Military Reminiscences of the Civil War: Autobiographical Account by a General of the Union Army. Jacob D. Cox

He believed, and apparently with reason, that ten days was sufficient to complete this transfer with the means at McClellan's disposal, but at the end of ten days the movement had not yet begun. ²⁰ He was right in thinking that the whole army should be united. McClellan thought the same. The question was where and how. McClellan said, "Send Pope's men to me." Halleck replied that it would not do to thus uncover Washington. McClellan had said that vigorous advance upon the enemy by his army and a victory would best protect the capital. ²¹ Again he was right, but he seemed incapable of a vigorous advance. Had he made it when he knew (on July 30) that Jackson had gone northward with thirty thousand men to resist Pope's advance, his army would not have been withdrawn. ²² He was then nearly twice as strong as Lee, but he did not venture even upon a forced reconnoissance. The situation of the previous year was repeated. He was allowing himself to be besieged by a fraction of his own force. Grant would have put himself into the relation to McClellan which he sustained to Meade in 1864, and would have infused his own energy into the army. Halleck did not do this. It would seem that he had become conscious of his own lack of nerve in the actual presence of an enemy, and looked back upon his work at St. Louis in administering his department, whilst Grant and Buell took the field, with more satisfaction than upon his own advance from Shiloh to Corinth. He seemed already determined to manage the armies from his office in Washington and assume no responsibility for their actual leadership.

When the Army of the Potomac was arriving at Alexandria, another crisis occurred in which a single responsible head in the field was a necessity. McClellan had been giving a continuous demonstration, since August 4th, how easy it is to thwart and hinder any movement whilst professing to be accomplishing everything that is possible. No maxim in war is better founded in experience than that a man who believes that a plan is sure to fail should never be set to conduct it. McClellan had written that Pope would be beaten before the Army of the Potomac could be transferred to him, and Pope was beaten. ²³ The only chance for any other result was for Halleck himself to conduct the transfer. If Halleck meant that Franklin should have pushed out to Manassas on the 27th of August, he should have taken the field and gone with the corps. He did not know and could not know how good or bad McClellan's excuses were, and nothing but his own presence, with supreme power, could certainly remove the causes for delay. He wrote to Pope that he could not leave Washington, when he ought not to have been in Washington. ²⁴ He worked and worried himself ill trying to make McClellan do what he should have done himself, and then, overwhelmed with details he should never have burdened himself with, besought his subordinate to relieve him of the strain by practically taking command. ²⁵

As soon as McClellan began the movement down the James, Lee took Longstreet's corps to Jackson, leaving only D. H. Hill's at Richmond. ²⁶ From that moment McClellan could have marched anywhere. He could have marched to Fredericksburg and joined Pope, and Halleck could have met them with Burnside's troops. But the vast imaginary army of the Confederacy paralyzed everything, and the ponderous task of moving the Army of the Potomac and its enormous material by water to Washington went on. The lifeless and deliberate way in which it went on made it the 1st of September when Sumner and Franklin reached Centreville, and the second battle of Bull Run had ended in defeat on the evening before.

But the army was at last reunited, within the fortifications of Washington, it is true, and not on the James or on the line of the Rappahannock. There was another opportunity given to Halleck to put himself at its head, with McClellan, Pope, and Burnside for his three lieutenants. Again he was unequal to his responsibility. Mr. Lincoln saw his feebleness, and does not seem to have urged him. Halleck was definitely judged in the President's mind, though the latter seems to have clung to the idea that he might be useful by allowing him to assume the role he chose, and confine himself to mere suggestions and to purely routine work. Pope's unpopularity with the army was adopted by popular clamor, which always finds a defeated general in the wrong. The President, in real perplexity, compromised by assigning McClellan to command for the purpose of organizing, a work in which he was admitted by all to be able. The command in the field was a second time offered to Burnside, who declined it, warmly advocating McClellan's claims and proving his most efficient friend. ²⁷ Within three days from the time I had ridden with McClellan to meet the retreating army, the enemy had crossed the Potomac, and decision could not be postponed. The President met McClellan, and told him in person that he was assigned to command in the field. ²⁸

On the 5th of September Halleck had sent to McClellan a confidential note, telling of the President's action relieving Pope, and anticipating the issue of formal orders: ²⁹ "The President has directed that General Pope be relieved and report to the War Department; that Hooker be assigned to command of Porter's corps, and that Franklin's corps be temporarily attached to Heintzelman's. The orders will be issued this afternoon. Generals Porter and Franklin are to be relieved from duty till the charges against them are examined. I give you this memorandum in advance of orders, so that you may act accordingly in putting forces in the field." Later in the same day Halleck sent to McClellan the opinion that the enemy was without doubt crossing the Potomac, and said, "If you agree with me, let our troops move immediately." The formal order to Pope was: "The armies of the Potomac and Virginia being consolidated, you will report for orders to the Secretary of War." ³⁰ Pope had caused charges to be preferred against Porter and Franklin, and had accused McClellan of wilfully delaying reinforcements and so causing his defeat. His indignation that the interpretation of affairs given by McClellan and his friends should be made into public opinion by the apparent acquiescence of Halleck and the administration overcame his prudence. Had he controlled his feelings and schooled himself into patience, he would hardly have been relieved from active service, and his turn would probably have come again. As it stood, the President saw that McClellan and Pope could not work together, and the natural outcome was that he retired Pope, so that McClellan should not have it to say that he was thwarted by a hostile subordinate. McClellan himself was so manifestly responsible for Franklin's movements from the 27th to the 30th of August, that it was a matter of course that when the chief was assigned to command the condonation should cover the subordinate, and at McClellan's request Franklin was allowed to take the field at once. ³¹ A few days later he urged the same action in Porter's case, and it was done. Porter joined the army at South Mountain on the 14th of September. ³² The same principle demanded that McDowell, who was obnoxious to McClellan, should be relieved, and this was also done. As an ostensible reason for the public, McDowell's request for a Court of Inquiry upon his own conduct was assumed to imply a desire to be relieved from the command of his corps. ³³ But the court was not assembled till the next winter. McDowell had been maligned almost as unscrupulously as Pope. A total abstainer from intoxicating drinks, he was persistently described as a drunkard, drunken upon the field of battle. One of the most loyal and self-forgetting of subordinates, he was treated as if a persistent intriguer for command. A brave and competent soldier, he was believed to be worthless and untrustworthy. As between Halleck, McClellan, and Pope, the only one who had fought like a soldier and manoeuvred like a general was sent to the northwestern frontier to watch the petty Indian tribes, carrying the burden of others' sins into the wilderness. Mr. Lincoln's sacrifice of his sense of justice to what seemed the only expedient in the terrible crisis, was sublime. McClellan commanded the army, and Porter and