rg;^ggCQStta^Q^^2^j;7^aggg;:Q I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. % Chap. EH»nf I i5 She/f J M2-S<^.^ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA \ \ ■ ^ ^< -^^^^M ■^ '''M'"'^UBLISHED BT THE N. Y. TIMES. 1864, The following Chapters are a condensation aijci revioion of the series of twelve articles in review of McClellan's Reprrt, by William Swintojj, published in the New York Times, dmmg the months of Febnuay, March, and April, 1S64. In the preparation of this criticism the authcn- has to acknowledge the use of a large mass of unpublished offirial documents. CONTENTS i Page I. MeClellan as a Political Strategist 3 1 1. The " Young Napoleon " 4 IK. A Hundred and Fifty Thousand Men "in Buckram" 6 W. The Modern Fahius and his False Pretences 8 V. "My Plan and Your Plan." 9 VI. McClellan's Grievance — the Detachment of McDowell's Coi].s IS VII. "A Pickaxe and a Spade^ a Spade." = 16 7III. The Peninsular Campaign 18 IX. How Pope got out of his ScVape 25 X. Closing Scenes in McClellan's Career. .29' ICCLELLAN'S MILITARY CAREER REVIEWED AND EXPOSED^ 1. McCLELLAN AS A POLITICAL STRATEGIST. ft is a fact singularly characteristic of General McClellaa that haCving won what*- ffver reputation he enjoyo in the field of vjar, he is now running on this reputation p,3 the Presidential candidate of a party whose creed is peace and whose platform casts contumely on the very war of whi«h their nominee had for upwards of a year the chief conduct. When we consider, however, that all his fame is founded on defeats, it is not wondeiful that his hopes should still be bound up in defeats. Gen- eral McClellan's Presidental proepects brighten just in proportion as our soldiers suffer disaster, and be will only be certain of being Presiderit of our country when it is certain we have no country at all. There is no object more calculated to claim the sympathy of a generous people than a defeated general; and unless his failure has been associated with circum- stances of p€rsonal tiirpitude he is pretty sure, sooner or later, to receive that sym- pathy, Machiavelli, that subtle observer, points out that the Romans never 'blanked their unsuccessful commanders, esteeming that to a high-minded man the mortifica- tion of defeat was of itself punishment enough. Sertorius, Mithridates and Wil- liam of Orange were habitually unsuccessful generals, and yet history has not chosen 'io cast contumely on their names : on the contrary, the memory of their failiitres is ■covered up by the remembrance of qualities of mind that deserved, if they cowld not command, success. It has been left for General McClellan, however, to claim not merely th* sympa- thy of his countrymen (which would have been accorded him had his conduct been (marked by the modesty of a soldier) but their admiration and higbest.rowards for a aeries of exploits in which the country suffered only disastei'. General McClellan's candidacy for the Presidency does not begin wath the nomi- natiou at Chi<;ago. While his soldiers were being struck down by thousands with the fevers of the Chickahominy, the fever of the White House struck him. There are a thousand things both in his military career and in hifi subsequent conduct that can only be explained on this theory. No doubt he would have been glad to (have founded his Presidential pretensions oo success ; but ae, this was not possible he early conceived a characteristic change ef base : he determined to found them on defeat. He could not make failures triumphs, but he would adventure a flanking movement in the field of polities more bold than any he ever essayed on the field ■of war : he would throw the burden of all his failures upon an Administration wliich thwarted all his brilliant plans end ensured defeat where he had organized vic- tory ! This desperate enterprise he has attempted to carry though in a document published a few months ago, which, under the guise of a " Report," is really an elaborate political manifesto. Had General McCle-lan not been a prospective candidate for the Presidency, it would be difficult to bring his so called " Report " into any known category. If it is less than a Report it is also more than a Report It ki 1«S8 than a Report because numerous dispatches of the time are omitted from this collectioo. It is also more than a strictly military Report, because its basis is an elaborate historical, and argumentative recital, in which such dispatches aa are us«l by General AlcOleilan «re inlaid. Military Reports ia the sense in which any soldier understands the term, are written either from the battle-field itself, or, in the impossibility of th&i;. as speedily after the action as it is possible for the staff to collect the requisite data. There have been Generals who have seen fit at the close of their career to publish their dispatches in collected form. Such a legacy was left to military history by the great. Iron Duke. But what is peculiar in Wellington's publication of his dis- patches is that he has left these memorials of his career in their strict chronologi- cal order, in tiieir exact original state: he has not suppressed a line, nor added a word of commentary, nor a word of argument, nor a word of accusation, nor a word of justification. Not 60 General MeClellan's Report. The labor of a whole twelvemonth, com- posed in the leisure of retiracy, and after the publication of most of the materia! likely to bear on his fame, its purpose seems