[5] McClellan says that he offered to General Hitchcock, "who at that time held staff relations with his excellency, the President, and the secretary of war," to submit a list of troops, to be left for the defense of Washington, with their positions; but Hitchcock replied that McClellan's judgment was sufficient in the matter. McClellan's Report, 683. VOL. II.
[6] By letter to the adjutant-general, wherein he requested the transmission of the information to the secretary of war. Report of Comm. on Conduct of the War, ii. pt. i. 13. The addition in the Report is erroneous, being given as 54,456 instead of 55,456.
[7] See Comte de Paris, Civil War in America, i. 626, 627.
[8] See discussion by Swinton, Army of Potomac, 108 et seq.
[9] Perhaps he was not justified in counting upon it with such apparent assurance as he had done. Webb, The Peninsula, 37-42.
[10] General Webb says that this question is "the leading point of dispute in the campaign and may never be satisfactorily set at rest." But he also says: "To allow the general to remain in command, and then cut off the very arm with which he was about to strike, we hold to have been inexcusable and unmilitary to the last degree." Swinton condemns the withholding McDowell (Army of the Potomac, 104), adding, with fine magnanimity, that it is not necessary to impute any "really unworthy motive" to Mr. Lincoln!
[11] It seems to me that military opinion, so far as I can get at it, inclines to hold that the government, having let McClellan go to the Peninsula with the expectation of McDowell's corps, ought to have sent it to him, and not to have repaired its own oversight at his cost. But this does not fully meet the position that, oversight or no oversight, Peninsula-success or Peninsula-defeat, blame here or blame there, when the President had reason to doubt the safety of the capital, he was resolved, and rightly resolved, to put that safety beyond possibility of question, by any means or at any cost. The truth is that to the end of time one man will think one way, and another man will think another way, concerning this unendable dispute.
[12] General Wool was in command at Fortress Monroe. It had been originally arranged that General McClellan should draw 10,000 men from him. But this was afterward countermanded. The paragraph in the President's letter has reference to this.
[13] A slight obstruction by a battery at Drury's Bluff must have been abandoned instantly upon the approach of a land force.
[14] Whose command had been added to McDowell's.