MCCLELLAN AND POLITICS--HIS REMOVAL AND ITS CAUSE
Meeting Colonel Key--His changes of opinion--His relations to McClellan--Governor Dennison's influence--McClellan's attitude toward Lincoln--Burnside's position--The Harrison Landing letter--Compared with Lincoln's views--Probable intent of the letter--Incident at McClellan's headquarters--John W. Garrett--Emancipation Proclamation--An after-dinner discussion of it--Contrary influences--Frank advice--Burnside and John Cochrane--General Order 163--Lincoln's visit to camp--Riding the field--A review--Lincoln's desire for continuing the campaign--McClellan's hesitation--His tactics of discussion--His exaggeration of difficulties--Effect on his army--Disillusion a slow process--Lee's army not better than Johnston's--Work done by our Western army--Difference in morale--An army rarely bolder than its leader--Correspondence between Halleck and McClellan--Lincoln's remarkable letter on the campaign--The army moves on November 2--Lee regains the line covering Richmond--McClellan relieved--Burnside in command.
When I rode up with Burnside on the afternoon of the 15th September, in the group around McClellan I met Judge Key, whom I had not seen since we parted in the Ohio Senate in April of the preceding year. He was now aide-de-camp on the headquarters staff with the rank of colonel, and doing duty also as judge-advocate. When McClellan directed us to leave the ridge because the display of numbers attracted the enemy's fire, Colonel Key took my arm and we walked a little way down the slope till we found a fallen tree, on which we sat down, whilst he plunged eagerly into the history of his own opinions since we had discussed the causes of the war in the legislature of our State. He told me with earnestness that he had greatly modified his views on the subject of slavery, and he was now satisfied that the war must end in its abolition. The system was so plainly the soul of the rebellion and the tie which bound the seceded States together, that its existence must necessarily depend upon the success of the revolutionary movement, and it would be a fair object of attack, if doing so would help our cause. I was struck by the zeal with which he dashed into the discussion, forgetful of his actual surroundings in his wish to make me quickly understand the change that had come over his views since we parted at Columbus. He was so absorbed that even when a shell burst near us, he only half gave it attention, saying in a parenthetical way that he would change his position, as he would "rather not be hit in the back by one of those confounded things." We had been so sitting that in facing me his back was toward the front and the line of fire.
Colonel Key has been regarded by many as McClellan's evil genius, whose influence had been dominant in the general's political conduct and who was therefore the cause of his downfall. His influence on McClellan was unquestionably great,--and what he said to me is an important help in understanding the general's conduct and opinions. It accords with other statements of his which have been made public by Judge William M. Dickson of Cincinnati, who at one time was Colonel Key's partner in the practice of the law. [Footnote: I have failed in my efforts to find a communication on the subject in a newspaper, written by Judge Dickson, which he showed to me, reiterating his statements in it.]
General McClellan urged me to come to his headquarters without ceremony, and after the battle of Antietam I had several opportunities of unrestrained discussion of affairs in which he seemed entirely frank in giving me his opinions. It was plainly evident that he was subjected to a good deal of pressure by opponents of the administration to make him commit himself to them. On the other hand, Governor Dennison of Ohio, who was his sincere friend, took every opportunity to counteract such influences and to promote a good understanding between him and Mr. Lincoln. McClellan perfectly knew my own position as an outspoken Republican who from the first had regarded the system of slavery as the stake ventured by the Secessionists on their success in the war, and who held to John Quincy Adams's doctrine that the war powers were adequate to destroy the institution which we could not constitutionally abolish otherwise. With me, the only question was when the ripe time had come for action, and I had looked forward to Mr. Lincoln's proclamation with some impatience at the delay.
The total impression left upon me by the general's conversation was that he agreed with Colonel Key in believing that the war ought to end in abolition of slavery; but he feared the effects of haste, and thought the steps toward the end should be conservatively careful and not brusquely radical. I thought, and still think, that he regarded the President as nearly right in his general views and political purposes, but overcrowded by more radical men around him into steps which as yet were imprudent and extreme. Such an attitude on his part made Governor Dennison and myself feel that there was no need of any political quarrel between him and the administration, and that if he would only rebuff all political intriguers and put more aggressive energy into his military operations, his career might be a success for the country as well as for himself. The portions of his correspondence with Burnside which have become public show that the latter also had, as a true friend, constantly urged him to keep out of political controversy. Burnside himself, like Grant and Sherman, began with a dislike of the antislavery movement; but, also like them, his patriotism being the dominant quality, the natural effect of fighting the Secessionists was to beget in him a hearty acceptance of the policy of emancipation to which Mr. Lincoln had been led by the same educational process.
At the time I am speaking of, I knew nothing of McClellan's famous letter to the President from Harrison's Landing, of July 7, but since it has come to light, I have interpreted it much less harshly than many have done. Reading it in the light of his talk during those Antietam days, I think it fair to regard it as an effort to show Mr. Lincoln that they were not far apart in opinion, and to influence the President to take the more conservative course to which he thought him inclined when taking counsel only of his own judgment. McClellan knew that his "change of base" to the James River in June was not accepted as the successful strategy he declared it to be, and that strong influences were at work to remove him. Under the guise of giving advice to the President, he was in fact assuring him that he did not look to the acknowledgment of the Confederacy as a conceivable outcome of the war; that the "contraband" doctrine applied to slaves was consistent with compensated emancipation; that he favored the application of the principle to the border States so as to make them free States; that concentration of military force as opposed to dispersion of effort was the true policy; that he opposed the rules of warfare which he assumed were announced in General Pope's much criticised orders; and lastly, that he would cordially serve under such general-in-chief as Mr. Lincoln should select.
Compare all this with Mr. Lincoln's known views. It was notorious that he was thought to be too conservative by many of his own party. He had urged a system of compensated emancipation for the border States. He had said that he held the slavery question to be only a part, and an absolutely subordinate part, of the greater question of saving the Union. He had disapproved of a portion of Pope's order regarding the treatment of non-combatants. However ill-advised McClellan's letter was, it may be read between the lines as an attempt to strengthen himself with the President as against Stanton and others, and to make his military seat firmer in the saddle by showing that he was not in political antagonism to Mr. Lincoln, but held, in substance, the conservative views that were supposed to be his. Its purpose seems to me to have been of this personal sort. He did not publish it at the time, and it was not till he was removed from his command that it became a kind of political manifesto. This view is supported by what occurred after the publication of the Emancipation Proclamation, which I shall tell presently; but, to preserve the proper sequence, I must first give another incident.