less to record a series of military trans- actions than to vindicate his conduct and arraign the Administration. No charge- is too great, none too small,, to draw out from him a replication : and he is equal- ly read}', whether to bring railing accusations against his military superiors, to bowl down the Committee on the Conduct of the War, or to blow up the news- papers. In this state of facts, a ci'itical analysis of this so-called " Report " becomes a mat- ter which Cdncerns the welfare of the country not leas than the truth of history. It- is to this task I propose addressing myself it will be our duty to pierce to the his- torical truth underlying the veneer which General McClellan has spread over events, to endeavor to seize by the guiding-clue of unpublished dispatches how much here set down as original motive is really afterthought, and to examine the foundation of the charges which he heaps upon the Administration. If I do not succeed in prov- ing by documentary evidence that every one of General McClellan's failures wa& the result of his own conduct and character, — if I do not prove his career as a whole to have been a failure unmatched in military history, and if I do not fasteci upon him conduct which in nny other country in the world w»uld have caused! him to be court-martialed and dismissed the service, — I shall ask the reader to ac- cept hie plea in abatement of judgment and accord him the patent of distinguished generalship. But if I make giiod all I have said, I shall ask the reader to charac- terize in fitting terms tho conduct of a man who, receiving the heartiest support of the Government, thelavij^li confidence of the people, and the unstinted resources of the nation, achieves nothing hnt defeat, and terminates a career of unexampled fail- ure by charging the blame up<f their full weight, and this subject is worth examining with some fulness, because? &here is a close logical connexion between that louginactioa aad all the subsequentt ill fortune of the Army cf She Potomac. A HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND MEN "IN EUCKRAM." There is one characteristic of General McClellan which displays itself so persisi- entl}', both in his Report and in his conduct, thals it must belong to the very struc- ture of his intellect. What I mean, is a certain ineoijUality of vision which puta facts oat of all just relations, gives him one standard of judgment for himself and another for others, a-nd leads him to a prodigious over-estimate of immediate, and a prodigious und«?-e3timate of remote difficulties. "The first q,ualiScation in a general,^ saj's Napoleon, " is a cool head — that is, a head which receives just impressions, and estimates things and objects at their real value. Some men are so constituted as to see everything th?ough a bigh-eolored raedium. Y/'hateve? knowledge^ o^r talent, or courage, or other good qualities audi men may possess, nature has not formed them for the command of armies, or the direction of great military operations." This key will aid us in the interpretation of that extraordinayy tendency to exag- gerate the force of the enemy which we find him displaying at the very outset of kis career, and which eontinued to grow upon him throughout its whole course. The first instance in wbieh we have a distinct utterance from General McClellan on the point of the relative strength of his awn and the enemy's force is in a lette? aiddressed by him to the Secrttary cf War in the latter part of October, 1861.* In this communication he uses the following language : "8omu<;h time has passed, and the winter is approaching so. ra,pidly, that but two courseware left to the Government, viz: to go into winter qiuarters, or to assume the oStiumve with force greatly inferior in numbers to the army J regarded as desirable and necessary. Now, the first question is, what number he regarded as not only "desirable " but ''necessary" in order to enable him to assume the ofi'ensive. Happily, on this point we have from himself precise iufoymation, for ia a subsequent part of the same com- munioation he gives what he calls an " estimate of the requisite force for an advance movement by the Army of the Potomac." It is as as follows : "Column of active operations. 150,000 men, 400 gun&. Garrison of the city of Washington 85,000 " 40 " To guard the Potomac to Harper's Ferry 5,009 " 12 " To guard the Lower I'domac 8,000 " 24 " Garrison for Baltimore and Annapolis 10,000 " 12 " Total effective force required 208,000 men, 488 gune> or an aggregate, present and absent, of about 240,000 mes, should the losses by sickness, &c., no3 rise to a higiier per centage tlian at present." As the strength of an army, like any other means for the accomplishment of a certain end, is necessarily controlled by the object to be accomplished and the re- sistance to be overcome, we must seek the rationale of the extraordinary estimate pu4 forth by General McClellan of the military force required as an indispensable condi- tion precedent to any offensive operations, in his calculation of the strength of the army which the rebels were able to confront him withal. Fortunately on this point, also, we are not left in the dark, for he goes on to state that all his information showed that in November, 18&1, "the enemy had a force on the Potomac, not less than 150,000 strong, well drilled and equipped, ably commanded, and strongly en- trenched." If it be true that at any period