General Heintzelman arrived in front of the works, and was greeted with shells from Magruder's batteries. While the cannon were booming on that afternoon of the 4th, the following brief telegram was sent over the wires from Washington to Fortress Monroe:—
"By direction of the President, General McDowell's army corps has been detached from the force under your immediate command, and the General is ordered to report to the Secretary of War."
General McClellan received it on the 5th. He remarks:—
"To me the blow was most discouraging. It frustrated all my plans for impending operations. It fell when I was too deeply committed to withdraw. It left me incapable of continuing operations which had been begun. It compelled the adoption of another, a different, and a less effective plan of campaign. It made rapid and brilliant operations impossible. It was a fatal error. It was now of course out of my power to turn Yorktown by West Point. I had therefore no choice left but to attack it directly in front as I best could with the force at my command."[12]
This brief despatch will demand the patient consideration of historians in the future, who, when the passions and prejudices of men have passed away, calmly and dispassionately review the causes of the failure of the Peninsular campaign. On one hand, it is alleged to have been the fatal error; that it was an unwarrantable interference, which made it impossible for General McClellan to conduct the campaign to a successful issue.
On the other hand, it is asked how the presence of McDowell would have enabled him to go to West Point without the aid of the navy, which he could not have.[13]
How did it compel the adoption of another plan, inasmuch as the order for the troops to advance and attack the works at Yorktown was issued on the 3d, and they marched on the 4th, and were engaged with the enemy before General McClellan received the orders? It is claimed, therefore, that the issuing of the order was not a fatal error; that it did not compel the adoption of another plan; that no other plan was adopted; that it did not leave General McClellan incapable of continuing operations already begun; that it did not deprive him of the power of taking West Point, inasmuch as he never had had the power; neither did it compel an attack directly in front, for that had already begun; and that the President in making the change was only enforcing the conditions on which he accepted the plan of a movement to the Peninsula,—the retention of a force sufficient to cover Washington,—which General McClellan had not complied with.
In the correspondence which passed between the President and General McClellan, the President has this explanation and vindication of his course:—
"My explicit directions that Washington should, by the judgment of all commanders of corps, be left entirely secure, had been entirely neglected. It was precisely this that drove me to detain McDowell. I do not forget that I was satisfied with your arrangement to leave Banks at Manassas Junction, but when that arrangement was broken up, and nothing was substituted for it, of course I was not satisfied. I was constrained to substitute something for it.
"And now allow me to ask you: Do you really think I should permit the line from Richmond via Manassas Junction to this city to be entirely open, except what resistance could be presented by less than twenty thousand unorganized troops? This is a question which the country will not allow me to evade."[14]