy personal harmony between himself and his Government. It counts for little that in private he soon set down all the civil authorities as the "greatest set of incapables," and so forth, but it counts for more that he was personally insolent to the President. Lincoln had been in the habit, mistaken in this case but natural in a chief who desires to be friendly, of calling at McClellan's house rather than summoning him to his own. McClellan acquired a habit of avoiding him, he treated his enquiries as idle curiosity, and he probably thought, not without a grain of reason, that Lincoln's way of discussing matters with many people led him into indiscretion. So one evening when Lincoln and Seward were waiting at the general's house for his return, McClellan came in and went upstairs; a message was sent that the President would be glad to see him; he said he was tired and would rather be excused that night. Lincoln damped down his friends' indignation at this; he would, he once said, "hold General McClellan's stirrup for him if he will only win us victories." But he called no more at McClellan's, and a curious abruptness in some of his orders later marks his unsuccessful effort to deal with McClellan in another way. The slightly ridiculous light in which the story shows Lincoln would not obscure to any soldier the full gravity of such an incident. It was not merely foolish to treat a kind superior rudely; a general who thus drew down a curtain between his own mind and that of the Government evidently went a very long way to ensure failure in war. Lincoln had failed to move McClellan early in December. For part of that month and January McClellan was very ill. Consultations were held with other generals, including McDowell, who could not be given the chief command because the troops did not trust him. McDowell and the rest were in agreement with Lincoln. Then McClellan suddenly recovered and was present at a renewed consultation. He snubbed McDowell; the inadequacy of his force to meet, in fact, less than a third of its number was "so plain that a blind man could see it"; he was severely and abruptly tackled as to his own plans by Secretary Chase; Lincoln intervened to shield him, got from him a distinct statement that he had in his mind a definite time for moving, and adjourned the meeting. Stanton, one of the friends to whom McClellan had confided his grievances, was now at the War Department and was at one with the Joint Committee of Congress in his impatience that McClellan should move. At last, on January 27, Lincoln published a "General War Order" that a forward movement was to be made by the army of the Potomac and the Western armies on February 22. It seems a blundering step, but it roused McClellan. For a time he even thought of acting as Lincoln wished; he would move straight against Johnston, and "in ten days," he told Chase on February 13, "I shall be in Richmond." But he quickly returned to the plan which he seems to have been forming before but which he only now revealed to the Government, and it was a plan which involved further delay. When February 22 passed and nothing was done, the Joint Committee were indignant that Lincoln still stood by McClellan. But McClellan now was proposing definite action; apart from the difficulty of finding a better man, there was the fact that McClellan had made his army and was beloved by it; above all, Lincoln had not lost all the belief he had formed at first in McClellan's capacity; he believed that "if he could once get McClellan started" he would do well. Professional criticism, alive to McClellan's military faults, has justified Lincoln in this, and it was for something other than professional failure that Lincoln at last removed him. McClellan had determined to move his army by sea to some point further down the coast of the Chesapeake Bay. The questions which Lincoln wrote to him requesting a written answer have never been adequately answered. Did McClellan's plan, he asked, require less time or money than Lincoln's? Did it make victory more certain? Did it make it more valuable? In case of disaster, did it make retreat more easy? The one point for consideration in McClellan's reply to him is that the enemy did not expect such a movement. This was quite true; but the enemy was able to meet it, and McClellan was far too deliberate to reap any advantage from a surprise. His original plan was to land near a place called Urbana on the estuary of the Rappahannock, not fifty miles east of Richmond. When he heard that Johnston had retreated further south, he assumed, and ever after declared, that this was to anticipate his design upon Urbana, which, he said, must have reached the enemy's ears through the loose chattering of the Administration. As has been seen, this was quite untrue. His project of going to Urbana was now changed, by himself or the Government, upon the unanimous advice of his chief subordinate generals, into a movement to Fort Monroe, which he had even before regarded as preferable to a direct advance southwards. A few days after Johnston's retreat, the War Department began the embarkation of his troops for this point. Fort Monroe is at the end of the peninsula which lies between the estuaries of the York River on the north and