during the fall or winter of 1&61-2, the rebels had "on the Potomac" an army of the strength claimed by General McClellan — an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men — then we must concede that bis estimate of the army he himself needed — namely, an effecting fighting column of the same strength— was not excessive, and that his reiterated demands for more men, even at this early period, were the result of a wise appreciation of the necessities of the case. But if it can be shown that this rebel colossus of a hundred and fifty thou- sand men was a monstrous delusion, the figment of a " heat-oppressed brain," we shall reqi.ire to find other terms in which to characterize his conduct and his clamor. *Kepon,p. 8; Now, I think I «an show that the rebel army on the Pctcmac, so far from "being of the force of 150,000 men, was never more than one-third that number. The battle of Bull Run was fought on the part of the rebels with a force of leas than thirty thousand men. General Beauregard, in his official report, says : " The effec- tive force of all arms of the (Confederate) Army of the Potomac on that eventful morning, including the garrison of Camp Pickens, did not exceed 21,833 men, and 29 guns. Th« Army of the Shenandoah, (Johnston's,) ready f r action in the field, may be set down at 6,000 men and 20 guns, and its total strength at 8,834." We are then to believe that "the rebel army in the interval of three months, be- tween the end of July and the end of October, leaped from thirty thousand men to a hundred and fifty thousand! Credat Jtideeusl It is too monstrous to believe. It would take double the time even to brigade such a herd of men. It would indeed be difficult to say what the precise strength of the rebel force was during tlie period referred to, especially as it varied greatly, having attained a certain maximum, then declined by the expiration of the term of service, and then commenced to as- cend once more when the first conscription came into force. I do not, therefore, attempt to do this. I merely desii-e to show that the swelling figures that affrighted the soul of the then head of the Army of the Potomac existed only in his imagination, and to fis a maximum bej'ond which it is certain the rebel army did • ':iot go. Daring the autumn of 1861, while the rebel army was still at Cent^rville, a letter written from that plaee fell into the hands of the military authorities. The writer, referring to the flutter that existed in the ranks of theii" army in regard to the cre- ation of a certain number of Major Generals, tells how the Confederate Army was •organized into brigades of four divisions each, like ours, but that they only put two brigades into a division — that is, they put eight regiments or battalions instead of twelve, as we have. "Now," says the writer, "this makes quite a stir as to the appointment of the twelve Major Generals." This wo ild give them twenty-four brigades, or ninety-eix regiments. The average strength of their regiments at that time certainly did not exceed that of our own at the same period, 600 men; and this would give them a total of 57,600 men.* Now, it is worthy of note that General McClellan hiniself, six months after the date of his estimate of the rebel force "on the Potomac," at 150,000 men, givee another estimate made by his chief of the secret service corps on the 8th of March. in which the rebel troops at Jklanassas, Centreville, Bull Run, Upper Occoquan, and vicinity are put down at 80,000. Note that this was after the rebel conscription had gone into force and had swelled the Confederate ranks with its harvesting ; and that, notwithstanding all this, it gives a i esult less by seventy thousand than the fig- ure made out by General McClellan in the month of November. At one stroke the rebel huudred and fifty thousand in buckram had dwindled by a half! Ftom all these data, I believe I am authorized in concluding that Johnston at no time had on the Potomac an army of over 50,000 men. And it was before this cod- temptible force that our magnificent army of three times its strength — no. not the ■army, but its coynmander — stood paralyzed for eight months! Such a spectacle the history of the world never before presented. Whether General McClellan ever really believed that he had in front of him an army of a hundred and fifty thousand men, or anything like that figure, is a point which I do nob pretend to determine.| But certain it is that having fixed upon this number, all his subsequent efforts seetn to have been directed, not to the task of destroying the enemy before him, but of forcing the Government to give him a command which he could never have brought into action in any battle-field Vir *Tlvere are those, indeed, who put the rebel force on the Potomac at an even lower fjorure. Mr Hurlbert, who at this time was within the rebel lines and had access to good sources of Informa- tion, says in the notes to his translation of the pamphlet of the Prince de Joinville on the Army <>( the Potomac. " I have reason to believe that when the history of the present war shall come to be written fairly and in fiill, it will be found that General Johnston never intended to hold Manassas and G-etj- treville against any serious attaclc ; that his army at those points had suffered trreafly during the autumn and winter of lS6t-S, and that from October to March he never had an effctive force oj 7;ior« er, and the inferiority