Lincoln had failed to move McClellan early in December. For part of that month and January McClellan was very ill. Consultations were held with other generals, including McDowell, who could not be given the chief command because the troops did not trust him. McDowell and the rest were in agreement with Lincoln. Then McClellan suddenly recovered and was present at a renewed consultation. He snubbed McDowell; the inadequacy of his force to meet, in fact, less than a third of its number was "so plain that a blind man could see it"; he was severely and abruptly tackled as to his own plans by Secretary Chase; Lincoln intervened to shield him, got from him a distinct statement that he had in his mind a definite time for moving, and adjourned the meeting. Stanton, one of the friends to whom McClellan had confided his grievances, was now at the War Department and was at one with the Joint Committee of Congress in his impatience that McClellan should move. At last, on January 27, Lincoln published a "General War Order" that a forward movement was to be made by the army of the Potomac and the Western armies on February 22. It seems a blundering step, but it roused McClellan. For a time he even thought of acting as Lincoln wished; he would move straight against Johnston, and "in ten days," he told Chase on February 13, "I shall be in Richmond." But he quickly returned to the plan which he seems to have been forming before but which he only now revealed to the Government, and it was a plan which involved further delay. When February 22 passed and nothing was done, the Joint Committee were indignant that Lincoln still stood by McClellan. But McClellan now was proposing definite action; apart from the difficulty of finding a better man, there was the fact that McClellan had made his army and was beloved by it; above all, Lincoln had not lost all the belief he had formed at first in McClellan's capacity; he believed that "if he could once get McClellan started" he would do well. Professional criticism, alive to McClellan's military faults, has justified Lincoln in this, and it was for something other than professional failure that Lincoln at last removed him.
McClellan had determined to move his army by sea to some point further down the coast of the Chesapeake Bay. The questions which Lincoln wrote to him requesting a written answer have never been adequately answered. Did McClellan's plan, he asked, require less time or money than Lincoln's? Did it make victory more certain? Did it make it more valuable? In case of disaster, did it make retreat more easy? The one point for consideration in McClellan's reply to him is that the enemy did not expect such a movement. This was quite true; but the enemy was able to meet it, and McClellan was far too deliberate to reap any advantage from a surprise. His original plan was to land near a place called Urbana on the estuary of the Rappahannock, not fifty miles east of Richmond. When he heard that Johnston had retreated further south, he assumed, and ever after declared, that this was to anticipate his design upon Urbana, which, he said, must have reached the enemy's ears through the loose chattering of the Administration. As has been seen, this was quite untrue. His project of going to Urbana was now changed, by himself or the Government, upon the unanimous advice of his chief subordinate generals, into a movement to Fort Monroe, which he had even before regarded as preferable to a direct advance southwards. A few days after Johnston's retreat, the War Department began the embarkation of his troops for this point. Fort Monroe is at the end of the peninsula which lies between the estuaries of the York River on the north and the James on the south. Near the base of this projection of land, seventy-five miles from Fort Monroe, stands Richmond. On April 2, 1862, McClellan himself landed to begin the celebrated Peninsula Campaign which was to close in disappointment at the end of July.
Before the troops were sent to the Peninsula several things were to be done. An expedition to restore communication westward by the Baltimore and Ohio Rail way involved bridging the Potomac with boats which were to be brought by canal. It collapsed because McClellan's boats were six inches too wide for the canal locks. Then Lincoln had insisted that the navigation of the lower Potomac should be made free from the menace of Confederate batteries which, if McClellan would have co-operated with the Navy Department, would have been cleared away long before. This was now done, and though a new peril to the transportation of McClellan's army suddenly and dramatically disclosed itself, it was as suddenly and dramatically removed. In the hasty abandonment of Norfolk harbour on the south of the James estuary by the North, a screw steamer called the Merrimac had been partly burnt and scuttled by the North. On March 1 she steamed out of the harbour in sight of the North. The Confederates had raised her and converted her into an ironclad. Three wooden ships of the North gave gallant but useless fight to her and were destroyed that day; and the news spread consternation in every Northern port. On the very next morning there came into the mouth of the James the rival product of the Northern Navy Department and of the Swedish engineer Ericsson's invention. She was compared to a "cheesebox on a raft"; she was named the Monitor, and was the parent of a type of vessel so called which has been heard of much more recently. The Merrimac and the Monitor forthwith fought a three hours' duel; then each retired into harbour without fatal damage. But the Merrimac never came out again; she was destroyed by the Confederates when McClellan had advanced some way up the Peninsula; and it will be unnecessary to speak of the several similar efforts of the South, which nearly but not quite achieved very important successes later.