the James on the south. Near the base of this projection of land, seventy-five miles from Fort Monroe, stands Richmond. On April 2, 1862, McClellan himself landed to begin the celebrated Peninsula Campaign which was to close in disappointment at the end of July. Before the troops were sent to the Peninsula several things were to be done. An expedition to restore communication westward by the Baltimore and Ohio Rail way involved bridging the Potomac with boats which were to be brought by canal. It collapsed because McClellan's boats were six inches too wide for the canal locks. Then Lincoln had insisted that the navigation of the lower Potomac should be made free from the menace of Confederate batteries which, if McClellan would have co-operated with the Navy Department, would have been cleared away long before. This was now done, and though a new peril to the transportation of McClellan's army suddenly and dramatically disclosed itself, it was as suddenly and dramatically removed. In the hasty abandonment of Norfolk harbour on the south of the James estuary by the North, a screw steamer called the Merrimac had been partly burnt and scuttled by the North. On March 1 she steamed out of the harbour in sight of the North. The Confederates had raised her and converted her into an ironclad. Three wooden ships of the North gave gallant but useless fight to her and were destroyed that day; and the news spread consternation in every Northern port. On the very next morning there came into the mouth of the James the rival product of the Northern Navy Department and of the Swedish engineer Ericsson's invention. She was compared to a "cheesebox on a raft"; she was named the Monitor, and was the parent of a type of vessel so called which has been heard of much more recently. The Merrimac and the Monitor forthwith fought a three hours' duel; then each retired into harbour without fatal damage. But the Merrimac never came out again; she was destroyed by the Confederates when McClellan had advanced some way up the Peninsula; and it will be unnecessary to speak of the several similar efforts of the South, which nearly but not quite achieved very important successes later. Before and after his arrival at the Peninsula, McClellan received several mortifications. Immediately after the humiliation of the enemy's escape from Manassas, he was without warning relieved of his command as General-in-Chief. This would in any case have followed naturally upon his expedition away from Washington; it was in public put on that ground alone; and he took it well. He had been urged to appoint corps commanders, for so large a force as his could not remain organised only in divisions; he preferred to wait till he had made trial of the generals under him; Lincoln would not have this delay, and appointed corps commanders chosen by himself because he believed them to be fighting men. The manner in which these and some other preparatory steps were taken were, without a doubt, intended to make McClellan feel the whip. They mark a departure, not quite happy at first, from Lincoln's formerly too gentle manner. A worse shock to McClellan followed. The President had been emphatic in his orders that a sufficient force should be left to make Washington safe, and supposed that he had come to a precise understanding on this point. He suddenly discovered that McClellan, who had now left for Fort Monroe, had ordered McDowell to follow him with a force so large that it would not leave the required number behind. Lincoln immediately ordered McDowell and his whole corps to remain, though he subsequently sent a part of it to McClellan. McClellan's story later gives reason for thinking that he had intended no deception; but if so, he had expressed himself with unpardonable vagueness, and he had not in fact left Washington secure. Now and throughout this campaign Lincoln took the line that Washington must be kept safe—safe in the judgment of all the best military authorities available. McClellan's progress up the Peninsula was slow. He had not informed himself correctly as to the geography; he found the enemy not so unprepared as he had supposed; he wasted, it is agreed, a month in regular approaches to their thinly-manned fortifications at Yorktown, when he might have carried them by assault. He was soon confronted by Joseph Johnston, and he seems both to have exaggerated Johnston's numbers again and to have been unprepared for his movements. The Administration does not seem to have spared any effort to support him. In addition to the 100,000 troops he took with him, 40,000 altogether were before long despatched to him. He was operating in a very difficult country, but he was opposed at first by not half his own number. Lincoln, in friendly letters, urged upon him that delay enabled the enemy to strengthen himself both in numbers and in fortifications. The War Department did its best for him. The whole of his incessant complaints on this score are rendered unconvincing by the language of his private letters about that "sink of iniquity, Washington," "those treacherous hounds," the civil authorities, who were at least honest and intelligent men, and the "Abolitionists and other scoundrels," who, he supposed, wished the destruction of his army. The