in arms, equipment, and transportation, that marked the rebel foree in Virginia. If that force afterward 'became an army whose formidable valor and superb discipline we have too often found out to ©ur cost, it is to be attributed in great part to the time General Mc- Clellan gave them for consolidation, and the prestige they gained by their victo- ries over him. But all comparison is superfluous ; what I say is that General McClellan's claim that there was anything in the diselpHae of hie army to prevent his dealing a blow at the enemy before him, is a shallow makeshift that will no longer serve. If it had been designed to make a Prussian or an English army — a thing of pipeclay and pedantry, of the rattan and red tape — there might be some force in the call for months or for years, in which to perfect this painful and useless education. But lor modern armies there is but one way; it is, after the rudiments of tactics are ac- quired, to put the men promptly into the field and let them be made soldiers by the hard realities of war. It was in this way, and not by the pedantry of the martinet that the armies of the Thirty Years' War, of the American Revolution, and of the ^eat French Revolution, were farmed. In 181S rough German levies fought almost 'before they were drilled, and at Bautzen French recruits were victorious over the ■elaborately trained machines that formed the armies of Austria, Prussia and Russia. Disastrous as Bull Run was in its military results, it, beyond a doubt, did more to make our men eoldiere than all the reviews, parades, and sham fights, with which ■General McClellan amused a country whose life and national honor were all the while ebbing away. I have Eow exhausted the several reasons alleged by General McClellan in excuse for his long delay, from August, 1861, to April, 1862. I have ehown that there ie nothing in these excuses, whether drawn from the condition of the roads and the season, or from the strength and discipline of our own arnsy, or that of the rebels, to justify it. No, nol Net all the shallow devices which a year of afterthought ■can bring to the extenuation of military incapacity can either explain or exculpate that fatal delay which gave the rebels their best ally. Time ; which made the timid .among us despair, and the proudest hang their heads with shame.; and which almost authorized foreign recognition of the rebellion by our seeming inability to (nut it down. V. "MY PLAN AND YOUE PLAN." Whether General McClellan ever would have been ready to advance on the ene- my, is a problem the solution of which is known only to Omniscience ; but the spell ^ . ji> *Ibid. p. 171. -fFirst year of the War, p. 178. $Priaoe de Joinville on the Army of tlie Potomac, p. 101. 10 was at length broken, not by the motion of McClellan, but by a word of fnftiativ® uttered by the I'resident. On the 27th of January, 1862, Mr. Lincoln issued "Gen- eral War (Jrder No. 1," directing "that the 22d d^^y of February, 18G2, be the day • for a general laovenient of the land and naval forces of the United States agaiuSt the insurgent forces.'" As the reason for ordering a "general movement" on the day indicated may not be- aniversally intelligible and has frequently been made a matter of virondermeat by General McClellau's partisans, a word on that head will not be out of place. Shortly after coming i'nto command of the Army of the Potoraac, General McClellan began to urge that all the armies of the Union should be put under the direction of & "single will." In his letter of October, IStJl, addressed to the Secretary of War, we find him urging this with tlie utmost emphasis, and even making it aw indispen- sable condition of any advance by the Army of the Potomac* Action, on any terms, being the supreme desire of the Government, Genaial Mc- Clellan was, on the 1st of November, inves-ted with the control of the armies of the United States as General-in-Chief. Bewildering though one finds the retrospect of such impotence of ambition as inspired this man to take on his pigmy shoulders- a burden v/hich a colossus like Napoleon never attempted to b«ar — the task of at once personally dire«ting the o]>€ratiou of an army of two huDrohaMi/ greater, a good deal, than my otmi, and vei-y strongly intrenched. Hancock has taken two redoubts, and repulsed Karly's brigade by a real chargeof the bayonet, taking 1 colonel and 150 prisoners, killing at least two colonels and as many lieutenant- colonels, an WiLLiAMSBUKG, Va , May 6. j I have the pleasure to announce the occupation of this place as the result of the hard-fought ac- tion of yesterday The effect of Hancock's brilliant engagement yesterday afternoon was to turn the left of their line of works He was strongly reinforced, and the enemy abandoned the entire posi- tion during -.he night, leaving all his sick and wounded in our hands The victory is complete. * * * Am I autAorizeil to follow the example of other generals, and direct the names of battles to be placed on the colors of regiments ? We have other battles to fight before reaching Bichmond. /-, t, at nr-cTT axt G-, B. McCLELLAN, Major General Commanding. At ten o'clock during the night of the 5th of May, General McClellan^ formally re- ports that he will hold the enemy in check, when, in fact, his real opinion was that the enemy held him in check ; and he quite distinctly declares his purpose of resort- ing to measures requiring time to obtain possession of