Campfire and Battlefield / An Illustrated History of the Campaigns and Conflicts of the Great Civil War

by Rossiter Johnson; Selden Connor; John Brown Gordon; Henry W. B. Howard; O. O. Howard; John Tyler Morgan; John Clark Ridpath

One of General McClellan's severest critics, Gen. John G. Barnard, in an elaborate review of the campaign, wrote: "It was a blunder unparalleled to expose Porter's corps to fight a battle by itself on the 27th against overwhelming forces of the enemy. With perfect ease that corps might have been brought over on the night of the 26th, and, if nothing more brilliant could have been thought of, the movement to the James might have been in full tide of execution on the 27th. A more propitious moment could not have been chosen, for, besides Jackson's own forces, A. P. Hill's and Longstreet's corps were on the left bank of the Chickahominy on the night of the 26th. Such a movement need not have been discovered to the enemy till far enough advanced to insure success. At any rate, he could have done no better in preventing it than he actually did afterward.... He has spent weeks in building bridges which establish a close connection between the wings of his army, and then fights a great battle with a smaller fraction of his army than when he had a single available bridge, and that remote. He, with great labor, constructs 'defensive works' in order that he 'may bring the greatest possible numbers into action,' and again exhibits his ability to utilize his means by keeping sixty-five thousand men idle behind them, while thirty-five thousand, unaided by 'defensive works' of any kind, fight the bulk of his adversary's forces, and are, of course, overwhelmed by 'superior numbers.' We believe there were few commanding officers of the Army of the Potomac who did not expect to be led offensively against the enemy on the 26th or 27th. Had such a movement been made, it is not improbable that, if energetically led, we should have gone into Richmond. Jackson and A. P. Hill could not have got back in time to succor Magruder's command, if measures of most obvious propriety had been taken to prevent them. We might have beaten or driven Magruder's twenty-five thousand men and entered Richmond, and then, reinforced by the great moral acquisition of strength this success would have given, have fought Lee and reëstablished our communications. At any rate, something of this kind was worth trying.... Our army is now concentrated on the James; but we have another day's fighting before us, and this day we may expect the concentrated attack of Lee's whole army. We know not at what hour it will come—possibly late, for it requires time to find out our new position and to bring together the attacking columns—yet we know not when it will come. Where, this day, is the commanding general? Off, with Captain Rodgers, to select 'the final positions of the army and its depots.' He does not tell us that it was on a gunboat, and that this day not even 'signals' would keep him in communication with his army, for his journey was ten or fifteen miles down the river; and he was thus absent till late in the afternoon. This is the first time we ever had reason to believe that the highest and first duty of a general, on the day of battle, was separating himself from his army to reconnoitre a place of retreat!... If the enemy had two hundred thousand men, it was to be seriously apprehended that, leaving fifty thousand behind the 'strong works' of Richmond, he would march at once with one hundred and fifty thousand men on Washington. Why should he not? General McClellan and his eulogists have held up as highly meritorious strategy the leaving of Washington defended by less than fifty thousand men, with the enemy in its front estimated to be one hundred and twenty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand strong, and moving off to take an eccentric line of operations against Richmond; and now the reverse case is presented, but with an important difference. The enemy at Manassas, on learning General McClellan's movement, could either fly to the defence of Richmond or attack Washington. General McClellan says that this latter course was not to be feared. McClellan on the James, on learning that Lee with one hundred and fifty thousand men is marching on Washington, can only attack Richmond; by no possibility can he fly to the defence of Washington. Besides, he is inferior in numbers (according to his own estimate) even to Lee's marching army. Here, in a nutshell, is the demonstration of the folly of the grand strategic movement on Richmond, as given by its own projector."

An English military critic thus analyzes the great campaign: "As regards the value of the plan, in a merely military point of view, three faults may be enumerated: It was too rash; it violated the principles of war; its application was too timid. (1) An army of one hundred and thirty thousand volunteers should not be moved about as if it were a single division. (2) The choice of Fort Monroe as a secondary basis involved the necessity of leaving Washington, or the fixed basis, to be threatened, morally at least, by the enemy. The communications also between these two places were open to an attack from the Merrimac, an iron-plated ship, which lay at Norfolk, on the south side of Hampton Roads. The first movement to Fort Monroe was the stride of a giant. The second, in the direction of Richmond, was that of a dwarf. When the army arrived in front of the lines at Yorktown, it numbered, probably, one hundred thousand men, and here there was no timid President to interfere with the command; nevertheless, McClellan suffered himself to be stopped in the middle of an offensive campaign by Magruder and twelve thousand men.... The hour of his arrival in front of the lines should have been the hour of his attack upon them. Two overwhelming masses, to which life and energy had been communicated, should have been hurled on separate points. Magruder not only defeated but destroyed! The morale of the Federal army raised! The result of the campaign, although it might not have been decisive, would have been more honorable."

On the Confederate side the criticism was almost as severe, because, while claiming the result of the six days as a Confederate success, it was also claimed that the campaign should have resulted in the complete destruction of McClellan's army.

The use of balloons for reconnoitring the enemy's position formed a picturesque feature of this campaign. T. S. C. Lowe, J. H. Stiner, and other aëronauts were at the National headquarters with their balloons, and several officers of high rank accompanied them in numerous ascents. But it seems to have been demonstrated that the balloon was of little practical value.

CHAPTER XIV.

POPE'S CAMPAIGN.

FORMATION OF THE ARMY OF VIRGINIA—HALLECK MADE GENERAL-IN-CHIEF—McCLELLAN LEAVES THE PENINSULA—BATTLE OF CEDAR MOUNTAIN—POPE AND LEE MANOEUVRE—BATTLE OF GROVETON—THE SECOND BULL RUN—BATTLE OF CHANTILLY—THE PORTER DISPUTE—GENERAL GRANT'S OPINION—COMPLICATED MOVEMENTS OF THE CAMPAIGN—INTERESTING INCIDENTS.

While McClellan was before Richmond, it was determined to consolidate in one command the corps of Banks, Frémont, and McDowell, which were moving about in an independent and ineffectual way between Washington and the Shenandoah Valley. Gen. John Pope, who had won considerable reputation by his capture of Island No. 10, was called from the West and given command (June 26, 1862) of the new organization, which was called the Army of Virginia. Frémont declined to serve under a commander who had once been his subordinate, and consequently his corps was given to General Sigel. General Pope, on taking command of this force, which numbered all told about thirty-eight thousand men, and also of the troops in the fortifications around Washington, had the bad taste to issue a general order that had three capital defects: it boasted of his own prowess at the West, it underrated his enemy, and it contained a bit of sarcasm pointed at General McClellan, the commander of the army with which his own was to coöperate. Pope says, in his report, that he wrote a cordial letter to McClellan, asking for his views as to the best plan of campaign, and offering to render him any needed assistance; and that he received but a cold and indefinite reply. It is likely enough that a courteous man and careful soldier like McClellan would be in no mood to fall in with the suggestions of a commander that entered upon his work with a gratuitous piece of bombast, and seemed to have no conception of the serious nature of the task. When it became evident that these two commanders could not act sufficiently in harmony, the President called Gen. Henry W. Halleck from the West to be General-in-Chief, with headquarters at Washington, and command them both. Halleck had perhaps more military learning than any other man in the country, and his patriotic intentions were unquestionably good; but in practical warfare he proved to be little more than a great obstructor. He had been the bane of the Western armies, preventing them from following up their victories, and had almost driven Grant out of the service; and from the day he took command at Washington (July 12) the troubles in the East became more complicated than ever.