Terrible Swift Sword (57 page)

The bark was really worse
than the bite. The harshest parts of the orders were not enforced, innocent non-combatants
were not shot despite these rasped threats, and by the end of the war the
policy thus laid down would be considered more or less normal for an army
campaigning in hostile country. But these orders did not come at the end of the
war; they came when the old illusion that some limit could be placed on mortal
combat still lingered, when the phrase about "the war between
brothers" might yet seem to connote romance and good sportsmanship rather
than anger, bitterness and a deep desire to hurt. They outraged and shocked the
Southern nation, which at once concluded that John Pope was a monster, but
their real significance went far beyond Pope. They meant that the Federal
government had at last abandoned the belief that it could make war
dispassionately and without leaving scars and resentment. As Mr. Davis promptly
pointed out to the Confederate Congress, these orders were perfectly in tune
with the spirit of the Confiscation Act which the Federal Congress had recently
adopted: they meant ruthlessness and a fight to the finish, and the Confederacy
could respond only by "employing against our foe every energy and every
resource at our disposal."
^s

If the shootings and imprisonments
promised by General Pope failed to materialize, the orders did bring much
suffering to Virginians who lived in the path of Pope's army. The Federal
soldiers never were tightly disciplined, any long march meant extensive
straggling, the stragglers always included the worst rowdies in the army, and
the men now interpreted the new directive to mean that pillage and looting were
more or less legal. Farms were stripped of livestock and grain, smokehouses
were robbed, homes were entered, and one Federal officer ruefully admitted that
"the lawless acts of many of our soldiers are worthy of worse than
death." Most of the men rationalized their behavior: it was absurd to
protect secessionist property when the men who were trying to put down secession
were hungry. This feeling as a matter of fact existed in McClellan's army as
well as in Pope's, and some of the Army of the Potomac units this summer
ravaged the Virginia peninsula with a heavy hand.
⁴

As an inevitable by-product, the
soldiers became an anti-slavery force. An army which, by orders and on impulse,
deprived secessionists of their property in order to win the war was not
likely to make an exception in the case of human property. Soldiers who had not
a trace of sympathy for the Negro would nevertheless set him free if his owner
was an enemy who needed to be hurt. No matter what laws or proclamations might
come out of Washington, the Union armies were certain to corrode the
institution of slavery to the point of its collapse if they operated in slave
territory long enough. The slaves themselves got the point before anyone else
did, and the appearance of Federal troops sent waves of restlessness across
every plantation. A few weeks after McDowell's regiments occupied
Fredericksburg, Betty Herndoh Maury noticed that the town was clogged with
runaway slaves, who were "leaving their owners by the hundred and
demanding wages." She added: "Many little difficulties have occurred
since the Yankees have been here, between white people and Negroes. In every case
the soldiers have interfered in favor of the Negroes."
⁵
Be it
noted that this happened under McDowell, who was one Federal general who tried
so hard to protect Southern property that his soldiers actually suspected him
of being disloyal to the Union.

A ferment was working, and the only way
to stop it was to stop the war, presumably by winning it. In Virginia the
Federals had the manpower to win; McClellan and Pope had fully twice as many
men as Lee had, and reinforcements were in sight. But McClellan was on the
James and Pope was on the Rappahannock, and the victorious Army of Northern
Virginia lay between them. Pope obviously would never be sent down to the
peninsula, because the administration was as reluctant as ever to uncover
Washington. He would unquestionably advance overland, striking at Richmond
from the north, and his army was smaller than Lee's; if McClellan remained
inert, Lee could slip out of Richmond, defeat Pope, and then get back and
confront the Army of the Potomac in its lines at Harrison's Landing. So
McClellan and Pope would have to work together and their moves would have to be
precisely co-ordinated, and, early in July, Pope wrote to McClellan to find out
what could be done.