WiUiamsburgh, when at the moment of writing that dispatch General Hancock, by acting in the spirit of the President's recommendation to break the enemy's lines, but without specific instruc- tions from General McClellan, had turned their position, and had actually com- passed what General McClellan despaired of accomplishing, except by slow opera- lions. On the morning of the 6th of May General McClellan, passing suddenly from a state of extreme despondency, reports exultingly tliat the victory of the 5th of May " is complete." In the slate of despondency he exaggerates the strength of the enemy, plainly an excuse for his delay before Yorktown, and sets it dawn as " considerably greater than his own ;" but says he will do all he can with the force at his disposal— when the facts show that the enemy abandoned Yorktown without waiting for an attack, and were driven out of WiUiamsburgh by a brilliant assault made by troops acting under an inspiration, which General McClellan's extreme " caution" could not alto- gether restrain. It is by precisely such manipulation as this— that is, by constantly putting as *And here it may be observed, that while he was employed before Yorktown, the enemy con- structed his line of defence six or eight miles in the rear, where General McClellan proposed to consume more time, giving the enemy leisure for the construction of another line stUl further in the rear, as if he intended to aid the enemy in disputing " every step to Richmond ;" the purposes ot the enemy, according to informalion received Irom " prisoners.'' 22 origiaal motives what were really aflcrthnar/Ids, and by an adroit use of the .sup- prcssio vcri — that General McOlellan endeavors to give a false coloring to actions and events. But unfortunately for the success of this operation, there are too many "damned spots" that will not "out" for all his washing. Of these there is now another that must be set, forth. When General McGlellan, after the battle of Williamsburgli took up his march by the line of the York river, and thence along the railroad to the Chickahominy, in- stead of striking across obliquely to the James, and using that river as his line of supplies — a coui-se rendered possible by the destruction of the Merrhnac — we are, according to his Report, to believe that it was with extreme reluctance that he adopted this plan, to which he attempts to make it appear that he was reduced by the intermeddling of the authorities at Washington. In response to General McClellan's constant calls for reinforcements it was deter- mined that McDowell's corps, at Frederieksburgh, should move overland to make a junction either north or south of the I'amunkey, with the right of the Army of the Potomac, and co operate in the reduction of Richmond. Informed of this determination by a dispatch from the Secretary of War, under date of May 18, General McGlellan goes off in a fit of well simulated rage, and de- clares that this determination, and the necessity it imposed of taking the line of the York river, destroj-ed all his plans. " This order," he says, " rendered it impossible for me to use the James river as a line of operations, eiX\A forced me to establish our depots on the I'amunkey and to approach Richmond from the north. * * * The land movement obliged me to expose my right in order to secure the junc- tion ; and as the order for General McDowell's march was soon countermanded, I incurred great risk, of which the enemy finally took advantage mid frustrated the plan of campaign." Now, is General McGlellan so short of memory, or is he purposely guilty of so shameless an inconsistency, that he dares to make such an assertion as this, ^vhen he is himself on record, under solemn oath, in a sense directly the reverse ? In his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, General Mc- Glellan in reply to the specific questions — " Could not the advance on Richmond from Williamsburgli have been made with better prospect of success by the James river titan by the route pursued, and what were the reasons for taking the route adop- ted ?" — stated as follows : "I do not think that the navy at that tiino was in a condition to nialce the line of tlie James river perfectly secure for our supplies. The line of the Pamunkey offered greater advantages in that reaped. The place ioa.9 in a better position to effect a junction with any troops that might moiie from Washington on the Frederieksburgh line . I remember that the ilea of moving on Vie James river was seriousli/ discussed at that time. But the conlusion was arrived at that, under the circuiristanoes then existing, the route actually followed icas the best.'''' I leave to others the task of harmonizing these " points of mighty opposites," and of determining which is original motive and which afterthought. If they can- not be harmonized, 1 leave the reader to stamp with its fitting characterization this assertion of General McClellan's. But the truth of history requires me to go farther, and to point out tliat it was not at Williamsburgh but at Roper's church, where the army was, ten days preniously, that it was necessary to decide whether he would there cross the Ciiickahominy (undefended) and approach the James liver, (then open to us by the destruction of the Merrimae,) or continue on the Williamsburgh road toward Richmond. Tiie de cision was made then and there, and the decision was to move by the York and Pamunkey. So that so far from its