Mr Lincoln's Army (16 page)

It was to be just a year, plus three or four
days, before McClellan himself would take the train out of Washington to
retirement. But for the moment that day was deeply hidden in the future, and
there were the problems of the present to worry about. And while McClellan
took Scott's high place and became general of all the country's armies, his
most pressing problems seemed to be chiefly two: the presence of General Joe
Johnston's army in Centreville and Manassas, with outposts so far north that
Confederate pickets could see the unfinished dome of the Capitol, and the
existence along the Potomac River of highly effective Rebel batteries of
artillery.

These
latter created an immediate pinch. During the weeks before Bull Run the
Confederates had edged forward to the river below Washington and had put up
fortifications at three places—at Quantico, at Mathias Point, and at Aquia
Creek, northern terminus of the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad.
In addition, they had removed all lights, buoys, and channel markers from the
stream. Nobody much came down to molest them, and they had plenty of time that
summer to make the positions strong and to mount heavy guns; and by early
autumn the Lincoln administration was forced to realize that the capital was
effectively blockaded as far as its water approach was concerned. To be sure,
the railroad line was open, and troops and supplies could come in freely; but
the water route was closed—warships could run the gantlet without too much
trouble, but merchant vessels couldn't—and this was not only a big nuisance but
a flaming humiliation as well. While Secretary Seward was assuring European
nations that the Federal government was getting the insurrection well under
control, the uncomfortable fact remained that the government could not open the
waterway to its own capital.

The navy did what it could to restore the
situation, without effect. It simply had no good ships to spare for operations
on the Potomac. Practically everything that would float and carry a gun was
needed on the blockade, or on the inland rivers, or on the high seas hunting
commerce destroyers. At the beginning of the summer the navy's Potomac flotilla
consisted of one small side-wheel steamer and two converted tugs, the three
mounting a total of seven light guns. In June this hopeful little squadron
steamed down to attack the works at Aquia Creek, retiring after a five-hour
bombardment in which a good deal of powder was burned and a grand racket
created but in which nobody on either side was hurt. Later in the month,
stiffened by the arrival of the U.S.S.
Pawnee—
which
was at least a regular warship, although only a second-class sloop—the navy
returned to the fray, going down to Mathias Point and sending a landing party
ashore, under the cover of gunfire, to seize the works and spike the batteries.
This was playing into the Rebels' hands; they had infantry there, brought it
up, drove the landing party off, and killed Commander James H. Ward, who had
charge of the venture. After that the batteries were allowed to stay there
undisturbed. In February of 1862, when the navy began mounting the expedition
that was to capture New Orleans, David Dixon Porter came under fire while going
downstream in the ex-revenue cutter
Harriet
Lane,
which
took a round shot through one of her paddle wheels.
³

Clearing the Potomac, then, was up to the
army—which of course meant that it was up to McClellan. McClellan pointed out,
sensibly enough, that the existence of the Rebel batteries along the Potomac
depended on Johnston and his army at Centreville and Manassas; as long as
Johnston stayed there they would remain, but they would go automatically when
he retreated. The Manassas-Centreville stronghold was the real objective, then.
The young general would presently put his army in motion and clear this
stronghold out?

He would. Riding out in the Virginia
countryside with McDowell, McClellan used to gesture toward the eastern end of
the Confederate line at Manassas and say, "We shall strike them
there." He eased some troops forward a few miles "by way of getting
elbow-room" and wrote confidently to his wife: "The more room I get
the more I want, until by and by I suppose I shall be so insatiable as to think
I cannot do with less than the whole state of Virginia." Joe Hooker, who
had his division in training over on the eastern shore of Maryland, was lined
up to prepare for a river crossing that would clear the Virginia shore of all
graycoats. But McClellan refused to be precipitate about it. The lines around
Centreville and Manassas were strong. The army's secret service assured
McClellan that Johnston had something like ninety thousand men behind those
entrenchments—men well drilled and well armed, and all athirst for Yankee
blood. The more McClellan thought about it, the less did a frontal assault on
those lines appeal to him.

He
was in this mood when he took over Scott's job and became responsible for the
strategy of the entire war; and a day or so after that he attended a cabinet
meeting, sitting alone and somewhat silent at one end of the long council
table. At the meeting this day was a young colonel of the 9th New York, one
Rush Hawkins, who had just come back from the expedition which had seized
Hatteras Inlet on the Carolina coast, and who was making a report on the
situation there. When the meeting ended McClellan beckoned Hawkins to his side
and began to ask questions, not about Hatteras but about conditions around
Norfolk and Hampton Roads. Hawkins was all primed; he had been telling old
General Wool, who was in command at Fortress Monroe, that what the government
ought to do was land an army at the tip of the Virginia peninsula and move on
Richmond from the east, and he quickly sketched out a rough map of the terrain,
showing where the roads led and pointing out how gunboats could provide
transportation and flank protection for an invading army by steaming up the
York and James rivers.

McClellan pumped him dry and pocketed his
sketch map. The young colonel's idea meshed with an idea of his own—was it
really necessary to attack the Confederate fortifications at Manassas at all?
The North had sea power and the South did not; despite the batteries along the
Potomac, a properly convoyed fleet of transports could ascend and descend the
river at any time. Why not take the army down the bay by water, land somewhere
east of Richmond just as Hawkins was suggesting, and move in on the Confederate
capital from that direction, completely by-passing Joe Johnston and his defensive
works? The move would compel Johnston to retreat at once. Unless he retreated
swiftly, the Federal army might even get to Richmond before he did. In any
case, it could get clear to the gates of the Rebel capital without a contest
and could fight its great battle there where victory would be decisive.

