by Bruce Catton
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."
McClellan was beginning to realize, too, that as general-in-chief of the armies he had some sort of responsibility in regard to the slavery issue. He was moved to deep reflections on the evils of slavery when he read the reports from the expedition that had captured Port Royal, South Carolina, late that fall. As the troops seized portions of the Carolina coast, great numbers of slaves came wandering into the Union lines with their simple possessions tied up in bundles—infinitely wistful and confused, not knowing what was happening but sensing, somehow, that a great day of change had arrived. There was something in this spectacle "inexpressibly mournful" to the young general as he sat at headquarters late at night and poured out his inmost thoughts to his young wife. He wrote: "When I think of some of the features of slavery I cannot help shuddering. Just think for one moment, and try to realize that at the will of some brutal master you and I might be separated forever! It is horrible; and when the day of adjustment comes I will, if successful, throw my sword into the scale to force an improvement in the condition of these poor blacks." And then the young general, so deeply moved with a sincere, fundamental emotion, added the towering anticlimax: "I do think that some of the rights of humanity ought to be secured to the negroes. There should be no power to separate families, and the right of marriage ought to be secured to them."
But these moments of self-communion, bringing the bright vision of an all-powerful young conqueror using his great victory to right profound wrongs, were after all
relatively few. The more immediate concerns left little room for them. Washington had become antagonistic to him. There was afoot a subtle, implacable hostility, born of villainy, moving below the surface to thwart the man who would save the country. Matters were not going right, and it was because there were men in high places who did not want matters to go right. Very late at night, worn by a hard day, McClellan told his wife: ". . . the necessity for delay has not been my fault. I have a set of men to deal with unscrupulous and false; if possible they will throw whatever blame there is on my shoulders, and I do not intend to be sacrificed by such people. I still trust that the all-wise Creator does not intend our destruction, and that in His own good time He will free the nation from the men who curse it, and will restore us to His favor." Specifically who might these men be? They are not named, they are just there, the men who try to talk strategy to a soldier, who insist on a quick stab at Manassas (where ovewhelming foes lie in wait) instead of easily agreeing that it is more sensible to wait and go round by the peninsula; the men who want the Potomac opened at once; the frock-coated politicians who think they are somebodies even though there is a great war to be fought, who commission ignorant civilians like themselves as generals and entrust troops to them, who sometimes quite openly do not want or expect a soldier to succeed unless he sees political issues as they do.
The effect of all this was to drive McClellan deeper in on himself— this sensitive, immeasurably introspective man, whose high confidence rested on a dark substratum of doubt, where every problem, every venture, had to be given prolonged study to make sure that inexplicable dangers were not attached to it. The army was not only the instrument he had created and was ready to use; it was his refuge as well, ready with cheers and understanding to dispel those queer twinges of self-distrust that could come up even without the nagging criticism of ignorant politicians. To this nagging he could oppose obstinacy. He would handle the army according to purely military principles, and he would not be hurried.
He presented at last his plan for taking the army down the river by water (in the spring, when warm weather and the end of winter damp had made passable the execrable unpaved roads of Virginia), and there was endless to-do about it. Typhoid fever laid him up for a while. Lincoln came to see him while he was convalescing, and once again couldn't seem to get admitted to the presence; Lincoln then called into council General McDowell and General William Franklin, explaining that he had to talk to somebody, and remarking that if General McClellan did not intend to use the army he would like to borrow it for a time. Recovering, McClellan found himself involved with a good part of the Cabinet, plus the two generals, discussing matters of strategy. He froze McDowell with icy politeness when McDowell tried to express his embarrassment at having been called into consultation over the head of the army commander, and listened in noncommittal silence while Secretary Seward, slouching in his chair, said he didn't particularly care whether the army beat the Confederates at Manassas or at the gates of Richmond, just so long as it beat them somewhere. When Secretary Chase asked him bluntly if he actually did plan to do anything definite with the army, and if so when he proposed to do it, McClellan was equally blunt: said that he had a plan, with a perfectly good time element in it, and if the President ordered him to spill it in public he would do so, but that if he were not so ordered he would prefer to keep quiet, feeling that it would be well to have as few civilians as possible know about secrets of strategy. Whereupon, amid some hemming and hawing, Lincoln adjourned the meeting.