Before and after his arrival at the Peninsula, McClellan received several mortifications. Immediately after the humiliation of the enemy's escape from Manassas, he was without warning relieved of his command as General-in-Chief. This would in any case have followed naturally upon his expedition away from Washington; it was in public put on that ground alone; and he took it well. He had been urged to appoint corps commanders, for so large a force as his could not remain organised only in divisions; he preferred to wait till he had made trial of the generals under him; Lincoln would not have this delay, and appointed corps commanders chosen by himself because he believed them to be fighting men. The manner in which these and some other preparatory steps were taken were, without a doubt, intended to make McClellan feel the whip. They mark a departure, not quite happy at first, from Lincoln's formerly too gentle manner. A worse shock to McClellan followed. The President had been emphatic in his orders that a sufficient force should be left to make Washington safe, and supposed that he had come to a precise understanding on this point. He suddenly discovered that McClellan, who had now left for Fort Monroe, had ordered McDowell to follow him with a force so large that it would not leave the required number behind. Lincoln immediately ordered McDowell and his whole corps to remain, though he subsequently sent a part of it to McClellan. McClellan's story later gives reason for thinking that he had intended no deception; but if so, he had expressed himself with unpardonable vagueness, and he had not in fact left Washington secure. Now and throughout this campaign Lincoln took the line that Washington must be kept safe—safe in the judgment of all the best military authorities available.
McClellan's progress up the Peninsula was slow. He had not informed himself correctly as to the geography; he found the enemy not so unprepared as he had supposed; he wasted, it is agreed, a month in regular approaches to their thinly-manned fortifications at Yorktown, when he might have carried them by assault. He was soon confronted by Joseph Johnston, and he seems both to have exaggerated Johnston's numbers again and to have been unprepared for his movements. The Administration does not seem to have spared any effort to support him. In addition to the 100,000 troops he took with him, 40,000 altogether were before long despatched to him. He was operating in a very difficult country, but he was opposed at first by not half his own number. Lincoln, in friendly letters, urged upon him that delay enabled the enemy to strengthen himself both in numbers and in fortifications. The War Department did its best for him. The whole of his incessant complaints on this score are rendered unconvincing by the language of his private letters about that "sink of iniquity, Washington," "those treacherous hounds," the civil authorities, who were at least honest and intelligent men, and the "Abolitionists and other scoundrels," who, he supposed, wished the destruction of his army. The criticism in Congress of himself and his generals was no doubt free, but so, as Lincoln reminded him, was the criticism of Lincoln himself. Justly or not, there were complaints of his relations with corps commanders. Lincoln gave no weight to them, but wrote him a manly and a kindly warning. The points of controversy which McClellan bequeathed to writers on the Civil War are innumerable, but no one can read his correspondence at this stage without concluding that he was almost impossible to deal with, and that the whole of his evidence in his own case was vitiated by a sheer hallucination that people wished him to fail. He had been nearly two months in the Peninsula when he was attacked at a disadvantage by Johnston, but defeated him on May 31 and June 1 in a battle which gave confidence and prestige to the Northern side, but which he did not follow up. A part of his army pursued the enemy to within four miles of Richmond, and it has been contended that if he had acted with energy he could at this time have taken that city. His delay, to whatever it was due, gave the enemy time to strengthen himself greatly both in men and in fortifications. The capable Johnston was severely wounded in the battle, and was replaced by the inspired Lee. According to McClellan's own account, which English writers have followed, his movements had been greatly embarrassed by the false hope given him that McDowell was now to march overland and join him. His statement that he was influenced by this is refuted by his own letters at the time. McClellan, however, suffered a great disappointment. The front of Washington was now clear of the enemy and Lincoln had determined to send McDowell when he was induced to keep him back by a diversion in the war which he had not expected, and which indeed McClellan had advised him not to expect.