McClellan
developed this idea. The President, the Cabinet, and the newspapers were
calling for action—open the Potomac, drive Johnston out of northern
Virginia—but McClellan at length concluded that his new plan was sounder; and
by early December, in reply to a note from Lincoln, he wrote that "I have
now my mind actually turned toward another plan of campaign that I do not think
at all anticipated by the enemy nor by many of our own people."

This meant delay. It would take time to round
up enough shipping for an amphibious venture of this magnitude—for McClellan
proposed to move on Richmond with an army of at least 150,000 men— and there
were innumerable details to get in shape. McClellan began to see that it would
be spring, at the earliest, before he could move. This meant that the people
and the administration would have to be patient. It was a bad time to call for
patience. Ball's Bluff seemed to call for action—not merely for revenge,
although that would be welcome, but for an advance that would relieve the North
of the shame of having impudent Rebel hordes camped almost within gunshot of
the capital, ready to gobble up any detachment that ventured to cross the
river. By the end of October the navy had formally reported that the Potomac
would have to be considered closed to water traffic, except for movements made
under the protection of heavy warships.

And this, in turn, meant that the young
general's place was beginning to be difficult. He was still the predestined
hero chosen to save the Republic, and the cheers of his men continued to echo
across the hills when he rode about the lines; but he was learning that much is
expected of the man to whom much has been given, and his temper was beginning to
wear ragged. There was a flaw in the arrangement somewhere. He saw the problem
so clearly, and he had promised the country that the war would be "short,
sharp and decisive," and he had worked a great transformation in the
capital and in the army that protected it; yet there was a growing note of
criticism, the President and his Cabinet seemed to be more and more impatient,
and the clear strategic plans that were so simple to a trained soldier had to
be explained, and justified, and explained afresh to men who did not understand
what he was talking about and who could by no means be trusted to keep their
mouths shut when they were entrusted with classified information.

This
fall the young general was writing to his wife: "I can't tell you how
disgusted I am becoming with these wretched politicians," and "this
getting ready is slow work with such an administration. I wish I were well out
of it." The note recurred, as the months wore away: "I am becoming
daily more disgusted with this administration —perfectly sick of it. If I could
with honor resign I would quit the whole concern tomorrow; but so long as I can
be of any real use to the nation in its trouble I will make the sacrifice. No
one seems able to comprehend my real feeling—that I have no ambitious feelings
to gratify, and only wish to serve my country in its trouble." He was no
longer telling proudly about multiple dinner invitations from members of the
Cabinet. Instead: "When I returned yesterday, after a long ride, I was
obliged to attend a meeting of the cabinet at eight p. m., and was bored and
annoyed. There are some of the greatest geese in the cabinet I have ever
seen—enough to tax the patience of Job."

There was never-failing consolation in the
adoration of the army: " 'Our George' they have taken it into their heads
to call me. I ought to take good care of these men, for I believe they love me
from the bottom of their hearts; I can see it in their faces when I pass among
them." But the army, unfortunately, was not all: "I appreciate all
the difficulties in my path: the impatience of the people, the venality and bad
faith of the politicians, the gross neglect that has occurred in obtaining
arms, clothing, etc." There were matters of state to worry about also:
"This unfortunate affair of Mason and Slidell has come up and I shall be
obliged to devote the day to endeavoring to get our government to take the only
prompt and honorable course of avoiding a war with England and France.
...
It is sickening in the extreme, and
makes me feel heavy at heart, when I see the weakness and unfitness of the poor
beings who control the destinies of this great country."

Something—it
may be remarked—seems to have been going to the young general's head right
about then. The famous Mason and Slidell incident had indeed created a
regrettable moment of crisis, and the country could have had a full-dress war
with England just by asking for it, in December of 1861. But neither Lincoln
nor Seward had the remotest notion of letting the dispute boil over into
war—"One war at a time," Lincoln kept saying—and the dispute was
settled smoothly, at some cost to inflamed national pride. McClellan was simply
deluding himself if he thought that it was at any time necessary for him to
needle either the President or the Secretary of State into sensible behavior.

For that matter, if McClellan felt obliged to
guide the President on foreign policy he was hardly taking the most tactful
path to gain his end. It was just at this time—when the danger of war with England
had suddenly become real and imminent, when the administration was irritably
asking when the army would take the offensive, and when the Potomac River
shipping was stagnating at the wharves because of the defiant Rebel batteries
downstream—that McClellan chose to deliver his famous snub to the President:
came back to his house one evening, was told the President was in the parlor
waiting to see him, and calmly went upstairs and got into bed, leaving the
President to cool his heels as he might please. At about the same time he was
writing to his wife: "I have not been at home for some three hours, but am
concealed at Stanton's to dodge all enemies in the shape of 'browsing'
presidents, etc." A few months later, when the unpredictable Stanton had
become Secretary of War and great enmity had arisen between general and
Secretary, McClellan was to complain that Stanton insulated him from the White
House and kept him from seeing the President. If Stanton did do that when his
time came, he at least had something to work on.

Not that McClellan did not have many things
on his mind. The whole load had been placed upon him. He had said confidently,
"I can do it all," and he was overworking himself with relentless
energy, but the load was crushing. He saw himself at times as a man held back
by civilian incompetence: "The people think me all-powerful. Never was
there a greater mistake. I am thwarted and deceived by these incapables at
every turn." And while Lincoln had the impression that an advance on
Manassas was prevented only by McClellan's hesitation, McClellan was writing:
"I am doing all I can to get ready to move before winter sets in, but it
now begins to look as if we were condemned to a winter of inactivity. If it is
so the fault will not be mine: there will be that consolation for my conscience,
even if the world at large never knows it."