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claimed to speak for the loyal people of the United CHAP. IX. States, and this claim generally met with the sympathy and support of a majority of the people's representatives in Congress assembled. It was often hasty and unjust in its judgments, but always earnest, patriotic, and honest; it was assailed with furious denunciation and defended with headlong and indiscriminating eulogy; and on the whole it must be said to have merited more praise than blame.

Even before this committee was appointed, as we have seen, Senators Chandler and Wade, representing the more ardent and eager spirits in Congress, had repeatedly pressed upon the Government the necessity of employing the Army of the Potomac in active operations; and now that they felt themselves formally intrusted with a mandate from the people to that effect, were still more urgent and persistent. General McClellan and his immediate following treated the committee with something like contempt. But the President, with his larger comprehension of popular forces, knew that he must take into account an agency of such importance; and though he steadily defended General McClellan and his deliberateness of preparation before the committee, he constantly assured him in private that not a moment ought to be lost in getting himself in readiness for a forward movement. A free people, accustomed to considering public affairs as their own, can stand reverses and disappointments; they are capable of making great exertions and great sacrifices. The one thing that they cannot endure is inaction on the part of their rulers; the one thing that they insist upon is to see some

CHAP. IX. result of their exertions and sacrifices. December was the fifth month that General McClellan had been in command of the greatest army ever brought together on this continent. It was impossible to convince the country that a longer period of preparation was necessary before this army could be led against one inferior in numbers, and not superior in discipline or equipment. As a matter of fact, the country did not believe the rebel army to be equal to the army of the Union in any of these particulars. It did not share the delusion of General McClellan and his staff in regard to the numbers of his adversary, and the common sense of the people was nearer right in its judgment than the computations of the general and his inefficient secret service. McClellan reported to the Secretary of War that Johnston's army, at the end of October, numbered 150,000, and that he would therefore require, to make an advance movement with the Army of the of Military Potomac, a force of 240,000. Johnston's report of tions," p. 81. that date shows an effective total of 41,000 men. It was useless to try to convince General McClellan of the impossibility of such a concentration of troops in front of him; he simply added together the aggregates furnished by the guesses of his spies and implicitly believed the monstrous sum. It is worthy of notice that the Confederate general rarely fell into the corresponding error. At the time that McClellan was quadrupling, in his imagJohnston, ination, the rebel force, Johnston was estimating of Military the army under McClellan at exactly its real

W. R. Vol. V., pp. 9, 10. Johnston, "Narrative

Орега

1861.

"Narrative

Opera

tions," p. 81. strength.

Aware that his army was less than one-third as strong as the Union forces, Johnston contented

himself with neutralizing the army at Washington, CHAP. IX. passing the time in drilling and disciplining his troops, who, according to his own account, were seriously in need of it. He could not account for the inactivity of the Union army. Military operations, he says, were practicable until the end of December; but he was never molested. "Our military exercises had never been interrupted. No demonstrations were made by the troops of that army, except the occasional driving in of a Confederate cavalry picket by a large mixed force. The Federal cavalry rarely ventured beyond the protection of infantry, and the ground between the two armies had been less free to it than to that of the Confederate army."

There was at no time any serious thought of attacking the Union forces in front of Washington. In the latter part of September (Sept. 30), General Johnston had thought it possible for the Richmond Government to give him such additional troops as to enable him to take the offensive, and Jefferson Davis had come to headquarters at Fairfax Court House to confer with the leading commanders on that subject. At this conference, held on the 1st of October, it was taken for granted that no attack could be made, with any chance of success, upon the Union army in its position before Washington; but it was thought that, if enough force could be concentrated for the purpose, the Potomac might be crossed at the nearest ford, Maryland brought into rebellion, and a battle delivered in the rear of Washington, where McClellan would fight at a disadvantage. Mr. Davis asked the three generals present, Johnston, Beauregard, and G. W. Smith,

Johnston, "Narrative

of Military Орегаtions," p. 84.

1861.

Johnston,

CHAP. IX. beginning with the last, how many troops would be required for such a movement. Smith answered "fifty thousand"; Johnston and Beauregard both said "sixty thousand"; and all agreed that they "Narrative would require a large increase of ammunition and tions," p. 76. means of transportation. Mr. Davis said it was impossible to reënforce them to that extent, and the plan was dropped.

of Military

Opera

It is hard to believe that during this same month of October, General McClellan, in a careful letter to the War Department, with an army, according Vol. V., p. 9. to his own account, of "147,695 present for duty,"

W. R.

1861.

should have bewailed his numerical inferiority to the enemy, and begged that all other departments should be stripped of their troops and stores to enable him to make a forward movement, which he professed himself anxious to make not later than the 25th of November, if the Government would give him men enough to meet the enemy on equal terms. This singular infatuation, difficult to understand in a man of high intelligence and physically brave, as McClellan undoubtedly was, must not be lost sight of. It furnishes the sole explanation of many things otherwise inexplicable. He rarely estimated the force immediately opposed to him at less than double its actual strength, and in his correspondence with the Government he persistently minimized his own force. This rule he applied only to the enemy in his immediate vicinity. He had no sympathy with commanders at a distance who asked for reënforcements. When Rosecrans succeeded him in Western Virginia, and wanted additional troops, General McClellan was shocked at the unreasonable request. When Buell informed

him that W. T. Sherman insisted that two hundred CHAP. IX. thousand men were needed in the West, he handed the letter to Mr. Lincoln, who was sitting in his headquarters at the moment, with the remark, "The man is crazy." Every man sent to any other department he regarded as a sort of robbery of the Army of the Potomac.

All his demands were complied with to the full extent of the power of the Government. Not only in a material but in a moral sense as well, the President gave him everything that he could. In addition to that mighty army, he gave him his fullest confidence and support. All through the autumn he stood by him, urging him in private to lose no time, but defending him in public against the popular impatience; and when winter came on, and the voice of Congress, nearly unanimous in demanding active operations, added its authoritative tones to the clamor of the country, the President endangered his own popularity by insisting that the general should be allowed to take his time for an advance.

In the latter part of December, McClellan, as already stated, fell seriously ill, and the enforced paralysis of the army that resulted from this illness and lasted several weeks, added a keener edge to the public anxiety. The President painfully appreciated how much of justice there was in the general criticism, which he was doing all that he could to allay. He gave himself, night and day, to the study of the military situation. He read a large number of strategical works. He pored over the reports from the various departments and districts of the field of war. He held long conferences with

W. R. Vol. VII.,

p. 444.

1861.

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