Stanton

by Benjamin P. Thomas

  As Pope began to feel the heavier weight of troops that Lee sent against him, he posted his army behind the Rappahannock River and tried to hold the crossing until reinforcements arrived from McClellan. At last the armada bearing the Army of the Potomac came wallowing up Chesapeake Bay.

  Balked at the river crossings but determined to smash Pope before McClellan’s troops arrived in force, Lee hurried Jackson off on a bold sweep around Pope’s right flank. Taking Pope by surprise, Jackson crashed in on the Union rear. On August 26 word flashed to the War Department that Pope’s communications had been cut and that the Confederates were moving up the railroad toward Manassas Junction, his advance supply depot. Then the telegraph went dead. The elusive Jackson slipped away to the northwest, stalling and stabbing to keep Pope off balance until Lee had time to join him with the remainder of the Confederate army.

  On August 30 news came that the two armies had begun to slug it out on the old field of Bull Run. Halleck urged McClellan, who had now arrived at Alexandria in person, to get his troops into the fight. McClellan responded with objections of one sort or another, insisted upon a clarification of his status, and accomplished virtually nothing.

  Heavy connonading on the second day of the battle could be clearly heard in Washington. The acrid smell of gunpowder came in on the west wind. Stanton commandeered hacks and private carriages to take convalescent soldiers to the railroad station for removal to Philadelphia and New York, for all available cots in Washington would be needed when Pope’s casualties began to arrive. He recruited male nurses to go to the battlefield, and closed Washington’s saloons, but not soon enough; many of his nurses were already weaving drunk. Haupt protested against using badly needed railroad cars to take this sodden crew to the front, and soon brought them back to the city, hungry and with hangovers, to get them out of the way.

  Excitement in Washington mounted as wild rumors floated in from the front. McClellan wrote to his wife that if he could slip away to the city, he would send their silver off. Stanton, who early in the day believed that Pope had won a victory, nevertheless had the more important papers in the War Department gathered into bundles, ready to be carted to safety. He ordered the arms and ammunition in the Washington arsenal shipped to New York forthwith, but Colonel Ramsay, commander of the arsenal, chose to disregard the order, thereby incurring a black mark in Stanton’s book.

  Halleck urged McClellan to hurry the movement of troops to Pope. McClellan, considering Pope’s situation hopeless, advised Lincoln to look to the defense of Washington and let Pope get out of his fix as best he could. Halleck, distraught and weary, virtually abdicated his authority and allowed McClellan to do as he pleased. No more troops reached Pope.

  Stanton had refrained from interfering with field operations since Halleck assumed command, but now he could restrain himself no longer, and by his forthrightness soon returned to the highest level of influence around Lincoln. He directed Halleck to report whether, in his opinion, McClellan had acted with the promptness and energy required by the national safety. Halleck’s reply blamed McClellan for slowness and ineptitude. Stanton then obtained Chase’s assurance of support and drew up a remonstrance to the President. It accused McClellan of incompetence, charged him with imperiling Pope’s army through disobedience of orders and inactivity, and declared that the signers felt unwilling to be accessories to “the destruction of our armies, the protraction of the war, the waste of our national resources, and the overthrow of the government, which we believe must be the inevitable consequence of George B. McClellan being continued in command.”

  After signing the protest themselves, Stanton and Chase set out to obtain the signatures of other cabinet members. The document was a virtual ultimatum to the President that he must choose between retaining McClellan in command and forming a new cabinet.

  Attorney General Bates, reading the remonstrance, suggested that it be toned down by withholding the bill of particulars against McClellan until Lincoln asked for one. Stanton allowed Bates to rewrite the document, whereupon he, Chase, Smith, and Bates signed it. Welles agreed that McClellan should be removed and promised to back up the remonstrants orally, but he refused to sign the protest because he thought it discourteous to the President. Stanton responded with some degree of heat that he knew of no particular obligation he was under to the President. Lincoln had called him to a position involving labors and responsibilities which one man could scarcely carry at best, and had then made his task intolerable by trammeling him with a commander who did nothing but embarrass him, and he did not propose to submit to a continuance of this state of affairs. Welles admitted that Stanton had good cause for complaint.