McClellan's reply was
cordial but not very helpful. He approved of Pope's decision to concentrate his
forces, and he promised that if Pope advanced and was attacked by Lee, "I
will move upon Richmond, do my best to take it, and endeavor to cut off his
retreat." But he warned that "it is not yet determined what policy
the enemy intends to pursue, whether to attack Washington or to bestow his
entire attention upon this army"; for his own part, McClellan could only
say that "I shall carefully watch for any fault committed by the enemy and
take advantage of it." To this frank acknowledgment that Lee had the
initiative, McClellan added the hope that Pope could at least advance his
cavalry enough to divert Lee's attention from the Army of the Potomac.
⁶

It would have been hard enough at best
to get one harmonious offensive from these two separated armies; as things
actually were it was simply impossible. McClellan and Pope disliked and
distrusted each other intensely. McClellan expected Pope to fail and Pope
expected McClellan to let him fail, and in the end each man was right. When
Pope first reached Washington he told President Lincoln that McClellan ought to
be removed, and not long afterward he assured Secretary Chase that McClellan's
"incompetency and indisposition to active movements" were so great
that if Pope ever needed the help of McClellan's army he was not likely to get
it. McClellan's opinion of Pope was unqestionably expressed (at least in part)
by his close confidant, Fitz John Porter, who told a friend that in his address
to his troops Pope "has now written himself down, what the military world
has long known, an Ass," and said that the Army of the Potomac had no confidence
in the man.
⁷
Only an alert and forceful general-in-chief could have
made Pope and McClellan work together, and the general-in-chief at this point
was Halleck.

Halleck assumed his new duties in
Washington on July 23. Realizing that the first trouble spot to examine was at
Harrison's Landing, he left immediately for that place to have a talk with
McClellan. Six months earlier he had assured McClellan that the Federals'
"want of success" came because politicians rather than soldiers were
making mistakes;
⁸
now he and McClellan, two generals who had done
much to prove that this appraisal was wrOng, would see if they could somehow
manage to get the Army of the Potomac back into action.

McClellan
told Barlow that he had not been consulted about Halleck's appointment and that
the move was undoubtedly "intended as 'a slap in the face'"; he
believed that he himself was about to be relieved of his command, and since he
was tired "of submitting to the whims of such 'things' as those now over
me" he would be happy enough to go into retirement. He preserved the
amenities, however, telling Halleck that he would have urged his appointment
if he had been asked for his advice and assuring him that he felt not a particle
of enmity or jealousy. This was perhaps stretching things a little, but at
least the two generals conferred without striking sparks.
⁹

The interview was fairly brief, and neither
man got much out of it. Halleck was informed that the Army of the Potomac was
badly outnumbered—its latest report showed 101,000 present for duty, but Lee
had at least 200,000. (Halleck told Secretary Stanton when he got back to Washington
that he had not been in the east long enough to know whether this estimate of
Lee's strength was correct.) The army would advance on Richmond if it could be
strongly reinforced; meanwhile it would be bad to withdraw it from the
peninsula, because the true defense of Washington was there. McClellan in turn
was told that it was impossible to reinforce him to any great extent; if he
could not move on Richmond with very moderate additions to his strength it
would probably be necessary to withdraw his army. (If the Army of the Potomac
and Pope's army were made into one, Halleck wanted McClellan to command the
whole.) Then Halleck returned to Washington, reflected that if McClellan was
right about the size of Lee's army it was mortally dangerous to approach that
army with divided forces, and on July 30 he sent word that "in order to
enable you to move in any direction" McClellan should at once send away
his sick men, of whom there were about 12,000.

Then, on August
3,
the ax came down.
Halleck formally notified McClellan that "it is determined to withdraw
your army from the peninsula to Aquia Creek." McClellan protested
vigorously, but Halleck was firm: the decision was his own, he would risk his
reputation on it, and McClellan must hurry the movement as fast as he could.
¹⁰

So the peninsula campaign was over, the first
great campaign of the Army of the Potomac. It had lasted just about four
months: a month at Yorktown, nearly a month spent moving from Yorktown to the
lines along the Chickahominy, a month in front of Richmond ending in the agony
of the Seven Days, and finally a month of dazed convalescence at Harrison's
Landing. The army had fought hard and endured much, it had pride and self-pity
at the same time, and it was developing its own legend, which—like the profound
emotional attachment which it had for its commanding general —would always set
it apart from the other Union armies. It was acquiring what can only be called
a sort of dogged pessimism, a fatalistic readiness to expect the worst, as if
it sensed that its best efforts would be wasted but was not thereby made
disheartened; and now as for months to come it would have to keep step with its
rival, the Army of Northern Virginia.

