This new instrument, as McClellan was frank
to state, had been poorly chosen. Scattered fragments of commands had been
swept together and entrusted to a self-confident soldier from the Western
armies, General John Pope, and Pope had been sent down into Virginia overland,
following the line of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad to the Rappahannock
River. Leaving McClellan and his army to swelter in their camp on the James,
the Rebels had promptly concentrated against Pope's army and had been giving
him a bad time of it—so bad, indeed, that McClellan's army was now being pulled
back to Washington and was being forwarded to Pope by bits and pieces.
McClellan was not being sent forward with it; and this morning, as he passed
through the sprawling base of supplies, where white door fronts of the colonial
era looked down on muddy streets churned by endless wagon trains, it seemed
likely that he would presently be a general without an army.
The general went with the colonel to the
colonel's office. They were both West Pointers, and when the war broke out they
had both been railroad men, and they could talk the same language. As soon as
they were seated Haupt gave McClellan such news as he had. None of it was good.
Seen thus, from behind the lines, the war was untidy, misdirected,
discouraging.
Enemy forces, said Haupt, were across the
railroad line at Manassas Junction. It had been thought at first that these
were merely a handful of roving cavalry—cavalry had descended on the railroad a
few days earlier, farther down the line at Catlett's—but it was beginning to
be clear now that they were more important than that. A New Jersey brigade had
gone forward to restore the situation and had run into rifle and artillery fire
too heavy to come from any cavalry; had, as a matter of fact, been most
distressingly cut to pieces. Two Ohio infantry regiments were holding on where
the railroad crossed Bull Run, but they were obviously in grave danger and
would probably have to come back. Confederates apparently were either on or
near the railroad this side of them, between Bull Run and Alexandria; the
bridge over Pohick Creek near Burke's Station, only thirteen miles out, was
rumored to have been burned, and the telegraph line had been cut. Nor was it
just the two Ohio regiments that were in peril. The seizure of Manassas
Junction meant that General Pope was out of forage for his horses and rations
for his men.
Colonel Haupt did not know where Pope was,
and it seemed that the War Department did not know either. It was bombarding
Haupt with inquiries and had evidently developed the jitters—McClellan saw a
wire complaining that there had been "great neglect and carelessness"
on the Manassas plain. To McClellan that seemed obvious. He did not admire
General Pope, either as a man or as a soldier, and his present prospect of
forwarding his own troops to Pope at a time when Pope's position was unknown
and the road leading in his direction was blocked by Rebel soldiers was not
one that McClellan could think about with any pleasure.
Clearly, this was no time for an army
commander or a superintendent of military railroads to sit holding his thumbs.
With the plight of Pope's army and the dire fix of those two Ohio regiments
Colonel Haupt had no direct concern, except that it was up to him to get the railroad
back in working order so that these and other troops could be fed, supplied,
and, if necessary, transported; and for this he had a plan of action, which he
now asked McClellan to approve. A wrecking and construction train, ready to go
forward and repair damaged tracks and bridges, was standing on a siding with
steam up. Also ready was a freight train loaded with forage and rations. Haupt
proposed to send out ahead of these a train of flatcars carrying a battery of
field artillery and a few hundred sharpshooters. This could go as far as the
condition of the track permitted, and the guns and riflemen could then advance
by road and clear out such Rebel marauders as might be in the vicinity. The
wrecking train could then get the bridges repaired in short order—Haupt kept a
stock of prefabricated bents and stringers on hand, ready for just such
emergencies as this, and if they had to, his construction gangs could build a
bridge with timber from torn-down farmhouses along the right of way—and when
that had been done the supply trains could be leapfrogged through with
subsistence for Pope's army.
The thin lines between McClellan's eyes
deepened slightly and he shook his head slowly. He could not approve the plan.
It would be attended with risk. Haupt was primarily a railroad man; any kind of
expedient was all right, for him, if it just gave him a chance to put his track
gangs on the job and get the line opened up again. Also, there was not,
inherently, any very great difference between a Rebel army and a spring freshet
on a Pennsylvania mountain river—both broke up a railroad, and when the damage
had been done one went out and fixed it as quickly as possible. But McClellan's
mind was full of the mischances that can befall troops which are incautiously
thrust out into enemy territory; he repeated that he could not approve. Haupt
was irritated. All military operations, he said, were attended with risk, as
far as he could see, and the risk here did not seem to be excessive. Surely, if
the advance guard were properly handled, nothing very disastrous could happen.
The trains could be kept safely in the rear while the skirmishers went forward.
If the enemy were found in force, the men could retire to their train and the
whole expedition could quickly be brought back out of harm's way.
McClellan shook his head again. The situation
was too obscure. Enemy troops, possibly in very substantial numbers, appeared
to be between Pope's army and Washington; the first thing to do was to arrange
the troops actually present in such a way that the capital itself would be
safe. Then preparations could be made for an advance in force. Meanwhile—the
general had grown pale beneath his tan and appeared genuinely unwell—did the
colonel have any brandy and water? The colonel did. McClellan took it and
seemed revived, borrowed a scratch pad, and wrote a telegram to the War Department,
reporting that he was ashore in Alexandria and describing the situation as he
had found it. Then he departed.
Left to himself, Haupt fumed and pondered,
and wished that he had not succeeded in finding McClellan at all. Earlier in
the morning he had telegraphed his proposal to General Henry W. Halleck, commander,
under the President, of the armies of the United States. Halleck, who never
made a decision himself if it could possibly be passed along to someone else,
had replied: "If you can see Gen. McClellan, consult him. If not, go ahead
as you propose." Haupt had now seen General McClellan and he wished he
hadn't; if he had only missed him, the expedition could be under way by now.