criticism in Congress of himself and his generals was no doubt free, but so, as Lincoln reminded him, was the criticism of Lincoln himself. Justly or not, there were complaints of his relations with corps commanders. Lincoln gave no weight to them, but wrote him a manly and a kindly warning. The points of controversy which McClellan bequeathed to writers on the Civil War are innumerable, but no one can read his correspondence at this stage without concluding that he was almost impossible to deal with, and that the whole of his evidence in his own case was vitiated by a sheer hallucination that people wished him to fail. He had been nearly two months in the Peninsula when he was attacked at a disadvantage by Johnston, but defeated him on May 31 and June 1 in a battle which gave confidence and prestige to the Northern side, but which he did not follow up. A part of his army pursued the enemy to within four miles of Richmond, and it has been contended that if he had acted with energy he could at this time have taken that city. His delay, to whatever it was due, gave the enemy time to strengthen himself greatly both in men and in fortifications. The capable Johnston was severely wounded in the battle, and was replaced by the inspired Lee. According to McClellan's own account, which English writers have followed, his movements had been greatly embarrassed by the false hope given him that McDowell was now to march overland and join him. His statement that he was influenced by this is refuted by his own letters at the time. McClellan, however, suffered a great disappointment. The front of Washington was now clear of the enemy and Lincoln had determined to send McDowell when he was induced to keep him back by a diversion in the war which he had not expected, and which indeed McClellan had advised him not to expect. "Stonewall" Jackson's most famous campaign happened at this juncture, and to save Washington, Lincoln and Stanton placed themselves, or were placed, in the trying position of actually directing movements of troops. There were to the south and south-west of Washington, besides the troops under McDowell's command, two Northern forces respectively commanded by Generals Banks and FrÉmont. These two men were among the chief examples of those "political generals," the use of whom in this early and necessarily blundering stage of the war has been the subject of much comment. Banks was certainly a politician, a self-made man, who had worked in a factory and who had risen to be at one time Speaker of the House. He was now a general because as a powerful man in the patriotic State of Massachusetts he brought with him many men, and these were ready to obey him. On the other hand, he on several occasions showed good judgment both in military matters and in the questions of civil administration which came under him; his heart was in his duty; and, though he held high commands almost to the end of the war, want of competence was never imputed to him till the failure of a very difficult enterprise on which he was despatched in 1864. He was now in the lower valley of the Shenandoah, keeping a watch over a much smaller force under Jackson higher up the valley. FrÉmont was in some sense a soldier, but after his record in Missouri he should never have been employed. His new appointment was one of Lincoln's greatest mistakes, and it was a mistake of a characteristic kind. It will easily be understood that there were real political reasons for not leaving this popular champion of freedom unused and unrecognized. These reasons should not have, and probably would not have, prevailed. But Lincoln's personal reluctance to resist all entreaties on behalf of his own forerunner and his own rival was great; and then FrÉmont came to Lincoln and proposed to him a knight-errant's adventure to succour the oppressed Unionists of Tennessee by an expedition through West Virginia. So he was now to proceed there, but was kept for the present in the mountains near the Shenandoah valley. The way in which the forces under McDowell, Banks and FrÉmont were scattered on various errands was unscientific; what could be done by Jackson, in correspondence with Lee, was certainly unforeseen. At the beginning of May, Jackson, who earlier in the spring had achieved some minor successes in the Shenandoah valley and had raided West Virginia, began a series of movements of which the brilliant skill and daring are recorded in Colonel Henderson's famous book. With a small force, surrounded by other forces, each of which, if concentrated, should have outnumbered him, he caught each in turn at a disadvantage, inflicted on them several damaging blows, and put the startled President and Secretary of War in fear for the safety of Washington. There seemed to be no one available who could immediately be charged with the supreme command of these three Northern forces, unless McDowell could have been spared from where he was; so Lincoln with Stanton's help took upon himself to ensure the co-operation of their three commanders by orders from Washington. His self-reliance had now begun to reach its full stature, his military good sense in comparison with McClellan's was proving greater than he had supposed, and he had probably not discovered its