The crisis of my illness now came in a paralysis of the lower limbs, and I was taken to Richmond, where I learned of my promotion to major-general, on the recommendation of Jackson, for services in the Valley, and assignment to a distant field.
Having expressed an opinion of McClellan as an organizer of armies, I will now treat of his conduct as a commander in this and his subsequent campaign. His first operations on the peninsula were marked by a slowness and hesitancy to be expected of an engineer, with small experience in handling troops. His opponent, General Magruder, was a man of singular versatility. Of a boiling, headlong courage, he was too excitable for high command. Widely known for social attractions, he had a histrionic vein, and indeed was fond of private theatricals. Few managers could have surpassed him in imposing on an audience a score of supernumeraries for a grand army. Accordingly, with scarce a tenth the force, he made McClellan reconnoiter and deploy with all the caution of old Melas, till Johnston came up. It is true that McClellan steadily improved, and gained confidence in himself and his army; yet he seemed to regard the latter as a parent does a child, and, like the first Frederick William's gigantic grenadiers, too precious for gunpowder.
His position in front of Richmond, necessitated by the establishment of his base on York River, was vicious, because his army was separated by the Chickahominy, a stream subject to heavy floods, which swept away bridges and made the adjacent lowlands impassable. Attacked at Fair Oaks while the river was in flood, he displayed energy, but owed the escape of his two exposed corps to Johnston's wound and the subsequent blunders of the Confederates. To operate against Richmond on the north bank of the James, his proper plan was to clear that river and rest his left upon it, or to make the Potomac and Rappahannock his base, as the line of rail from Aquia and Fredericksburg was but little longer than the York River line. This, keeping him more directly between the Confederate army and Washington, would have given him McDowell's corps, the withdrawal of which from his direction he earnestly objected to. The true line of attack was on the south of the James, where Grant was subsequently forced by the ability of Lee; but it should be observed that after he took the field, McClellan had not the liberty of action accorded to Grant. That Lee caught his right "in the air" at Hanover and Cold Harbor, McClellan ascribes to his Government's interference with and withdrawal of McDowell's corps. Reserving this, he fought well at Gaines's Mill, Cold Harbor, and Frazier's Farm. Always protecting his selected line of retreat, bringing off his movable stores, and preserving the organization of his army, he restored its spirit and morale by turning at Malvern Hill to inflict a bloody repulse on his enemy. In his official report he speaks of his movement from the Chickahominy to Harrison's Landing on the James as a change of base, previously determined. This his detractors sneer at as an afterthought, thereby unwittingly enhancing his merit. Regarded as a change of base, carefully considered and provided for, it was most creditable; but if suddenly and unexpectedly forced upon him, he exhibited a courage, vigor, and presence of mind worthy of the greatest commanders.
Safe at Harrison's Landing, in communication with the fleet, the army was transferred from McClellan to the command of General Pope; and the influence of McClellan on his troops can not be correctly estimated without some allusion to this officer, under whose command the Federal Army of the Potomac suffered such mortifying defeat. Of an effrontery while danger was remote equaled by helplessness when it was present, and mendacity after it had passed, the annals of despotism scarce afford an example of the elevation of such a favorite. It has been said that his talent for the relation of obscene stories engaged the attention and confidence of President Lincoln. However this may be, great was the consternation at Washington produced by his incapacity. The bitterness of official rancor was sweetened, and in honeyed phrase McClellan was implored to save the capital. He displayed an unselfish patriotism by accepting the task without conditions for himself, but it may be doubted if he was right in leaving devoted friends under the scalping-knife, speedily applied, as might have been foreseen.
With vigor he restored order and spirit to the army, and led it, through the passes of South Mountain, to face Lee, who was stretched from Chambersburg to Harper's Ferry. Having unaccountably permitted his cavalry to separate from him, and deprived himself of adequate means of information, Lee was to some extent taken unawares. His thin lines at Antietam, slowly fed with men jaded by heavy marching, were sorely pressed. There was a moment, as Hooker's advance was stayed by the wound of its leader, when McClellan, with storgé of battle, might have led on his reserves and swept the field. Hard would it have been for the Confederates, with the river in rear; but this seemed beyond McClellan or outside of his nature. Antietam was a drawn battle, and Lee recrossed into Virginia at his leisure.
While it may be confidently believed that McClellan would have continued to improve by experience in the field, it is doubtful if he possessed that divine spark which impels a commander, at the accepted moment, to throw every man on the enemy and grasp complete victory. But his Government gave him no further opportunity. He disappeared from the war, to be succeeded by mediocrity, too well recognized to disturb the susceptibility of a War Secretary who, like Louvois, was able, but jealous of merit and lustful of power.
Although in the last months of the war, after he had assumed command of the armies of the Confederacy, I had some correspondence with General Lee, I never met him again, and indeed was widely separated from him, and it now behooves me to set forth an opinion of his place in Southern history. Of all the men I have seen, he was best entitled to the epithet of distinguished; and so marked was his appearance in this particular, that he would not have passed unnoticed through the streets of any capital. Reserved almost to coldness, his calm dignity repelled familiarity: not that he seemed without sympathies, but that he had so conquered his own weaknesses as to prevent the confession of others before him. At the outbreak of the war his reputation was exclusively that of an engineer, in which branch of the military service of the United States he had, with a short exception, passed his career. He was early sent to Western Virginia on a forlorn hope against Rosecrans, where he had no success; for success was impossible. Yet his lofty character was respected of all and compelled public confidence. Indeed, his character seemed perfect, his bath in Stygian waters complete; not a vulnerable spot remained: totus teres atque rotundus. His soldiers reverenced him and had unbounded confidence in him, for he shared all their privations, and they saw him ever unshaken of fortune. Tender and protecting love he did not inspire: such love is given to weakness, not to strength. Not only was he destitute of a vulgar greed for fame, he would not extend a hand to welcome it when it came unbidden. He was without ambition, and, like Washington, into whose family connection he had married, kept duty as his guide.
The strategy by which he openly, to attract attention, reënforced Jackson in the Valley, to thrust him between McDowell and McClellan at Cold Harbor, deserves to rank with Marlborough's cross march in Germany and Napoleon's rapid concentration around Ulm; though his tactical manœuvres on the field were inferior to the strategy. His wonderful defensive campaign in 1864 stands with that of Napoleon in 1813; and the comparison only fails by an absence of sharp returns to the offensive. The historian of the Federal Army of the Potomac states (and, as far as I have seen, uncontradicted) that Grant's army, at second Cold Harbor, refused to obey the order to attack, so distressed was it by constant butchery. In such a condition of morale an advance upon it might have changed history. In truth, the genius of Lee for offensive war had suffered by a too long service as an engineer. Like Erskine in the House of Commons, it was not his forte. In both the Antietam and Gettysburg campaigns he allowed his cavalry to separate from him, and was left without intelligence of the enemy's movements until he was upon him. In both, too, his army was widely scattered, and had to be brought into action by piecemeal. There was an abundance of supplies in the country immediately around Harper's Ferry, and had he remained concentrated there, the surrender of Miles would have been advanced, and McClellan met under favorable conditions. His own report of Gettysburg confesses his mistakes; for he was of too lofty a nature to seek scapegoats, and all the rambling accounts of that action I have seen published add but little to his report. These criticisms are written with unaffected diffidence; but it is only by studying the campaigns of great commanders that the art of war can be illustrated.