say, "without exposing both to destruction, and yet they must be united. To send Pope's forces by water to the Peninsula is, under present circumstances, a military impossibility. The only alternative is to send the forces on the Peninsula to some point by water, say Fredericksburg, where the two armies can be united."

In the face of the subsequent history of the war it is probable that General Halleck would hardly care to admit that he felt himself shut down to this solitary alternative by the force of purely military considerations. To do so would be to convict himself of an absolute incapacity for the conduct of a great campaign. The real impossibility of sending General Pope's forces by water to the Peninsula, as General Halleck well knew, was not a military, but a political impossibility, it was the political impossibility of permitting General McClellan completely to prove, by the capture of Richmond in August, how Richmond might have been captured in May, had the "overland" theory on which his excellency, the commanderin-chief, had from the first "insisted," been frankly abandoned.

General Halleck repeating peremptorily his orders for the removal of the army, there was nothing left for General McClellan but to obey them,

The wharf facilities at Harrison's Landing were very limited, nor could the heaviest transport steamers come up so high on the James River; and the chief quartermaster, Colonel Ingalls, reported to General McClellan on the 7th, that after the transports already engaged by order of General Halleck, in moving the sick and wounded, should have returned, it would be possible to move at one time 25,000 men of the Army of the Potomac, but that in the actual condition of the transportation that day available, it would be impossible to move more than 5,000 infantry. He accordingly advised the sending forward. of the troops to Fortress Monroe, and their shipment from that point. All that could be done was done to accelerate the movement, but from the moment when it began General Mc

Clellan was plied with telegrams from General Halleck reproaching him for his alleged delay in executing the order of removal, telegrams which are interesting to the student of this campaign only as they reveal the positively hostile feeling of the authorities at Washington towards the recalled commander.

On the 9th of August, for example, three days after his final orders had been given for the removal of the army, General Halleck telegraphed :

MAJ.-GEN. MCCLELLAN,

I am of opinion that the enemy is massing his forces in front of Generals Pope and Burnside, and that he expects to crush them and move forward to the Potomac. You must send reinforcements instantly to Acquia Creek.

Considering the amount of transportation at your disposal, your delay is not satisfactory, you must move with all possible celerity.

H. W. HALLECK,
Major-General.

On the next day, August 10th, the general-in-chief telegraphed again, "the enemy is crossing the Rapidan in large force. They are fighting General Pope to-day; there must be no further delay in your movements. That which has already occurred was entirely unexpected and must be satisfactorily explained."

The enemy was indeed crossing the Rapidan in large force and "fighting General Pope." Having learned early in August, as in some mysterious manner they always learned them, the military decisions come to by the Aulic Council at Washing ton, the Confederates had forthwith seized their opportunity, and were precipitating the main body of their army upon the headlong commander of the " Army of Virginia." As General McClellan had never been notified of the intention of the

government to transfer his army northward until the 3rd of August, and had never been finally commanded to execute that intention until the 6th of August, this refusal to him of proper confidence had resulted in giving the Confederates, operating upon interior lines and by railway, such an advantage over the two armies of the Union in point of time, as could not possibly have been neutralized had the transportation service at Harrison's Bar been as perfect as General Halleck, in these imperious and insulting telegrams assumed it to be. But that service, as we have seen, was far from being at all adequate to the sudden demand now made upon it. On the 10th of August the officer in charge of the quartermaster's department at Harrison's Bar compelled General Halleck to retract the substance of his charges of "delay" by a despatch confirming General McClellan's statement that the capacity of the transportation service of the Army of the Potomac had been entirely exhausted by the demands made on it for the movement of the sick and wounded, and of General Burnside's heavy artillery. It was, furthermore, to have been supposed that as General Halleck had expressly requested General McClellan to keep his movement " a secret from his own officers and men," the necessary transportation service would have been prepared at Washing. ton. But the miserably petty nature of these charges cannot be better shown than it is by the fact that while General McClellan was now taken sharply to task for failing to send forward ninety thousand men to the Rappahannock from an expeditionary base of operations on the James within four days from the date of the final order requiring him to do so, the war department itself had occupied more than a week in sending forward five thousand men from the great national base of supplies to the James River. On the 5th of June Mr. Stanton had telegraphed to General McClellan, "I will send you five regiments as fast as transportation can take them." These regiments joined the army on the 12th and 13th of June.

To move the Army of the Potomac safely from Harrison's Bar to Acquia Creek and Alexandria, with such facilities as were supplied to General McClellan, was the proper work of a month at least. Anxious that no unnecessary delays should occur, either in embarking or disembarking his men, General McClellan, on the 12th of August, went in person seventy miles to the telegraph office at Jamestown Island, and sent a telegram to General Halleck, announcing his wish to confer with him on such subjects as the following:

"I learn that wharf accommodations at Acquia are altogether inadequate for landing troops and supplies to any large extent. Not an hour should be lost in remedying this. Great delays will ensue there from shallow water. You will find a vast deficiency in horse transports; we had nearly (200) two hundred when we came here. I learn of only (20) twenty provided now; they carry about (50) fifty horses each. More hospital accommodations should be provided. We are much impeded here because our wharves are used night and day to land current supplies. At Monroe a similar difficulty will occur. With all the facilities at Alexandria and Washington, (6) six weeks about were occupied in embarking this army and its material."

General Halleck telegraphed from Washington:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14, 1862. 1.40 a. M. I have read your dispatch. There is no change of plans. You will send up your troops as rapidly as possible. There is no difficulty in landing them. According to your own accounts there is now no difficulty in withdrawing your forces. Do so with all possible rapidity.

H. W. HALLECK,

Maj.-Gen.

Immediately after sending this reply, General Halleck left the Washington Office without informing General McClellan of the fact, or waiting for any further communication from

him, thus insolently signifying his profound indifference to the wishes, the counsels and the feelings of the officer to whom, within a brief fortnight, he was destined to be indebted for his deliverance from the chaos of danger and despair into which the Aulic council and himself were now rapidly hurrying the affairs of the state.

Late in the afternoon of the 16th of August, when the last soldier had left the deserted camp, General McClellan and his personal staff bade farewell to the spot upon which he had planted the banner of the Union in such a formidable proximity to the rebel capital as since that day no army of the United States has occupied.

Part of his troops moving by land on Yorktown and Fortress Monroe, and part descending the James River, the commander of the Army of the Potomac had thus pushed forward his ninety thousand men to the relief of General Pope within a fortnight's time from his receipt of the first positive intimation that such a movement would be required of him.

On the 24th of August, three weeks after this intimation had reached him, General McClellan reported for orders at Acquia Creek. The corps of General Porter; pushed forward through the tangled wilderness of the Peninsula with unsurpassed rapidity by that officer, on his learning, by a letter inter cepted at Williamsburgh, that the enemy were massing themselves tremendously against Pope; had reached Northern Virginia two days before, and was already in the front of battle endeavoring to ascertain where the commander of the "Army of Virginia" really was, and what his plans of action were.