being true, as claimed by General McClellan — that the dispatch of the Secretary of War " ordering" him to connect by land with McDowell, obliged him to renounce a route b}^ which, as he would now lead us to believe, he could have taken Richmond, the truth is that the choice of route was voluntarily made by Genei'al McClellan ten days before this order he quotes was given; and yet he lias in his report the astounding assurance to complain of the order in question as subjecting him to " great risks," of which the enemy finally " took ad- vantage" and " frustrated '"the plan of campaign !" What the enemy took advantage of — and what he would have been a fool had he 7iot taken advantage of — was Gen. McClellan's own ill judged scheme of operations, by which he gave the Rebels an interior position between himself and the force covering Washington. Just as Gen. McDowell was about to start from Fredericks- burg, with a reinforcement of forty thousand men, came the news of Jackson's raid up the Shenandoah A^alley, and Gen. McDowell was ordered by the President to send first one division, then another, and then his whole force, to follow Jackson — a request which is evident from Gen. McDowell's dispatches, he complied with with 23 extreme reluctance, as it, for the time being, diverted him from his proposed march to join McOlellan, which lie had extremely at heart. 'i'hus early was the order detaining McDowell's corps to cover "Washington fully justified! This, as well as all the circumstances of the case, are fully set forth in a dispatch from the President, under date of May 25, in which, after giving the details of Jackson's movement and the dispositions that had been made in consequence, he concludes as follows: "//■ McBoweXV R force ica/i noiv heyojid our reach, we should he utterly heirless. Aj^prehension of something like this, and no unwillingtiess to sustain you, lias always been my reason for withholding McDowell's force from you. Please understand this, and do the best you can with the force you have." I submit if this language does not display, on the part of the President, a temper worthy the name of sublime, especially when we consider it was addressed to the man who, of all others, had most tried his patience — the man whose conduct, on numberless occasions, had deserved his severest displeasure — the man to whom the President had conceded unlimited means for preparing one of the most powerful armies ever raised in any country — the man who, after all, evaded by an attempted artifice, the orders of his constitutional chief, thereby exposing the capital of the nation to be sacked bj' the enemy, and exposing also his really grand army to defeat and danger of imminent destruction? The countermanding of the order given to McDowell, gave McClellan what was far more valuable to him than the actual reinforcements which that General would have brought — to wit, an excuse, or the semblance of an excuse for further delays. For a long time he and his friends were able to saddle on that detention all the blame of his failures; but this shallow trick has ceased to be possible since the publication of the documents in the case; and I may add that it has ceased to be possible since the publication of Gen. McClellan's own report. Gen. McClellan states that "the information that McDowell's corps would march from Fredrieksburgh on the following Monday, (the 26th,) and that he would be under my command, ivas cheerhig news, and I now fell that wc would on his arrival he siifficienthj strong to overpower the large army confronting us." This is simulated joy and had no being in the bosom of Gen. McClellan at the time. The fact is Gen. McClellan did not wish Gen. McDowell to join him by an overland march; he wished tim to come by water on ftis rear, and stated at the time that lie would rather not have him at oil than have him come overlaiid ! This fact is abundantly proven by numerous dispatches, published and unpublished. Thus, under date of May 21, he writes: " I fear there is little hope McDowell can join me overland in time for the coming battle." (One would suppose from this that be was going to fight a battle in ten minutes.) But if he did not think McDowell would be able to join him "in time" bv an overland march of fifty miles, (an easy three or four days' march,) how co.. d he expect him to join him in time by the water route, when, according to his experience, the transit could not have been accomplished short of a fortnight? This is iterated and reiterated day after day, and finally, in a dispatch, under date of June 14, he says, with still greater emphasis: " It ouglit to be distinctly understood that McDowell and his troops are completely under my control, I received a telegraph from him requesting that McCall's Division might be placed so as to join him immediately on his arrival. That request does not breathe the proper spirit. — Whatever troops come to me must be so disposed of as to do the most good . I ds not feel feel that, in such circumstances as those in which 1 am now placed. Gen. McDowell should wish the general interest to be sacrificed for the purpose of incre'asing his command. If I cannot fully control all his troops, I want none of them, but would prefer to fight the battle zcith what I have, and let others be responsible for the results." Now, speaking of what does and what does not " breathe the proper spirit," I would like to ask whether this astounding