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McClellan's inactivity

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instead of a victory brought on the affair of Ball's Bluff, a small engagement, ending in a discreditable Union defeat. The number of casualties was insignificant, but the accidents of the battle so much resembled blunders that it had an exasperating effect on public opinion.

Very soon after, in the first week of December, Congress again met in annual session; and the restless spirits in that body began to reflect the popular impatience with increasing emphasis. As a consequence of the discussions it evoked, Congress created a permanent joint committee of the two Houses, known as the Committee on the Conduct of the War. It consisted of Senators Wade, Chandler, and Andrew Johnson (afterwards President) and Representatives Gooch, Covode, Julian, and Odell. It played an important part throughout the whole war by its investigation into, and criticism of, military affairs; and the inaction of General McClellan came in for an early share of both its confidential and public dissatisfaction.

While the President defended the general against these strictures, insisting that he must be allowed to take his own time, he admonished that officer that he must not fail to take into account the official standing and influence of the Committee, and the pressing need of action. But still day after day passed away in parades and reviews, while little by little the enemy established batteries on the Virginia shore of the Potomac, which in time enforced an almost complete blockade of the river. Finally, McClellan's magnificent army went into winter quarters, and the daily newspaper report of "all quiet on the Potomac" passed into a derisive popular byword. To crown all, McClellan fell seriously ill; and in an interview with Generals McDowell and Franklin, on January 10, 1862, President Lincoln made the sarcastic comment: "If something were not soon done, the bottom would be out of the whole affair; and if General McClellan did not want to use the army, he would like to borrow it, provided he could see how it could be made to do something."

The public and official impatience was not unnatural, when we remember existing conditions. Until the beginning of the year 1861 the peace of the country had been disturbed only once during nearly half a century. The home experiences of the Mexican War were little else than the enthusiasm of raising volunteers and reading bulletins of victories. Excitement over the Utah and Kansas episodes was political and not military. These recollections stimulated rather than restrained the popular craving for results.

Since the fall of Sumter, if we except the magnificent manifestations of patriotic loyalty by the North, and the miniature victory of Rich Mountain, nearly all the military incidents had proved a keen irritation to her people. Baltimore, Big Bethel, Bull Run, Ball's Bluff, were names at which resentment ever flamed up afresh. The tension was somewhat relieved when Commodore Wilkes captured the Confederate

470

Northern progress in 1861

[1861

envoys Mason and Slidell on their way from Havana to Europe, only however to be again embittered by England's peremptory demand for their release, and the necessity of surrendering them, because the seizure had not been made in strict accordance with international usages.

In reality great preliminary progress had already been made towards the maintenance of the government and the eventual suppression of the rebellion. A considerable navy had been improvised; Port Royal, the finest Southern harbour, captured and occupied; and an effectual blockade established along the whole vast line of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The Confederate leaders had confidently expected to secure the adhesion of the entire South; but this hope had been effectually baffled. Maryland, Western Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, forming the whole northern tier of the Slave States, were under the official control of the Unionist government, and for the greater part within Union military lines. Half a million Federal soldiers were under arms, ready for future campaigns; and there was as yet no perceptible abatement in the streams of volunteers flowing to camps. of instruction near the capitals of the Free States. The cool wisdom of the President had averted a rupture with England; and Napoleon III, though filled with unfriendly sentiment, hesitated in his ambitious designs.

With the character and extent of the civil war thus much more clearly defined, it becomes easier to trace out and comprehend the scope and succession of the principal military campaigns destined to follow. Geographically the area of insurrection fell into three great divisions, (1) from the Atlantic coast to the Alleghany Mountains, (2) from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, (3) from the Mississippi to the western frontier. But the political and strategical fields did not immediately coincide with the geographical. If not of the greatest, at least of the first importance was the blockade by which a barrier of ocean patrol was stretched from Chesapeake Bay to the mouth of the Rio Grande. It marked and guarded the sovereignty of the United States over that part of the Atlantic seaboard which the President's proclamation closed to the commerce of the world. Except at the risk of capture and confiscation, no foreign ship might enter its ports to bring arms or munitions to the insurrection; no Confederate vessel might sail out of them to wage war or carry cotton to exchange for gold in Europe. No commercial privileges could be offered by the Confederate States to tempt a foreign nation to intervene. So strictly was the blockade enforced that foreign luxuries disappeared from Southern homes, and Confederate credit shrank to worthlessness.

Of the three geographical divisions, that between the Atlantic coast and the Alleghanies assumed from the beginning and maintained till the end the leading importance. Washington City, the Federal

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Three distinct fields of war

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capital, lying on the Potomac river between the Slave States of Maryland and Virginia, had been the earliest point of danger, and necessitated the principal concentration of Union troops. The Confederate capital, first located at Montgomery, Alabama, where the Secessionist government was organised, was, about June 1, 1861, moved to Richmond, Virginia. This town, lying on the James river, 115 miles nearly due south of Washington, was thenceforward the political and military focus of the rebellion, requiring the support of the principal Confederate army. The country between and around these opposing capitals therefore became of necessity, with only occasional diversions, the main field of conflict in the Civil War. In the resulting campaigns in this field, the Union army by reason of its superior numbers almost constantly maintained the aggressive, its object being to capture, and that of the Confederates to defend, the city of Richmond.

