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electric perturbation at the Executive Mansion and CHAP. IX. the Capitol, which answered but faintly to the growing excitement in the North. The accumulating hostility and distrust of General McClellan, -totally unjust as it affected his loyalty and honor and his ardent desire to serve his country in the way that he thought best,-though almost entirely unknown to him, was poured upon the President, the heads of Government, and the leading Members of Congress in letters and conversations and newspaper leaders. Mr. Lincoln felt the injustice of much of this criticism, but he also felt powerless to meet it, unless some measures were adopted to force the general into an activity which was as necessary to his own reputation as to the national cause. The 22d of February came and passed, and the President's order to move on that day was not obeyed. McClellan's inertia prevailed over the President's anxious eagerness.

On the 8th of March, Mr. Lincoln issued two more important General Orders. The first directed General McClellan to divide the Army of the Potomac into four army corps, to be commanded respectively by Generals Irvin McDowell, E. V. Sumner, S. P. Heintzelman, and E. D. Keyes; the forces to be left in front of Washington were to be placed in command of General James S. Wadsworth. A fifth corps was to be formed, to be commanded by General N. P. Banks. For months this measure had been pressed upon General McClellan by the Government. An army of 150,000 men, it was admitted, could not be adequately commanded by the machinery of divisions and brigades alone. But though McClellan accepted this view in

1862.

CHAP. IX. principle, he could not be brought to put it into practice. He said that he would prefer to command the army personally on its first campaign, and then select the corps commanders for their behavior in the field. The Government thought better to make the organization at once, giving the command of corps to the ranking division commanders. The fact that of the four generals chosen three had been in favor of an immediate movement against the enemy in front of Washington will of course be considered as possessing a certain significance. It was usually regarded as a grievance by the partisans of General McClellan. The other order is of such importance that we give it entire:

PRESIDENT'S GENERAL WAR ORDER, No. 3.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, March 8, 1862.

Ordered, That no change of the base of operations of the Army of the Potomac shall be made without leaving in and about Washington such a force as, in the opinion of the General-in-Chief and the commanders of army corps, shall leave said city entirely secure.

That no more than two army corps (about fifty thousand troops) of said Army of the Potomac shall be moved en route for a new base of operations until the navigation of the Potomac from Washington to the Chesapeake Bay shall be freed from enemy's batteries and other obstructions, or until the President shall hereafter give express permission. That any movement as aforesaid, en route for a new base of operations, which may be ordered by the General-in-Chief, and which may be intended to move upon the Chesapeake Bay, shall begin to move upon the bay as early as the 18th of March, instant, and the General-in-Chief shall be responsible that it moves as early as that day.

Ordered, That the Army and Navy coöperate in an im- CHAP. IX. mediate effort to capture the enemy's batteries upon the Potomac between Washington and the Chesapeake Bay. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

L. THOMAS, Adjutant-General.

This order has always been subject to the severest criticism from General McClellan's partisans; but if we admit that it was proper for the President to issue any order at all, there can be no valid objection made to the substance of this one. It was indispensable that Washington should be left secure; it would have been madness to allow General McClellan to take all the troops to the Peninsula, leaving the Potomac obstructed by the enemy's batteries so near the capital; and the fixing of a date beyond which the beginning of the movement should not be postponed had been shown to be necessary by the exasperating experience of the past eight months. The criticism so often made, that a general who required to have such orders as these given him should have been dismissed the service, is the most difficult of all to meet. Nobody felt so deeply as Mr. Lincoln the terrible embarrassment of having a general in command of that magnificent army who was absolutely without initiative; who answered every suggestion of advance with demands for reënforcements; who met entreaties and reproaches with unending arguments to show the superiority of the enemy and the insufficiency of his own resources; and who yet possessed in an eminent degree the enthusiastic devotion of his friends and the general confidence of the rank and file. There was so much of executive efficiency and ability about him

CHAP. IX. that the President kept on hoping to the last that if he could once "get him started" he would then handle the army well and do great things with it.

CHAPTER X

SUN

MANASSAS EVACUATED

1862.

UNDAY, the 9th of March, was a day of swiftly CHAP. X. succeeding emotions at the Executive Mansion. The news of the havoc wrought by the Merrimac in Hampton Roads the day before arrived in the morning, and was received with profound chagrin by the calmest spirits, and with something like consternation by the more excitable. But in the afternoon astonishing tidings came to reverse the morning's depression. The first was of the timely arrival of the Monitor, followed shortly, on the completion of the telegraph to Fort Monroe, by the news of her battle and victory. The exultation of the Government over this providential success was changed to amazement by the receipt of intelligence that the rebel batteries on the Potomac were already abandoned; and the tale of surprises was completed by the news which came in the evening that the Confederate army had abandoned their works at Manassas, retreating southward. General McClellan was with the President and the Secretary of War when this message arrived, and he received it, as might have been expected, with incredulity, which at last gave way to stupefaction. He started at once across the river, ostensibly to

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