declaration of Gen. McClellan "breathes" exactly the " pi'oper spirit?" According to his own repeated declarations, he was in a position in which reinforcements were absolutelj' essential, atul yet he prefers not to have them at all, unle.atch to Frankiin received. I have been doing all possible to hurry artillery and cavalry. The moment that Franklin can be started with a reasonable amount of artillery h« shall v°■^ *<•*., * * X * , ^'*^'i-''^ see Barnard, and be sure the works toward the Chain Bridge are perfectly secure. I look upon those works, Ethan Allen and Marcy, as of the flrat importance" •" At 3 30 P. M., Halleck impatiently telegraphs McClellan: " mt a 7noment must he lost in pursuing as large a focce as possible toward Manasses, so as to communicate with Pope before the enemy is reinforced." To this McClellan repliel at 4 40 P. M.: "Oeji Frariklin is with me here. I will know In a few minutes the condition of artillery and cavalry. We are not yet in a condition to move— may be by to-morrow moi'ning." At 8 40 P. M., Halleck still luore imperatively telegraphs: "There must be no further delay in moving Franklin's corps toward Manassas ; thev must ao to- morrow morning, ready or not ready. If we delay too long to get ready, there will be no ne- cessity to go at all for Pope will either be defeated or victorious without orir aid. If there is a ^v^'f" wagons, the men must carry provisions with them till the wagons can come to their To which Gen. McClellan replies at 1 P. M. : '• Your dispatch received. Franklin's corps has been ordered to march at 6 o'clock to-morrow morning. Sumner has about 14,000 infantry, without cavalry or artillery, here." These dispatches give the history of the 28th of August. Not one of these is published bu Gen. McClellan in his Report. They show the reiterated orders Gen. McClellan received to send reinforcements to Pope, and the imminence of the crisis that was upon that General. They show on the part of McClellan the shallow sub- terfuges he employed to avoid obeying these orders. In this whole series of excus- es, there is but one that presents even the show of sebstantiallity — namely the sup- posed lack of transportation ; but the utter baselessness of this pretence is made manifest by a dispatch of Gen. Halleck a day or two afterward. In which he says: "I learned last night (29th) that the Quartermasters Department would have given him (Franklin) plenty of transportation if he had applied for it any time since his arrival at Alexandria." . ^'/'s 29recisely Jifti/ Jive thousand effective men I Remember, now, that McClellan's old Peninsular army, swelled in 81 Washington by a great part of the command of Pope, numbered at this time over a htmdred and twenty thousand men — that is, that McClellan's force outnumbered the enemy's more than two to one — and yon will have the proper test by which to judge of his geceralsliip in the actions which followed. The rear guard left by Lee at South Mountain fully succeeded in delaying the ad- vance of McClellan until such time as Jackson andHill had compelled the surrender of Harper's Ferry and the capitulation of the garrison. But even after aiiiving before Antietam Creek he had still an opportunity on the 16th of September — the day be- fore the battle — to strike Lee before Jackson returned. This opportunity, also, he threw away. Says an English military critic, who always deals tenderly with LIcClellan: "Examining the proceedings of the 16th of September, by the account most favorable to the Federal leader, ^ere can be no doubt that the extreme cau- tion which he then displayed caused him to throw away the opportunity of crush- ing the enemy, which the resistance ©f Harper's Ferry, brief though it was, placed before him." During that night Jackson arrived with his corps, and the next day, September lYth, when the movement of Hooker drove McClellan into battle, Lee had his whole force massed at Antietam. But his whole force was doubly outnumbered by that of McClellan. The battle was delivered without order or etiseinble — the attacks being made feebly and in driblets. Says General Sumner, in regard to the manner of conducting the battle of Antietam : " I have always believed that, instead of sending these troops into that action in driblets as they were sent, if General McClellan had authorized me to march these 40,000 men on the left flank o the enemy, we could not have failed to throw them right back in front of the other divisions o our army on our left — Burnside's, Franklin's, and Porter's corps. As it was, we went in, division after division, imtil even one of my own divisions was forced out, the other two drove the enemy and held their positions. My intention was to have proceeded entirely on by their left and move down, bringing them right in front of Burnside, Franklin and Porter. Question. And all escape for the enemy would have been Impossible? Answer. I think so.'