All this did not signify; nothing could move McClellan. He wanted to wait till he could leave an enormous garrison in the defences of Washington, place a strong corps of observation along the Potomac, and then move out with a column of one hundred and fifty thousand men against an army that he believed to be as numerous as that, though in truth it was then less than half as large. It is now known that, from the beginning to the end of his career in that war, General McClellan constantly overestimated the force opposed to him. On the 10th of January, 1862, the President held a long consultation with Generals McDowell and Franklin and some members of his cabinet. General McClellan was then confined to his bed by an illness of a month's duration. At this consultation Mr. Lincoln said, according to General McDowell's memorandum: "If something was 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."
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| MAP SHOWING THE SEAT OF WAR FROM HARPER'S FERRY TO SUFFOLK, VA.. |
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| FOREIGN OFFICERS AND STAFF AT GENERAL McCLELLAN'S HEADQUARTERS. |
Immediately upon McClellan's recovery, the President called him to a similar council, and asked him to disclose his plan for a campaign, which he declined to do. Finally the President asked him if he had fixed upon any particular time for setting out; and when he said he had, Mr. Lincoln questioned him no further. A few days later, in a letter to the President, he set forth his plan, which was to move his army down the Potomac on transports, land it at or near Fort Monroe, march up the peninsula between York and James rivers, and attack the defences of Richmond on the north and east sides. The President at first disapproved of this plan, largely for the reason that it would require so much time in preparation; but when he found that the highest officers in the army favored it, and considered the probability that any general was likely to fail if sent to execute a plan he did not originate or believe in, he finally gave it his sanction, and once more set himself to the difficult task of inducing McClellan to move at all. And yet the President himself still further retarded the opening of the campaign by delaying the order to collect the means of transportation. Meanwhile General Johnston quietly removed his stores, and on the 8th of March evacuated Centreville and Manassas, and placed his army before Richmond. This reconciled the President to McClellan's plan of campaign, which he had never liked.
The order for the transportation of McClellan's army was issued on the 27th of February, and four hundred vessels were required; for there were actually transported one hundred and twenty-one thousand men, fourteen thousand animals, forty-four batteries, and all the necessary ambulances and baggage-wagons, pontoons and telegraph material. Just before the embarkation, the army was divided into four corps, the commands of which were given to Generals McDowell, Edwin V. Sumner, Samuel P. Heintzelman, and Erasmus D. Keyes. High authorities say this was one of the causes of the failure of the campaign; for the army should have been divided into corps long before, when McClellan could have chosen his own lieutenants instead of having them chosen by the President. General Hooker said it was impossible for him to succeed with such corps commanders. But his near approach to success rather discredits this criticism.
Another element of the highest importance had also entered into the problem with which the nation was struggling. This was the appointment (January 21, 1862) of Edwin M. Stanton to succeed Simon Cameron as Secretary of War. Mr. Stanton, then forty-seven years of age, was a lawyer by profession, a man of great intellect, unfailing nerve, and tremendous energy. He had certain traits that often made him personally disagreeable to his subordinates; but it was impossible to doubt his thorough loyalty, and his determination to find or make a way to bring the war to a successful close as speedily as possible, without the slightest regard to the individual interests of himself or anybody else. He was probably the ablest war minister that ever lived—with the possible exception of Carnot, the man to whom Napoleon said, "I have known you too late." It is indicative of Mr. Lincoln's sagacity and freedom from prejudice, that his first meeting with Mr. Stanton was when he went to Cincinnati, some years before the war, to assist in trying an important case. He found Mr. Stanton in charge of the case as senior counsel, and Stanton was so unendurably disagreeable to him that he threw up the engagement and went home to Springfield. Yet he afterward gave that man the most important place in his cabinet, and found him its strongest member.
One division of the army embarked on the 17th of March, and the others followed in quick succession. General McClellan reached Fort Monroe on the 2d of April, by which time fifty-eight thousand men and one hundred guns had arrived, and immediately moved with this force on Yorktown, the place made famous by the surrender of Cornwallis eighty years before. The Confederates had fortified this point, and thrown a line of earthworks across the narrow peninsula to the deep water of Warwick River. These works were held by General Magruder with thirteen thousand effective men. General Johnston, who was in command of all the troops around Richmond, says he had no expectation of doing more than delaying McClellan at Yorktown till he could strengthen the defences of the capital and collect more men; and that he thought his adversary would use his transports to pass his army around that place by water, after destroying the batteries, and land at some point above.
McClellan, supposing that Johnston's entire army was in the defences of Yorktown, sat down before the place and constructed siege works, approaching the enemy by regular parallels. As the remaining divisions of his army arrived at Fort Monroe, they were added to his besieging force; but McDowell's entire corps and Blenker's division had been detached at the last moment and retained at Washington, from fears on the part of the Administration that the capital was not sufficiently guarded, though McClellan had already left seventy thousand men there or within call. The fears were increased by the threatening movements of Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, where, however, he was defeated by Gen. James Shields near Winchester, March 23.
General Johnston had to contend with precisely the same difficulty that McClellan complained of. He wanted to bring together before Richmond all the troops that were then at Norfolk and in the Carolinas and Georgia, and with the large army thus formed suddenly attack McClellan after he should have marched seventy-five miles up the peninsula from his base at Fort Monroe. But in a council of war General Lee and the Secretary of War opposed this plan, and Mr. Davis adopted their views and rejected it. Johnston therefore undertook the campaign with the army that he had, which he says consisted of fifty thousand effective men.
McClellan spent nearly a month before Yorktown, and when he was ready to open fire with his siege guns and drive out the enemy, May 3d, he found they had quietly departed, leaving "Quaker guns" (wooden logs on wheels) in the embrasures. There was no delay in pursuit, and the National advance came up with the Confederate rear guard near Williamsburg, about twelve miles from Yorktown. Here, May 4th, brisk skirmishing began, which gradually became heavier, till reinforcements were hurried up on the one side, and sent back on the other, and the skirmish was developed into a battle. The place had been well fortified months before. The action on the morning of the 5th was opened by the divisions of Generals Hooker and William F. Smith. They attacked the strongest of the earthworks, pushed forward the batteries, and silenced it. Hooker was then heavily attacked by infantry, with a constant menace on his left wing. He sustained his position alone nearly all day, though losing one thousand seven hundred men and five guns, and was at length relieved by the arrival of Gen. Philip Kearny's division. The delay was due mainly to the deep mud caused by a heavy rain the night before. Later in the day, Hancock's brigade made a wide circuit on the right, discovered some unoccupied redoubts, and took possession of them. When the Confederates advanced their left to the attack, they ran upon these redoubts, which their commanding officers knew nothing about, and were repelled with heavy loss. Hancock's one thousand six hundred men suddenly burst over the crest of the works, and bore down upon the enemy with fixed bayonets, routing and scattering them.