  As Chase and Stanton knew that Blair still had faith in McClellan, they did not present the remonstrance to him; and Seward had left Washington for a brief vacation, perhaps, as Welles suspected, to avoid committing himself. Meanwhile, by Sunday, August 31, little doubt remained that Pope had been defeated with heavy losses.

  The cabinet met next day to learn that McClellan had arrived in Washington in response to a summons from Halleck. Anxious to find out what was going on, for Lincoln was revealing his intentions to no one, Stanton invited Halleck and John Hay to his home. But all his undelicate “digging” failed to reveal what McClellan’s role was to be, for only Lincoln knew.

  Next day the cabinet finally learned from Lincoln that he had instructed McClellan to take command of all incoming troops in order to safeguard the capital. The news fell like a bombshell on the meeting. His voice trembling with excitement, Stanton joined with Chase in leading a chorus of complaint. Lincoln, clearly distressed to find himself at odds with most of the cabinet, explained that he had acted on his own responsibility for what he considered the country’s best interest. He held no brief for McClellan; he admitted the general had the “slows.” But he also knew the ground around Washington and was qualified beyond anyone else to whip the army back into shape.

  The War Department Building, Seventeenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Stanton’s office was on the third floor. (photo credit 10.1)

  “Council of War,” by John Rogers. A depiction of a session which never occurred but which reflects the sculptor’s insight into the Lincoln-Stanton relationship. (photo credit 10.2)

  A more common view of Lincoln and Stanton. The officer is Halleck. From Vanity Fair, May 31, 1862. (photo credit 10.3)

  Friends, Enemies, and Colleagues, I. (photo credit 10.4)

  Friends, Enemies, and Colleagues, II. (photo credit 10.5)

  The remonstrance against McClellan remained in Stanton’s pocket. Lincoln had made up his mind, and experience had taught Stanton that argument in such circumstances was fruitless. He plodded back to the War Department “in the condition of a drooping leaf,” his secretary recalled, and he was morose and silent all day. Lincoln never saw the remonstrance.10

  Stanton took a petty revenge. He saw to it that the order assigning McClellan to command went out under Halleck’s name rather than his own, and enjoyed receiving protests against McClellan’s appointment. When Chandler wrote in this vein, Stanton answered: “I understand and appreciate all you say … but am powerless to help it.”

  None too happy himself, Lincoln confided to Hay and to Welles that McClellan had behaved despicably toward Pope and “wanted him to fail. That is unpardonable, but he is too useful now to sacrifice.” McClellan and Pope could no longer be kept in the same theater, however; so Lincoln assigned Pope to an unimportant command in the West.

  Feeling himself justified by his reappointment, McClellan wrote to his wife that Halleck had begged him “to help him out of the scrape,” and of how he had gone to Washington “mad as a march hare, & had a pretty plain talk with him & Abe.” Only after this conversation, McClellan added, did he “reluctantly” agree “to take command here & try to save the Capital.” Unless Lincoln put the whole Army under his command, he would resign.

  Stanton’s discomfiture was obvious. Lincoln had not shared his de
cision concerning McClellan with him. McClellan, in whom Stanton had no confidence, had somehow proved to the President that the Army of the Potomac would follow only him. Halleck was now proved to be too timid to assume the role of over-all military co-ordinator and courageous adviser as Lincoln and Stanton had expected and hoped.11

  Now it seemed to Stanton that Lee, having defeated Pope, could take Washington if he chose to. Halleck confided to his wife that “Generals Collum, Meigs, and the Secretary of War and a few members of my staff, were the only persons to whom I told what I considered the real danger—the capture of Washington.”

  Lee, however, turned his gaze toward Maryland. An invasion of that slaveholding state might induce it to join the Confederacy, in which case Washington would fall anyway. He could replenish his supplies from Maryland’s ripening fields and give the North a taste of war. And a Confederate victory on Northern soil might induce hesitant European governments to recognize the Confederacy.