"Stonewall" Jackson's most famous campaign happened at this juncture, and to save Washington, Lincoln and Stanton placed themselves, or were placed, in the trying position of actually directing movements of troops. There were to the south and south-west of Washington, besides the troops under McDowell's command, two Northern forces respectively commanded by Generals Banks and Frémont. These two men were among the chief examples of those "political generals," the use of whom in this early and necessarily blundering stage of the war has been the subject of much comment. Banks was certainly a politician, a self-made man, who had worked in a factory and who had risen to be at one time Speaker of the House. He was now a general because as a powerful man in the patriotic State of Massachusetts he brought with him many men, and these were ready to obey him. On the other hand, he on several occasions showed good judgment both in military matters and in the questions of civil administration which came under him; his heart was in his duty; and, though he held high commands almost to the end of the war, want of competence was never imputed to him till the failure of a very difficult enterprise on which he was despatched in 1864. He was now in the lower valley of the Shenandoah, keeping a watch over a much smaller force under Jackson higher up the valley. Frémont was in some sense a soldier, but after his record in Missouri he should never have been employed. His new appointment was one of Lincoln's greatest mistakes, and it was a mistake of a characteristic kind. It will easily be understood that there were real political reasons for not leaving this popular champion of freedom unused and unrecognized. These reasons should not have, and probably would not have, prevailed. But Lincoln's personal reluctance to resist all entreaties on behalf of his own forerunner and his own rival was great; and then Frémont came to Lincoln and proposed to him a knight-errant's adventure to succour the oppressed Unionists of Tennessee by an expedition through West Virginia. So he was now to proceed there, but was kept for the present in the mountains near the Shenandoah valley. The way in which the forces under McDowell, Banks and Frémont were scattered on various errands was unscientific; what could be done by Jackson, in correspondence with Lee, was certainly unforeseen. At the beginning of May, Jackson, who earlier in the spring had achieved some minor successes in the Shenandoah valley and had raided West Virginia, began a series of movements of which the brilliant skill and daring are recorded in Colonel Henderson's famous book. With a small force, surrounded by other forces, each of which, if concentrated, should have outnumbered him, he caught each in turn at a disadvantage, inflicted on them several damaging blows, and put the startled President and Secretary of War in fear for the safety of Washington. There seemed to be no one available who could immediately be charged with the supreme command of these three Northern forces, unless McDowell could have been spared from where he was; so Lincoln with Stanton's help took upon himself to ensure the co-operation of their three commanders by orders from Washington. His self-reliance had now begun to reach its full stature, his military good sense in comparison with McClellan's was proving greater than he had supposed, and he had probably not discovered its limitations. Presumably his plans now were, like an amateur's, too complicated, and it is not worth while to discuss them. But he was trying to cope with newly revealed military genius, and, so far as can be told, he was only prevented from crushing the adventurous Jackson by a piece of flat disobedience on the part of Frémont. Frémont, having thus appropriately punished Lincoln, was removed, this time finally, from command. Jackson, having successfully kept McDowell from McClellan, had before the end of June escaped safe southward. McClellan was nearing Richmond. Lee, by this time, had been set free from Jefferson Davis' office and had taken over the command of Joseph Johnston's army. Lincoln must have learnt a great deal, and he fully realised that the forces not under McClellan in the East should be under some single commander. Pope, an experienced soldier, had succeeded well in the West; he was no longer necessary there, and there was no adverse criticism upon him. He was in all respects a proper choice, and he was now summoned to take command of what was to be called the army of Virginia. A few days later, upon the advice, as it seems, of Scott, Halleck himself was called from the West. His old command was left to Grant and he himself was made General-in-Chief and continued at Washington to the end of the war as an adviser of the Government. All the progress in the West had been made under Halleck's supervision, and his despatches had given an exaggerated impression of his own achievement at Corinth. He had not seen active service before the war, but he had a great name as an accomplished military writer; in after years he was well known as a writer on international law. He is not thought to have justified his appointment by showing sound judgment about war, and Lincoln upon some later emergency told him in his direct way that his military knowledge was useless if he could not give a definite decision in doubtful circumstances. But whether Halleck's abilities were great or small, Lincoln continued to use them, because he found him "wholly for the service," without personal favour or prejudice.