Although he had been trained as a soldier—he
had been graduated from West Point in 1835, in the same class with George
Gordon Meade—Haupt was essentially a civilian. Resigning his commission shortly
after graduation, he had gone into railroad work, had built a good part of the
Juniata division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and had become, successively,
division superintendent and chief engineer for that line. He had been brought
into the army, somewhat against his will, as a railroad and construction
expert, and he was admired in high places. President Lincoln liked to tell
about the marvelous bridge Haupt had built "out of beanpoles and
cornstalks" down on the Aquia Creek line out of Fredericksburg. Haupt
actually belonged in the next century; as it was, in the Civil War most generals
failed to appreciate him. He was used to direct action, and generals irritated
him. His present job gave them many occasions to do this, and they never seemed
to miss a chance. Three days ago, for example, Haupt had bestirred himself to
assemble trains to send General Joe Hooker's division forward to Pope. He got
the trains lined up, Hooker's troops were at hand ready to go aboard, but
Hooker himself had vanished—presumably to seek the fleshpots in Washington.
Haupt telegraphed to his good friend and brother railroad man, P. H. Watson,
Assistant Secretary of War. Back came Watson's reply:
"General
Hooker was in Alexandria last night, but I will send to Willard's and see if he
is there. I do not know any other place that he frequents. Be as patient as
possible with the generals; some of them will trouble you more than they do the
enemy."
1
That
was a judgment with which Haupt was ready to agree. He had no sooner got Hooker
out of his hair than General Samuel D. Sturgis got into it. Sturgis showed up
with a division of troops, demanding immediate transportation to the front. To
make sure that his request for transportation got top priority Sturgis had
moved his soldiers out and had seized the railroad—or that part of it which lay
within his reach, which was enough to tie up the entire line-swearing that no
trains would go anywhere until his division had been moved. Haupt tried to
reason with him, but it was no go— Haupt was a colonel and Sturgis was a general,
and Sturgis would not listen. Sturgis had the rank and he had the soldiers, and
for the moment he had the railroad, too, and no temporary colonel was going to
tell him what to do.
Haupt had had to go through that sort of
thing before. General Pope had had similar ideas when he first took command in
northern Virginia, announcing that his own quartermaster would control the
movement of railroad cars just as he ran the wagon trains, and informing Haupt
that his function was to do as he was told. Within two weeks the line had got
into such a snarl that no trains could move in any direction. Pope came to see
that it took a railroad man to run a railroad—he could get a point now and then
if it was obvious enough, could John Pope, for all his bluster—and he was glad
to hand the road back to Colonel Haupt: particularly so since Haupt by this
time had got from the Secretary of War an order giving him complete and
unqualified control over the railroad and everything on it, regardless of the
orders any army commander might issue. Haupt, therefore, was ready to take
Sturgis in his stride; but Sturgis had troops and guns and swore he would use
them. Furious, Haupt telegraphed Hal-leck, getting in return a bristling order
which specifically authorized him, in the name of the general-in-chief, to put
Sturgis under arrest if there was any more funny business. Haupt summoned
Sturgis to his office. Sturgis came, rather elevated with liquor, accompanied
by his chief of staff.
Haupt showed Halleck's order and explained
that he was getting all sorts of troops and supplies forward to General Pope
and that Sturgis would simply have to wait his turn. Sturgis was not impressed,
and he somehow got the idea that the order Haupt was exhibiting had been issued
by General Pope.
"I don't care for John Pope one pinch of
owl dung," said Sturgis solemnly—a sentiment which had its points but was
hardly germane. Patiently Haupt explained: this order was not from Pope, it was
from Halleck, who held the power to bind and to loose. Sturgis shook his head
and repeated his judgment of Pope, savoring the sentence as if the thought had
been bothering him for a long time. Haupt fluttered the order at him and went
over it a third time. Sturgis, his needle stuck in one groove, repeated:
"I don't care
for John Pope—"
His chief of staff tugged at his sleeve to
stop him, and hastily and earnestly whispered in his ear. Sturgis blinked,
finally got the point, and rose to his feet ponderously.
"Well, then," he said—with what,
all things considered, might be called owlish dignity,
"take
your damned railroad."
2
So that had been settled, and Sturgis had
awaited his turn. But the episode had tied up the railroad for the better part
of a day and had canceled the movement of four troop trains. Haupt was more
than ready to agree with Assistant Secretary Watson about the generals.
Anyway, that was over. Now there was the
problem of reopening Pope's supply line. Pope's soldiers must be getting
hungry; and besides, with the outer end of the line gone, the Alexandria yards
were clogged with loaded freight cars that had no place to go. Across the
river, in Washington, the Baltimore and Ohio was complaining that boxcars
consigned to Pope's army were filling the tracks on Maryland Avenue; the
available B. & O. engines were too heavy to go over the Long Bridge; would
Colonel Haupt please send an engine over from Alexandria and get them, so that
the B. & O. could go on with its regular work? This Haupt could by no means
do, having more cars in Alexandria now than he could handle. The B. & O.
needled the War Department, which sent plaintive messages; and the day wore on,
and the situation did not improve. Haupt reflected that he was, after all, in
charge of the railroad, and that somewhere off to the southwest there was an
army that greatly needed supplies. He determined to go ahead on his own hook.
After dark he sent a message to McClellan—who by now had established his
headquarters on shore—notifying him that at four in the morning he would start
his construction train forward, followed by the subsistence train. Would
McClellan at least let him have two hundred soldiers to go along as train
guard? If the men did not report, Haupt added, the trains would go ahead
without them.
He got no answer. At midnight he gave up on
McClellan, got on his horse, and set out to appeal to the first general he
saw—any general, just so long as he had a few troops to spare and was willing
to loan a few of them to help open a vital railway line.