Slike strani
PDF
ePub

France and England from the very jaws of ruin, on the heights of Inkermann. But the spectacle which met the eyes of the American commissioners was far more instructive than any shock of battle could have been. In the course of his investigations into the organization and establishment of the allied forces before the Russian stronghold, Captain McClellan learned to estimate aright the tremendous hazards which, even in modern times, and with all the advantages given by a complete command alike of the sea and of all the "sinews of war," attend what may be properly called, as Mr. Kinglake has called it, a colossal "adventure of invasion."

As a means of training the future Commander of the Army of the Potomac, nothing more apt and admirable than this visit to the Crimea could well have been imagined.

England and France, the two greatest military and naval powers of modern times, after many years of uninterrupted intercourse with all parts of Europe, found themselves brought to the necessity of invading a remote and almost isolated province of the Russian Empire.

"Their fleets had dominion over all the Euxine Sea, home to the straits of the Kertch. They had the command of the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles, the Mediterranean, and of the whole ocean; and of all the lesser seas, bays, gulfs, and straits from the Gulf of Gibraltar to within sight of St. Petersburgh. The Czar's Black Sea fleet existed, but existed in close durance, shut up under the guns of Sebastopol." The expeditionary force of the Western allies numbered sixtythree thousand men, and a hundred and twenty-eight guns. The objective point of their campaign was a single city, held to be impregnable by sea, but by land wholly open to attack, and garrisoned, when the allies moved against it, by about forty-five thousand men. Yet such was the difficulty of obtaining accurate knowledge in regard to the condition and strength of this single city, though the embassadors of France and England and Constantinople, their generals and admirals,

and the Foreign Offices of both countries, had been engaged for months with unlimited means in procuring it, that the French marshal, St. Arnaud, believed the enemy's force to be seventy thousand men, while the English Admiral Dundas supposed it to amount to one hundred and twenty thousand. Of the commander of the English army, Mr. Kinglake says: "It was natural, that a general who was within a few hours' sail of the country which he was to invade, and was yet unable to obtain from it any, even slight, glimmer of knowledge, should distrust information which had travelled round to him (through the aid of the Home government) along the circumference of a vast circle; and Lord Raglan certainly considered that, in regard to the strength of the enemy in the Crimea and the land defenses of Sebastopol, he was simply without knowledge."

From these inevitable incidents of a great errand of invasion, even in Europe, it had resulted that the commanders of the allied armies, after effecting an unopposed landing on the shore of the Crimea, and winning a brilliant victory within a day's march of Sebastopol, had found themselves compelled, by every consideration of military prudence, to such delays in their movement upon that place as afforded its Russian defenders time enough to avail themselves of the genius of a young engineer who, with pickax and spade, rapidly made their stronghold as formidable by land as it had before been by sea, and determined, by his achievements in a single siege, the whole modern system of fortifications.

All that it was the rare privilege of Captain McClellan to see and learn of the relations between politics and the military art, and of the practical operations of war conducted upon the grandest scale, during his visit to Sebastopol, might, however, let us here observe, have produced but an imperfect and inadequate effect upon his mind, had not his own previous and priceless, though comparatively limited, experience in Mexico prepared him intelligently to receive it, and fitted him to

deduce from it the most solid instruction and the most durable convictions. The immediate fruit of his sojourn in Europe at this time was an elaborate and exhaustive report upon the constitution of the greater European armies, which was published under the authority of Congress in the early part of the year 1857, and which bears irrefragable witness to the pains and zeal with which the young officer had devoted himself to mastering the minutest details, as well as the broadest principles, of military organization. But of infinitely greater pith and moment to himself and to his country were the larger and deeper results of this military tour upon his mental constitution and his habits of thought.

ence.

The officers of the regular army of the United States, although most carefully trained in the principles of mathematical science and of the military art, during the four years of their academic course, have enjoyed for the most part in later life but few and limited opportunities of military experiWith the exception of the Mexican war, the lives of most of them now living had been passed, when the great rebellion broke upon us, in a routine of post and garrison duty between the peaceful sea-board of the Atlantic and the frontier forts of the Far West. A harassing but contemptible warfare with the roving Indian tribes of the trans-Mississippi educated them to practical skill in the handling of small detachments, but could do nothing, of course, toward familiarizing them with the spirit and the necessities of war on a grand scale. Many of them, inspired with a genuine zeal and love for their profession, were at great pains to master all that books could teach upon this subject. But as the most scientific and thoughtful of military authorities, Baron Jomini, has well observed, "war, practical war is not an affair of mathematical demonstrations; it is a passionate drama," and no study of military literature, however judicious and faithful, can teach in years so much available military truth as a soldier like McClellan must imbibe from a few weeks of actual living

and mingled

contact with the realities of war as he came upon with them in the Crimea. After the publication of this Report on the condition of the armies of Europe, in January, 1857, Captain McClellan resigned his commission in the army and went into civil life.

He was appointed chief-engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad, and upon the completion of that great enterprise was elected vice-president of the company, which post he continued to fill, residing at Chicago, until the month of August, 1860, when, having been chosen president of the Eastern Division of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad, he removed to Cincinnati. Governor Dennison, of Ohio, in response to the first call of the President of the United States for volunteers to aid in the suppression of the rebellion and in maintaining the supremacy of the constitution, appointed George Brinton McClellan Major-General, to command the contingent of the State, being thirteen regiments of infantry. This commission was offered and accepted on the 23d of April, 1861.

On the 10th of May, 1861, the general government assigned General McClellan to the command of the Department of Ohio, embracing the States of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with his, headquarters at Cincinnati. Four days afterward he was commissioned a Major-General in the regular army, which rank he now holds. From this appointment dates his entrance into active service in the present war.

CHAPTER II.

THE ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1861. CONDITION OF THE COMBATANTS AT THE OUTSET.

THE civil war which began with the surrender of Fort Sumter to the Confederate General Beauregard, in April, 1861, found the States of the South and of the North almost equally unprepared, in the condition of their treasuries and their armaments, for such a contest as the events of a very few months sufficed to develop into its true proportions.

Threats of disunion as a remedy for political evils not otherwise to be reached, had indeed been frequent in the history of the American Republic; but they had never led either the people of the States or the Federal Government seriously to consider and guard against the formidable consequences contingent upon a deliberate attempt to put those threats into effect. This is the more remarkable, that the history of the Union is the history, not of the gradual disintegration of that which had been at first a unit of feelings and of interests, but rather of the attempted consolidation of communities occupying an area of territory half as large as Europe; and divided, not only by distance and the difficulties of communication over so vast a region, but by their traditions, their habits, and the general economy of their life.

When the British Colonies combined, from the frontiers of Canada to the frontiers of Florida, in a common resistance to Parliamentary usurpation, the adherents of the Crown were not less confounded by the harmony in action of Virginia with New England, and of Pennsylvania with the Carolinas, than

« PrejšnjaNaprej »