McClellan was slowly but steadily nearing Richmond. From June 26 to July 2 there took place a series of engagements between Lee and McClellan, or rather the commanders under him, known as the Seven Days' Battles. The fortunes of the fighting varied greatly, but the upshot is that, though the corps on McClellan's left won a strong position not far from Richmond, the sudden approach of Jackson's forces upon McClellan's right flank, which began on the 26th, placed him in what appears to have been, as he himself thought it, a situation of great danger. Lee is said to have "read McClellan like an open book," playing upon his caution, which made him, while his subordinates fought, more anxious to secure their retreat than to seize upon any advantage they gained. But Lee's reading deceived him in one respect. He had counted upon McClellan's retreating, but thought he would retreat under difficulties right down the Peninsula to his original base and be thoroughly cut up on the way. But on July 2 McClellan with great skill withdrew his whole army to Harrison's Landing far up the James estuary, having effected with the Navy a complete transference of his base. Here his army lay in a position of security; they might yet threaten Richmond, and McClellan's soldiers still believed in him. But the South was led by a great commander and had now learned to give him unbounded confidence; there was some excuse for a panic in Wall Street, and every reason for dejection in the North.
On the third of the Seven Days, McClellan, much moved by the sight of dead and wounded comrades, sent a gloomy telegram to the Secretary of War, appealing with excessive eloquence for more men. "I only wish to say to the President," he remarked in it, "that I think he is wrong in regarding me as ungenerous when I said that my force was too weak." He concluded: "If I save the army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you nor to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army." Stanton still expressed the extraordinary hope that Richmond would fall in a day or two. He had lately committed the folly of suspending enlistment, an act which, though of course there is an explanation of it, must rank as the one first-rate blunder of Lincoln's Administration. He was now negotiating through the astute Seward for offers from the State Governors of a levy of 300,000 men to follow up McClellan's success. Lincoln, as was his way, feared the worst. He seems at one moment to have had fears for McClellan's sanity. But he telegraphed, himself, an answer to him, which affords as fair an example as can be given of his characteristic manner. "Save your army at all events. Will send reinforcements as fast as we can. Of course they cannot reach you to-day or to-morrow, or next day. I have not said you were ungenerous for saying you needed reinforcements. I thought you were ungenerous in assuming that I did not send them as fast as I could. I feel any misfortune to you and your army quite as keenly as you feel it yourself. If you have had a drawn battle or repulse, it is the price we pay for the enemy not being in Washington. We protected Washington and the enemy concentrated on you. Had we stripped Washington, he would have been upon us before the troops could have gotten to you. Less than a week ago you notified us reinforcements were leaving Richmond to come in front of us. It is the nature of the case, and neither you nor the Government are to blame. Please tell me at once the present condition and aspect of things."
Demands for an impossible number of reinforcements continued. Lincoln explained to McClellan a few days later that they were impossible, and added: "If in your frequent mention of responsibility you have the impression that I blame you for not doing more than you can, please be relieved of such an impression. I only beg that, in like manner, you will not ask impossibilities of me." Much argument upon Lincoln's next important act may be saved by the simple observations that the problem in regard to the defence of Washington was real, that McClellan's propensity to ask for the impossible was also real, and that Lincoln's patient and loyal attitude to him was real too.
Five days after his arrival at Harrison's Landing, McClellan wrote Lincoln a long letter. It was a treatise upon Lincoln's political duties. It was written as "on the brink of eternity." He was not then in fact in any danger, and possibly he had composed it seven days before as his political testament; and apprehensions, free from personal fear, excuse, without quite redeeming, its inappropriateness. The President is before all things not to abandon the cause. But the cause should be fought for upon Christian principles. Christian principles exclude warfare on private property. More especially do they exclude measures for emancipating slaves. And if the President gives way to radical views on slavery, he will get no soldiers. Then follows a mandate to the President to appoint a Commander-in-Chief, not necessarily the writer. Such a summary does injustice to a certain elevation of tone in the letter, but that elevation is itself slightly strained. McClellan, whatever his private opinions, had not meddled with politics before he left Washington. The question why in this military crisis he should have written what a Democratic politician might have composed as a party manifesto must later have caused Lincoln some thought, but it apparently did not enter into the decision he next took. He arrived himself at Harrison's Landing next day. McClellan handed him the letter. Lincoln read it, and said that he was obliged to him. McClellan sent a copy to his wife as "a very important record."