  On September 4, Lee with 55,000 men crossed the Potomac and moved toward Frederick. Foreboding gripped the North.

  Lincoln merged all units of the Army of Virginia into the army of the Potomac and put McClellan in command of it. Knowing that Stanton would object to giving McClellan over-all field command, Lincoln did not consult him. The lift in morale that McClellan imparted to the soldiers affirmed Lincoln’s judgment in restoring him to command. Governor Curtin asked Stanton for troops to defend Harrisburg. The Secretary, accepting McClellan’s reappointment with what grace he could muster, answered that “the best defense … is to strengthen the force now moving against the enemy under General McClellan.”12

  Swinging westward toward Boonsboro, Lee sent three separate detachments from his army to capture Harpers Ferry and thus open a line of communication through the Shenandoah Valley. McClellan, following him cautiously, entered Frederick, where good fortune greeted him. An Indiana private, picking up a bunch of cigars at an abandoned Confederate camp site, found that they were wrapped in a copy of Lee’s orders, disclosing the fact that Lee’s army was divided and might be destroyed in detail.

  McClellan’s force amounted to 90,000 men. He decided to strike. But overestimating the number of Lee’s troops as usual, he still moved warily. Holding him off at the mountain passes, Lee tried desperately to bring his forces together again near Sharpsburg, behind Antietam Creek. By the time McClellan threw his army into action on September 17, all the scattered Confederate divisions had come up.

  The hours dragged that day while Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck, at the War Department, waited anxiously for news. At 5 p.m. came an uninformative wire from McClellan. Silence followed. Communication was broken. But at ten o’clock a message, coming through by way of Hagerstown, asked that ammunition be sent by rail at once. Stanton ordered the B & O tracks cleared, and a laden train left Washington a little after two o’clock in the morning. It went through so fast that the journal boxes of the cars were on fire a good part of the way. Stanton sent another ammunition train; and a division of fresh troops and two batteries of artillery under General Andrew A. Humphreys marched all night from Frederick under Stanton’s orders and joined McClellan the next morning.

  Reports from Hagerstown and Harrisburg on the eighteenth said that McClellan had pinned Lee against the Potomac. Next day McClellan wired: “Our victory is complete. The enemy is driven back into Virginia. Maryland & Pennsylvania are safe.”

  More information trickling into Washington made it evident, however, that what might have been an annihilating defeat for Lee was only a severe repulse. McClellan had wasted his superior strength in a series of un-co-ordinated attacks, all of them partially successful but none of them pressed home. He had never used his reserves, but had allowed Lee’s crippled army to recross the Potomac unmolested.13

  Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck tried frantically to induce McClellan to follow up his victory by throwing a knockout punch at Lee. Finally, on October 6, Lincoln directed him to cross the river at once and give battle to the enemy and drive him south. Telegraphing this order to McClellan, Halleck added that he and Stanton “fully concur” with Lincoln in this directive.

  But success had put McClellan in an overweening mood. He was ready to demand a guarantee from Lincoln that he would no longer be interferred with, and contemplated tendering his resignation unless Lincoln dismissed Halleck and Stanton and made him general in chief. In turn, Stanton wanted to remove McClellan on the spot, but Lincoln restrained him. Again rebuffed, Stanton told Chase that he was almost ready to quit, feeling that his usefulness was ended. What galled him most were the attempts of McClellan and his “creatures” to blame him for the army’s inactivity.14

  McClellan first complained that he could not move for lack of horses; those he had were ill, sore-tongued, and tired, he said. Lincoln asked sarcastically what they had done since Antietam that would fatigue anything, and Stanton demanded immediate reports on the army’s horse supply. Meigs responded that large numbers of horses had been going to McClellan every week. General Rufus Ingalls, McClellan’s own quartermaster, reported that on October 1 he had a total of 32,885 animals, one to every four men. Halleck commented in a letter to McClellan: “It is believed that your present proportion of cavalry and of animals is much larger than that of any other of our armies.”