The military importance of the other two great geographical divisions lay primarily, not in their vast territorial extent, but in the political and commercial value of the Mississippi river, which divided them. As a military highway, as a principal commercial artery, as a valuable and permanent asset in national and international politics, the possession and control of that stream became the leading object of the combatants in the Western campaigns. On the Mississippi were situated the two great commercial cities of the West, St Louis in Federal, New Orleans in Confederate territory. The Confederates, being in possession, had made what haste they could to fortify the stream at the most available points. Meanwhile, on its part, the Union government had secured a peculiarly advantageous position to attack it. The southern end of the free State of Illinois, wedgelike in shape, runs down between the upper Mississippi and Ohio rivers, to their junction at Cairo, thrusting free territory and anti-slavery sentiment farther into the South than at any other point; while a group of populous and energetic Free States lay immediately to the north, capable of supplying a weight of men and resources, the onset of which it would be difficult to resist, and which, if not resisted, would at once cut off and paralyse the military strength of from one-third to one-half of the territory of the Confederate States.

After the year 1861, therefore, the military operations of the Union armies for the suppression of the rebellion followed three great lines of activity. First, the maintenance of the Atlantic blockade, and the capture of all forts and harbours on the seaboard. Second, the Virginia campaigns for the capture of Richmond. Third, the opening of the Mississippi river, to be followed by a central and closing campaign through Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas. On the other hand, all the efforts of the Confederates were put forth to counteract and foil these efforts.

CHAPTER XV

THE CIVIL WAR: II

(1) MCCLELLAN IN VIRGINIA

OWING to a slight disagreement in policy, which however in no wise disturbed their friendly personal and party relations, President Lincoln, about the middle of January, 1862, transferred Secretary Cameron to the post of Minister to Russia, and appointed Edwin M. Stanton Secretary of War to succeed him. Stanton had been Attorney-General under Buchanan during the last two months of his administration, and in the Secession crisis had amply proved his loyal devotion to the Union. Simultaneously with this change, Lincoln on January 27 issued his President's War Order, No. 1, directing all the armies to move on the February 22 following. Two similar orders speedily followed, one dividing the Army of the Potomac into four army corps, and assigning to them senior division commanders, while the other relieved McClellan from the duties of General-in-Chief, and appointed him to the single task of conducting the campaign against Richmond. Thus far that general had neither made any movement with his immense army, nor adopted any plan to that end. On this point there had been from the first a disagreement between the President and himself. With correct military instinct, the President believed the war could be ended most quickly by fighting and conquering the Confederate armies, instead of merely occupying the Confederate capital; and for that purpose he wished the Army of the Potomac to move directly against the enemy at Manassas. McClellan, on the contrary, preferred a flank movement down Chesapeake Bay, and a land march from either Urbana or Fortress Monroe against Richmond. Before this difference was adjusted, occurred the famous battle between the ironclads Monitor and Merrimac in Hampton Roads, on March 9, 1862, and on the same day the sudden retreat of the Confederate army under Johnston toward Richmond, from its advanced position at Manassas to Gordonsville behind the Rappahannock and

1862] The Northern army lands in the peninsula

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Rapidan. Had McClellan, as directed by the President's first War Order, moved against it on February 22, as he might have done with double numbers, he could have won an easy and invaluable victory.

Under the new conditions the four corps-commanders met in a council of war on March 13, and decided in favour of the route by way of Fortress Monroe. McClellan adopted the plan; and it was also accepted by the President, with the conditions that Manassas should be occupied and permanently held, and Washington City be left entirely secure. "Move the remainder of the force down the Potomac," wrote the Secretary of War, communicating the President's decision," choosing a new base at Fortress Monroe, or anywhere between here and there, or at all events, move such remainder of the army at once, in pursuit of the enemy, by some route." Preparations for a movement by water had already been set on foot. The troops began their embarkation on March 17, and on April 5 the officer charged with the duty reported that he had transported to Fortress Monroe an army of 121,500 men with all their animals, waggons, batteries, pontoon bridges, and other impedimenta.

General McClellan arrived at Fortress Monroe on April 2 to lead his army up the Peninsula between the York and James rivers. Had he pursued the prompt and vigorous march he originally contemplated, he would have found no Confederate forces between him and Richmond capable of resisting the greatly superior army under his command. But from this point his campaign took on the double character of a fault-finding correspondence with the President and Secretary of War, and a feeble and hesitating advance; an approach that was more defensive than aggressive, giving the enemy ample time to concentrate their scattered detachments into a formidable army that successfully warded off the threatened loss of their capital, and finally caused the whole expeditionary force to be withdrawn. The two things of which McClellan chiefly complained, viz. that McDowell's corps was temporarily withheld, and that the navy did not render him expected help, were due to his own neglect of the President's positive injunction, approved by his own council of war, that he should leave Washington secure. Instead of the 55,000 men needed for the Washington forts, and a covering force, he had left behind only 18,000; and this neglect rendered imperative the temporary retention of McDowell, the greater portion of whose corps was however finally sent to McClellan. The promise that the navy should co-operate existed only in his own imagination. He had neither stipulated for this, nor had he received any promise of the specific work which he now declared it should have accomplished.

Besides answering the general's complaints, President Lincoln continually admonished him to push his campaign with serious energy. "And once more let me tell you," he wrote to him on April 9, "it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this.