The Army of Northern Virginia was also
developing its own distinctive character. It had a harder, more tragic fate,
and yet there is more laughter in its legend—as if, in some unaccountable way,
it worried less. Out of hardship, intermittent malnutrition, and
desperately-won victories it was creating a lean, threadbare jauntiness.
Beneath this was the great characteristic which it derived from its commander—
the resolute belief that it could not really be beaten no matter what the odds
might be. It had paid many lives for that conviction and it would pay many
more before it reached the last turn in the road, but what it got seems to have
been worth the price.

In
the middle of July its situation did not exactly look promising. The invading
Federals had been beaten but they had not been driven away, and they were still
camped within twenty-five miles of Richmond. With a Federal fleet in the James,
Lee had never seen any chance to attack the Harrison's Landing camp
successfully, and for some weeks after Malvern Hill he believed that McClellan
would be reinforced and would try again to capture Richmond. Pope's concentration
along the upper Rappahannock contained the threat of final disaster, for it
hinted that the Federals might at last be trying to bring their overwhelming
numerical advantage to bear at close quarters. The figures told the story.
Pope's strength had been raised to more than 50,000 although not all of these
were at hand—one division lay far to the east, at Fredericksburg, and other
units had not come down from the Shenandoah. Burnside was bringing 12,000 men
up from North Carolina and would move to join Pope before long. Even if
McClellan left 10,000 men to hold Fort Monroe, which was probable, it was clear
that if he and Pope moved together the Federals could assemble more than
140,000 men at the gates of Richmond. Lee commanded fewer than 70,000 men of
all arms. His only recourse was to put Pope out of action before the gigantic
concentration could be effected.
¹¹

He could do it if he moved fast and
boldly—provided, of course, that the Army of the Potomac, which was close
enough to put the clamps on at any time, permitted him to move at all. On July
13 he took the first step, sending Stonewall Jackson with 12,000 men off to
Gordonsville, where the Virginia Central Railroad crossed the line of the
Orange & Alexandria. (If his army planned to go north or if Pope's army
planned to come south, Gordonsville was a place the Confederacy had to hold.)
This was bold enough, because Gordonsville was sixty miles from Richmond and if
McClellan advanced suddenly Jackson could not get back in time; but anything
was better than to remain inactive and await envelopment, and Lee took the
risk. News of the move reached both Pope and McClellan, but nothing happened.
Pope went on concentrating his army in the vicinity of Sperryville, twenty-five
miles north of Jackson's position, and McClellan stayed at Harrison's Landing,
demanding reinforcements. The first step having been taken successfully, Lee
went on to take a longer one, sending A. P. Hill and his powerful "light
division" off to join Jackson.

Lee
was gambling, having coldly weighed the odds. When Hill reached him, Jackson
had nearly 30,000 of the best soldiers in Lee's army. The Army of the Potomac,
hardly two marches away from Richmond, now had a solid two-to-one advantage in
numbers, and again if it saw its opportunity and acted on it the Confederacy
might be ruined. Lee frankly told Mr. Davis that he disliked to reduce his own
strength so drastically, but that Jackson's original force was not big enough
to attack Pope and that Pope "ought to be suppressed if possible."
¹²
Whatever risks this action might involve, the worst risk of all for a general
in Lee's situation was to try to play it safe; so Lee waited, with the
controlled calm of
a
gambler who has everything riding on the next
play, while Jackson marched north of the Rapidan to commence the suppression of
General Pope.