  Next, McClellan argued that his requisitions for shoes and clothes had not been filled. Again Stanton demanded reports. Meigs responded that 48,000 pairs of boots and shoes were receipted for by McClellan’s quartermasters; Ingalls reported: “The suffering for want of clothing is exaggerated, I think, and certainly might have been avoided by timely requisitions of regimental and brigade commanders.” Halleck assured Stanton that the only delays in forwarding supplies had come from lack of cars, and this shortage had always been speedily remedied. The Army of the Potomac was better supplied in all respects than the Union armies in the West, or any army in the world. It was the ultimate in praise for Stanton and his subordinates.

  Both McClellan and Stanton were right on the question of supplies. McClellan exaggerated his deficiencies. Stanton mistakenly believed, in his methodical, civilian thinking, that all supplies listed as delivered to the Army of the Potomac got to their destination. He had failed to realize, until he sent an assistant to survey the supply situation, that rear-area troops appropriated substantial quantities of matériel consigned to combat forces. To Stanton’s credit, he had immediately replenished the dwindled stocks and in good time for McClellan to move if he had wanted to do so.15

  Stanton was so irate at Lincoln for not dismissing McClellan that he failed to notice signs that the President’s almost infinite patience had about played out. McClellan unhurriedly crossed the Potomac at long last, almost six weeks after being directed to do so, and then reposed again. When he allowed Lee to move toward Richmond unopposed, Lincoln resolved to remove him. But he decided to await the outcome of the fall elections.

  By this time standpat Democrats looked to McClellan for leadership to “bestride these lilliputians” and to inaugurate a new, conservative era. The general listened to this theme in a receptive mood, writing to his wife on October 31 that “I think it will end in driving Stanton out.… If I can crush him I will—relentlessly and without remorse.” To bring this about, McClellan authorized Barlow and the World clique again to “open your batteries” on Stanton “as soon as you please.” But McClellan’s dreams of vengeance were far afield from reality.

  Lincoln was convinced at last that in addition to failing to crush Lee, McClellan as commander of the army was a threat to the survival of civil authority over the military. The last state election took place on November 5; the next day Lincoln directed Halleck to remove McClellan “forthwith, or as soon as he may deem proper.” Stanton persuaded Halleck to act “forthwith,” and an order went out by special courier after Burnside agreed to take the command.

  McClellan and his soldiers took the dismissal with good grace, although there were a few spontaneous demonstrations. But
only when Stanton felt sure that there would be no trouble did he release the announcement to the press. Halleck joined him in worriedly watching the effect of the news, and—of comfort to Stanton—in the conviction that McClellan’s supersedure was “a matter of absolute necessity.” “In a few more weeks,” Halleck confided to his wife, “he would have broken down the government.”16

  The long joust between McClellan and Stanton had reached an end at last. How had Stanton acquitted himself? In his heart he knew that he need not be ashamed of his role. When his old friend the Reverend Heman Dyer asked Stanton whether there was any truth to the charge that he was willfully hindering McClellan, the Secretary, in evident distress of spirit, replied that there was not. He swore to God that he had entered Lincoln’s cabinet as McClellan’s “sincere friend,” and though he soon began to doubt the general’s ability, he “hoped on.” The move to the Peninsula proved to be the most hazardous, the most expensive, and the most protracted that could have been devised, but not being a military man, he had acquiesced in the decision and done everything he could to aid him. When McClellan left Washington exposed to seizure by the enemy, however, Stanton had deemed it his duty to take measures for its safety. Otherwise, he had employed the whole power of the government to support McClellan’s operations in preference to those of any other general.

  Why should he wish to thwart McClellan? Stanton asked. His own reputation descended at McClellan’s failures. He was suffering under a weight of vicious criticisms, yet his every effort had been expended to strengthen the general. For his acts in the efforts to sustain this government, Stanton expected to stand before God in judgment. He never altered his conviction that if “Little Mac” remained in command, the Union’s efforts for survival would be wasted in inconclusive maneuverings, until war-weariness combined with growing disaffection in the North to terminate the war on the basis of a permanently severed nation.