However, it was impossible to keep the commander-in-chief of the army inactive while a great war was in progress, and early in 1847, he was sent to the front, and on March 9 began one of the most successful and brilliant military campaigns in history. Landing before Vera Cruz, he captured that city after a bombardment of twenty days, and, gathering his army together, started on an overland march for the capital of Mexico. Santa Anna, with a great force, awaited him in a strong position at Cerro Gordo, but Scott seized the key of it in a lofty height commanding the Mexican position, and soon won a decisive victory. The American army swept on like a tidal wave, and city after city fell before it, until, on the twentieth of August, it reached the city of the Montezumas. An armistice delayed the advance until September 7, but on that day offensive operations were begun. Great fortifications strongly manned guarded the town, but they were carried one after another by assault, and on September 14, General Scott marched at the head of his army through the city gates. The war was ended—a war in which the Americans had not lost a single battle, and had gained a vast empire.
General Scott came out of the war with a tremendous reputation; but he lacked personal magnetism. A certain stateliness and dignity kept people at a distance, and, together with an exacting discipline, won him the sobriquet of "Old Fuss and Feathers." In 1852, he was the candidate of the Whig party for President; but the party was falling to pieces, he himself had no great personal following, and he was defeated by the Democratic candidate, one of his own generals, Franklin Pierce. He remained in command of the army until the outbreak of the Civil War. Age and infirmities prevented his taking the field, and after the disastrous defeat at Bull Run, he resigned the command. General Scott was renowned for his striking physique, more majestic, perhaps, even than that of Washington. He has, indeed, been called the most imposing general in history.
With General Scott ends another era of our history, and we come to a consideration of the soldiers made famous by the greatest war of the nineteenth century—the civil conflict which threatened, for a time, to disrupt the Union. It was a war waged on both sides with desperate courage and tenacity, and it developed a number of commanders not, perhaps, of the very first rank, but standing high in the second.
The first real success of the war was won by George B. McClellan. A graduate of West Point, veteran of the war with Mexico, and military observer of the war in the Crimea, he had resigned from the army in 1857 to engage in the railroad business, with headquarters at Cincinnati. At the opening of the war, he was commissioned major-general, and put in command of the Department of Ohio. His first work was to clear western Virginia of Confederates, which he did in a series of successful skirmishes, lasting but a few weeks. He lost only eight men, while the Confederates lost sixteen hundred, besides over a thousand taken prisoners. The achievement was of the first importance, since it saved for the Union the western section of Virginia which, a year later, was admitted as a separate state. It is worth remembering that in this campaign, McClellan's opponent was no less a personage than Robert E. Lee.
The success was the greater as contrasted with the disaster at Bull Run, and in August, 1861, McClellan was placed in command of the Army of the Potomac, gathered about Washington and still discouraged and disorganized from that defeat and rout. His military training had been of the most thorough description, especially upon the technical side, and no better man could have been found for the task of whipping that great army into shape. He soon proved his fitness for the work, and four months later, he had under him a trained and disciplined force, the equal of any that ever trod American soil. He forged the instrument which, in the end, a stronger man than he was to use. Let that always be remembered to his credit.
He had become a sort of popular hero, idolized by his soldiers, for he possessed in greater degree than any other commander at the North that personal magnetism which wins men. But it was soon evident that he lacked those qualities of aggressiveness, energy, and initiative essential to a great commander; that he was unduly cautious. He seems to have habitually over-estimated the strength of the enemy and under-estimated his own. With this habit of mind, it was certain that he would never suffer a great defeat; but it was also probable that he would never win a great victory, and a great victory was just what the North hungered for to wipe out the disgrace of Bull Run. Not for eight months was he ready to begin the campaign against Richmond, and it ended in heavy loss and final retreat, partly because of McClellan's incapacity and partly because of ignorant interference with his plans on the part of politicians at Washington. For it must be remembered that McClellan was a Democrat, and soon became the natural leader of that party at the North—a fact which seemed little less than treason to many of the political managers at the Capital.
One great and successful battle he fought, however, at Antietam, checking Lee's attempt to invade the North and sending him in full retreat back to Virginia, but his failure to pursue the retreating army exasperated the President, and he was removed from command of the army on November 7, 1862. This closed his career as a soldier. In the light of succeeding events, it cannot be doubted that his removal was a serious mistake. All in all, he was the ablest commander the Army of the Potomac ever had; he was a growing man; a little more experience in the field would probably have cured him of over-timidity, and made him a great soldier. General Grant summed the matter up admirably when he said, "The test applied to him would be terrible to any man, being made a major-general at the beginning of the war. If he did not succeed, it was because the conditions of success were so trying. If he had fought his way along and up, I have no reason to suppose that he would not have won as high distinction as any of us." In 1864, McClellan was the nominee of the Democratic party for the presidency, but received only twenty-one electoral votes.
The command of the Army of the Potomac passed to Ambrose E. Burnside, who had won some successes early in the war, but who had protested his unfitness for a great command, and who was soon to prove it. He led the army after Lee, found him entrenched on the heights back of Fredericksburg, and hurled division after division against an impregnable position, until twelve thousand men lay dead and wounded on the field. Burnside, half-crazed with anguish at his fatal mistake, offered his resignation, which was at once accepted.
"Fighting Joe" Hooker succeeded him, and was soon to demonstrate that he, too, was unfitted for the great task. Early in May, believing Lee's army to be in retreat, he attacked it at Chancellorsville, only to be defeated with a loss of seventeen thousand men. At the beginning of the battle, Hooker had enjoyed every advantage of position, and his army outnumbered Lee's; but he sacrificed his position, with unaccountable stupidity, moving from a high position to a lower one, provoking the protest from Meade that, if the army could not hold the top of a hill, it certainly could not hold the bottom of it; and he seemed unable to use his men to advantage, holding one division in idleness while another was being cut to pieces.