* On the night of the 18th the enemy, abandoned their position, their ammunition being exhausted, and returned across the Potomac into Virginia, without molestation. McClellan slowly followed and took up a position along the Potomac, on the Mary- land side. Lee established himself at the mouth of the valley, just south of Har- per's Ferry. If any combination of circumstances can be conceived calculated to prompt a gen- eral to energetic preparations to retrieve his tarnished laurels, it was such an ex- perience as General McClellen had passed through. The campaign toward Richmond, undertaken on his favorite line and began with loud promises of the apeed}^ annihi- lation of the enemy, had ended in that enemy's assuming the initiative, invading the territory of the loyal States and compelling McClellan's hasty retreat to cover the capital. The country, which bad lavished its resources to furnish that General with an incomparable army, felt the profoundest humiliation and mortification at the disastrous disappointment of its just expectations, and after Lee's retreat be- gan to look anxiously for a blow to be struck that would retrieve the national honor. Antietam having been fought about the middle of September, there was a prospect of a season of a couple of months, during which the state of the roads and the wt^ather would favor military operations, and cne would suppose that he would eagerly avail himself of this opportunity to strike a blow. As usual •with him he was during this period constantly promising to do so. On the 27th he wrote to General Halleck : " When the river rises so that the enemy cannot cross in force, I purpose concentrating the army somewhere near Harper's Ferry and then moving," etc. Well, shortly after, this condition was fulfilled, and still he remained inactive. The btirden of all his communications of this period was for more men, and still more men, though he had now under hiscommand an army 150,000 strong. On the 6th of October he was peremptorily ordered to "cross the Potomac and give battle to the enemy, or drive him South. Your army ynust move now while the roads are good." Week after week passed without the order being obeyed. — To cover up his disobedience he has much to say in his Report of the deficiency of the army in shoes, clothing, etc.; but the hollowness of this pretense is fully dis- played in the letters of General Meigs and Halleck, and even by his own chief quartermaster. General Ingalls. Besides, even if there were slight deficiencies in this respect, as there will be in every army, (though no army in the world was ever supplied as McClellan's was,) it would still have been better for him to have moved with this drawback than, by waiting to supply the deficit, to throw the time of moving over to the bad season. Said a corps commander in his army to the writer, ♦ Report on the Conduct of the War, vol. 1, p. 8^. 32 on the rainy November morning when the movement finally began, " We could better have advanced in September or October with the army barefoot than we can now perfectly supplied I " After nearly two months delay, General McClellan was pried from his base by an imperative order, just as he had been pried out of Washington by the like means in the preceding April, and he began his forward movement by the inner line, east of the Blue Ridge. But it soon became evident from the slowness of his movements, the spirit in which he acted, and the complications into wJiich he had plunged himself with the military authorities at Washington, that no good results could be expected from his campaign. He was accordingly ordered to resign command of the army at Warrenton, on the 5th of November. Thus closes a career certainly among the most extraordinary on record, and not less extraordinary from the record General McClellan has given of it to the world in the Report which has formed the subject-matter of this critique. But it is not yet possible for any man to follow out in the complex web of historic cause and effect all the results that have come, and may yet come, from that career. These results are more and other than military, and they did not cease when his military career closed. If, having failed as a military commander, he had left us merely the legacy of disaster we inherited from him, if we had been only destined to find that the man we had chosen for a leader in the dread ordeal into which the nation was plunged by the war was a mere blunderer and incompetent, we might curse our folly and thank heaven for having raised up other men to fight our battles. But he left us another heritage than that of military calamities. He darkened men's minds, and paralyzed their arms, with doubts and fears. The nation had put forth its strength lavishly only to see it wasted ; but we could have borne this, had not the very springs of confidence been sapped by the charge that all this waste, these dis- asters, were due to the incompetence and malevolence of the Administration. While still in command, McClellan lent the weight of his endorsement to the rising spirit of faction which sought to throw all the blame of his failures upon an Administration which the people were taught to believe had by its influence baulked all his bril- liant plans, and withheld the material needed to their execution. On being removed from command. McClellan put these slanders formally on record in his so-called Report. He has ended by becoming the leader of a party which, going on the effect produced by these vilifications of the Administration, seeks to obtain control of the destinies of this nation. I have attempted to expose the falsity of these charges, if not with the expectation of silencing the clamor of men seeking their greatness in their country's ruin, at least with the hope of disabusing honest men of mistaken notions long assiduously inculcated, and anticipating for the military conduct of Mr. Lincoln's Administration a part of that justice which history will accord it.