limitations. Presumably his plans now were, like an amateur's, too complicated, and it is not worth while to discuss them. But he was trying to cope with newly revealed military genius, and, so far as can be told, he was only prevented from crushing the adventurous Jackson by a piece of flat disobedience on the part of FrÉmont. FrÉmont, having thus appropriately punished Lincoln, was removed, this time finally, from command. Jackson, having successfully kept McDowell from McClellan, had before the end of June escaped safe southward. McClellan was nearing Richmond. Lee, by this time, had been set free from Jefferson Davis' office and had taken over the command of Joseph Johnston's army. Lincoln must have learnt a great deal, and he fully realised that the forces not under McClellan in the East should be under some single commander. Pope, an experienced soldier, had succeeded well in the West; he was no longer necessary there, and there was no adverse criticism upon him. He was in all respects a proper choice, and he was now summoned to take command of what was to be called the army of Virginia. A few days later, upon the advice, as it seems, of Scott, Halleck himself was called from the West. His old command was left to Grant and he himself was made General-in-Chief and continued at Washington to the end of the war as an adviser of the Government. All the progress in the West had been made under Halleck's supervision, and his despatches had given an exaggerated impression of his own achievement at Corinth. He had not seen active service before the war, but he had a great name as an accomplished military writer; in after years he was well known as a writer on international law. He is not thought to have justified his appointment by showing sound judgment about war, and Lincoln upon some later emergency told him in his direct way that his military knowledge was useless if he could not give a definite decision in doubtful circumstances. But whether Halleck's abilities were great or small, Lincoln continued to use them, because he found him "wholly for the service," without personal favour or prejudice. McClellan was slowly but steadily nearing Richmond. From June 26 to July 2 there took place a series of engagements between Lee and McClellan, or rather the commanders under him, known as the Seven Days' Battles. The fortunes of the fighting varied greatly, but the upshot is that, though the corps on McClellan's left won a strong position not far from Richmond, the sudden approach of Jackson's forces upon McClellan's right flank, which began on the 26th, placed him in what appears to have been, as he himself thought it, a situation of great danger. Lee is said to have "read McClellan like an open book," playing upon his caution, which made him, while his subordinates fought, more anxious to secure their retreat than to seize upon any advantage they gained. But Lee's reading deceived him in one respect. He had counted upon McClellan's retreating, but thought he would retreat under difficulties right down the Peninsula to his original base and be thoroughly cut up on the way. But on July 2 McClellan with great skill withdrew his whole army to Harrison's Landing far up the James estuary, having effected with the Navy a complete transference of his base. Here his army lay in a position of security; they might yet threaten Richmond, and McClellan's soldiers still believed in him. But the South was led by a great commander and had now learned to give him unbounded confidence; there was some excuse for a panic in Wall Street, and every reason for dejection in the North. On the third of the Seven Days, McClellan, much moved by the sight of dead and wounded comrades, sent a gloomy telegram to the Secretary of War, appealing with excessive eloquence for more men. "I only wish to say to the President," he remarked in it, "that I think he is wrong in regarding me as ungenerous when I said that my force was too weak." He concluded: "If I save the army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you nor to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army." Stanton still expressed the extraordinary hope that Richmond would fall in a day or two. He had lately committed the folly of suspending enlistment, an act which, though of course there is an explanation of it, must rank as the one first-rate blunder of Lincoln's Administration. He was now negotiating through the astute Seward for offers from the State Governors of a levy of 300,000 men to follow up McClellan's success. Lincoln, as was his way, feared the worst. He seems at one moment to have had fears for McClellan's sanity. But he telegraphed, himself, an answer to him, which affords as fair an example as can be given of his characteristic manner. "Save your army at all events. Will send reinforcements as fast as we can. Of course they cannot reach you to-day or to-morrow, or next day. I have not said you were ungenerous for saying you needed reinforcements. I thought you were ungenerous in assuming that I did not send them as fast as I could. I feel any misfortune to you and your army quite as keenly as you feel it yourself. If you have had a drawn battle or repulse, it is the price we pay for the enemy not being in Washington. We protected