The interviews of visitors were limited to a certain number of minutes, and when my time was up I had to go.
In a few days after the experience of negotiating the decoy over the river, the Army of the Potomac did move, and a demonstration was made precisely as I had indicated. But the history of General Burnside's famous stick-in-the-mud march has already been so well told that I need only to add that this was his plan. If the weather had not changed, or the dreadful Virginia mud had not prevented, General Burnside would have crossed above the town, and might have been successful then, and redeemed himself.
It is now certain that General Lee would have been surprised, and have been compelled to fight the Army of the Potomac on equal terms, outside of fortifications, with General Burnside for a leader. General Hooker afterward did precisely the same thing that General Burnside is so mercilessly criticized for attempting. Hooker failed miserably, after he was over, and when everything was in his grasp. Burnside might have managed it better in Hooker's position.
CHAPTER XXX.
CONSPIRACIES AMONG UNION GENERALS AND NORTHERN POLITICIANS—THE DEFENSE OF THAT UNAPPRECIATED ARMY, THE CAVALRY—HOOKER AND DEAD CAVALRYMEN—STONEMAN'S CELEBRATED RAID TO RICHMOND TRUTHFULLY DESCRIBED, AND ITS FAILURE TO CAPTURE RICHMOND ACCOUNTED FOR—A CHAPTER ON THE "SECRET SERVICE" NOT REFERRED TO IN OFFICIAL REPORTS OR CURRENT WAR HISTORY.
It is with considerable reluctance that I make this jump in my narrative from the date of Hooker's taking command until his first active movement at Chancellorsville. The months of February, March and nearly all of April were spent in comparative idleness. The massive Army of the Potomac, with its 100,000 men, were in their restful winter quarters on Stafford Heights, opposite Fredericksburg. It is a great mistake, however, to suppose that there was no activity at the headquarters of that army.
We were boiled and stirred up incessantly at headquarters by the little wars and inside conspiracies between our own general officers and against the War Office. The secret history of some of these bickerings would be interesting reading, by way of foot notes to the articles now being contributed to the Century and other war books by some of those who were active participants in these traitorous schemes. I however do not know enough of it (except from personal gossip about headquarters) to permit my venturing upon any detailed exposition.
Sufficient is known, however, in a general way, by the survivors, who were cognizant of the affairs at the time, to bear me out in asserting that among other schemes there was a widespread, organized conspiracy among certain officers to attempt a coup d'etat, by which McClellan was to be made Military Dictator, in place of President Lincoln.
This may be denied again and again, but the unadulterated facts are (and they froze so hard that winter that they will keep to the end) that there was such a conspiracy. The correspondence on the subject with the Copperhead politicians in the North, who were to manage that end, is probably yet in existence. Some day, when the active participators are dead and gone, perhaps the truth may be made known.