They had come quite a distance now from the day when Republican senators were flocking around the general with throat noises of admiration, saying, "How young he is!"; quite a distance from the day when four separate cabinet ministers craved the general's presence at dinner, and all criticism was suspended while the young soldier had a free hand. And it was all dreadfully complicated by the fact that suspicion and fear—perfectly natural, considering that the country was at war with itself—had been turned loose in the capital. That operated to intensify the handicap which, under any circumstances, must rest on the shoulders of a democracy's general. Of necessity, a democracy deeply distrusts its army, and in all ordinary times it wears its distrust openly on its sleeve—especially a democracy like that of 1861, which was still brash and crude and wore its hat in the parlor. But when a democracy goes to war in a big way it is suddenly compelled to rely on its army for its very existence. Then its instinct for self-preservation forces it to watch the army very carefully, to be excessively critical, to demand illogical and sometimes impossible things, and to be savage if they are not quickly done. And it is up to the general in command to realize all of this. A capacity for getting along with the civil authorities is just as essential a part of his equipment as is the ability to plan campaigns and win battles. (McClellan's opposite number, Robert E. Lee, could have told him about that: Lee had this capacity to his very finger tips.)4
And this capacity for getting along with the civilians does not consist merely in an ability to butter people up gracefully, to suffer fools in council with patience, and to yes the ignorant officeholders along. What it really means is that the general must understand that he is not a free agent and cannot hope to become one. He has to work within the limitations imposed by the fact that he is working for a democracy, which means that at times he must modify or abandon the soundest military plan and make do with a second-best. McClellan's experience in that difficult autumn and winter of inaction provides an illustration.
The administration desperately wanted him to drive the Confederates out of northern Virginia and open the Potomac waterway. For perfectly sound military reasons McClellan refused. What never entered his head was the fact that his own ability to command the army and to control the war was going to depend, at least in part, on the readiness with which he satisfied the administration's demands. In the long run this civilian voice was going to be heard, whether or no; if the general would not listen, there would eventually be a general there who would.
It was the same in the matter of appointing corps commanders. An army as big as the Army of the Potomac could not operate very well with the division as the largest administrative unit. The divisions had to be grouped into army corps, and generals had to be named to command those corps. Lincoln and his Cabinet, spurred by a bookish understanding of this, kept pressing McClellan to set the corps up and appoint the commanders. McClellan kept refusing; he would name corps commanders, he said, only after the test of battle had shown him which generals were best qualified for those important jobs. Which was all right—except that one morning he came down to work and found that the President had officially appointed the corps commanders himself. McClellan complained bitterly about it, as well he might; but he never saw that he really had himself to blame. The administration's insistence on having corps commanders appointed meant that corps commanders were going to be appointed —if not by the major general commanding, then by someone else. This was probably wrong, but it was one of the facts of life which the major general commanding needed to assimilate.
But by midwinter, in spite of all disputes and misunderstandings, the War Department was collecting steamers, ferryboats, tugs, canal barges, schooners—anything that would carry men or supplies—and making ready for the great descent of the Potomac, for McClellan had finally made his point. Richmond was to be attacked from the east, and a tremendous amphibious operation was to be launched.
There was a stir in the far-flung camps. Discipline was good, spirits were high; the new system of corps command was creaking somewhat, but it was working. With profound relief McClellan looked forward to getting out of the capital, away from the scheming politicians, out into the field with his soldiers. To his wife he wrote: "If I can get out of this scrape you will never catch me in the power of such a set again."
And a young officer in the 7th Maine wrote home: "We have no baggage with us but our blankets. I enjoy this kind of life immensely. We expect to be in Richmond in a fortnight"5
The Era of Suspicion
1.But You Must Act
The point that is so easy to overlook nowadays is that the men of the 1860s were living in the center of a fiery furnace. It was not a tidy, clear-cut war against some foreign nation that was being waged. It was a civil war, a war not between men of two nations but between men of two beliefs, two philosophies, two ways of considering human society and its structure and purpose. The opposing beliefs were not sharply defined and clear so that no man could mistake which camp he belonged in. On the contrary, there were a dozen gradations of belief leading from one to the other, and a man might belong in one camp on one issue and in the other camp on another; and the very word "loyalty" might mean loyalty to a flag, to a cause, or to a belief in some particular social and political theory, and "treason" might mean disloyalty to any of these. Indeed, the war was peculiarly and very bitterly a war of the tragically modern kind, in which loyalties and disloyalties do not follow the old patterns even though those patterns may be the only ones men can use when they try to formulate their loyalty. And so that generation was deprived of the one element that is essential to the operation of a free society— the ability to assume, in the absence of good proof to the contrary, that men in public life are generally decent, honorable, and loyal. Because that element was lacking, the wisest man could be reasonable