Washington and the enemy concentrated on you. Had we stripped Washington, he would have been upon us before the troops could have gotten to you. Less than a week ago you notified us reinforcements were leaving Richmond to come in front of us. It is the nature of the case, and neither you nor the Government are to blame. Please tell me at once the present condition and aspect of things." Demands for an impossible number of reinforcements continued. Lincoln explained to McClellan a few days later that they were impossible, and added: "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 an impression. I only beg that, in like manner, you will not ask impossibilities of me." Much argument upon Lincoln's next important act may be saved by the simple observations that the problem in regard to the defence of Washington was real, that McClellan's propensity to ask for the impossible was also real, and that Lincoln's patient and loyal attitude to him was real too. Five days after his arrival at Harrison's Landing, McClellan wrote Lincoln a long letter. It was a treatise upon Lincoln's political duties. It was written as "on the brink of eternity." He was not then in fact in any danger, and possibly he had composed it seven days before as his political testament; and apprehensions, free from personal fear, excuse, without quite redeeming, its inappropriateness. The President is before all things not to abandon the cause. But the cause should be fought for upon Christian principles. Christian principles exclude warfare on private property. More especially do they exclude measures for emancipating slaves. And if the President gives way to radical views on slavery, he will get no soldiers. Then follows a mandate to the President to appoint a Commander-in-Chief, not necessarily the writer. Such a summary does injustice to a certain elevation of tone in the letter, but that elevation is itself slightly strained. McClellan, whatever his private opinions, had not meddled with politics before he left Washington. The question why in this military crisis he should have written what a Democratic politician might have composed as a party manifesto must later have caused Lincoln some thought, but it apparently did not enter into the decision he next took. He arrived himself at Harrison's Landing next day. McClellan handed him the letter. Lincoln read it, and said that he was obliged to him. McClellan sent a copy to his wife as "a very important record." Lincoln had come in order to learn the views of McClellan and all his corps commanders. They differed a good deal on important points, but a majority of them were naturally anxious to stay and fight there. Lincoln was left in some anxiety as to how the health of the troops would stand the climate of the coming months if they had to wait long where they were. He was also disturbed by McClellan's vagueness about the number of his men, for he now returned as present for duty a number which far exceeded that which some of his recent telegrams had given and yet fell short of the number sent him by an amount which no reasonable estimate of killed, wounded, and sick could explain. This added to Lincoln's doubt on the main question presented to him. McClellan believed that he could take Richmond, but he demanded for this very large reinforcements. Some part of them were already being collected, but the rest could by no means be given him without leaving Washington with far fewer troops to defend it than McClellan or anybody else had hitherto thought necessary. On July 24, the day after his arrival at Washington, Halleck was sent to consult with McClellan and his generals. The record of their consultations sufficiently shows the intricacy of the problem to be decided. The question of the health of the climate in August weighed much with Halleck, but the most striking feature of their conversation was the fluctuation of McClellan's own opinion upon each important point—at one moment he even gave Halleck the impression that he wished under all the circumstances to withdraw and to join Pope. When Halleck returned to Washington McClellan telegraphed in passionate anxiety to be left in the Peninsula and reinforced. On the other hand, some of the officers of highest rank with him wrote strongly urging withdrawal. This latter was the course on which Lincoln and Halleck decided. In the circumstances it was certainly the simplest course to concentrate all available forces in an attack upon the enemy from the direction of Washington which would keep that capital covered all the while. It was in any case no hasty and no indefensible decision, nor is there any justification for the frequent assertion that some malignant influence brought it about. It is one of the steps taken by Lincoln which have been the most often lamented. But if McClellan had had all he demanded to take Richmond and had made good his promise, what would Lee have done? Lee's own answer to a similar question later was, "We would swap queens"; that is, he would have taken Washington. If so the Confederacy would not have fallen, but in all probability the North would have collapsed, and European Powers would at the least have recognised the Confederacy. |
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