[24] The Peninsula, 188. Swinton seems
to regard it in the same light. Army of Potomac,
147.
[25] Gaines’s Mill, contested with superb courage
and constancy by the Fifth Corps, under Porter, against
very heavy odds.
[26] McClellan’s Report, 131, 132.
See, also, his own comments on this extraordinary
dispatch; Own Story, 452. He anticipated,
not without reason, that he would be promptly removed.
The Comte de Paris says that the two closing sentences
were suppressed by the War Department, when the documents
had to be laid before the Committee on the Conduct
of the War. Civil War in America, ii. 112.
Another dispatch, hardly less disrespectful, was sent
on June 25. See McClellan’s Report,
121.
[27] For a vivid description of the condition to which
heat, marching, fighting, and the unwholesome climate
had reduced the men, see statement of Comte de Paris,
an eye-witness. Civil War in America, ii. 130.
THE THIRD AND CLOSING ACT OF THE MCCLELLAN DRAMA
As it seems probable that Mr. Lincoln did not conclusively
determine against the plan of McClellan for renewing
the advance upon Richmond by way of Petersburg, until
after General Halleck had thus decided, so it is certain
that afterward he allowed to Halleck a control almost
wholly free from interference on his own part.
Did he, perchance, feel that a lesson had been taught
him, and did he think that those critics had not been
wholly wrong who had said that he had intermeddled
ignorantly and hurtfully in military matters?
Be this as it might, it was in accordance with the
national character to turn the back sharply upon failure
and disappointment, and to make a wholly fresh start;
and it was in accordance with Lincoln’s character
to fall in with the popular feeling. Yet if a
fresh start was intrinsically advisable, or if it was
made necessary by circumstances, it was made in unfortunate
company. One does not think without chagrin that
Grant, Sherman, Sheridan lurked undiscovered among
the officers at the West, while Halleck and Pope were
pulled forth to the light and set in the high places.
Halleck was hopelessly incompetent, and Pope was fit
only for subordinate command; and by any valuation
which could reasonably be put upon McClellan, it was
absurd to turn him out in order to bring either of
these men in. But it was the experimental period.
No man’s qualities could be known except by
testing them; and these two men came before Lincoln
with records sufficiently good to entitle them to
trial. The successes at the West had naturally
produced good opinions of the officers who had achieved
them, and among these officers John Pope had been as
conspicuous as any other. For this reason he
was now, towards the close of June, 1862, selected
to command the “Army of Virginia,” formed
by uniting the corps of Fremont, McDowell, and Banks.[28]
Fremont resigned, in a pet at having an officer who
was his junior in the service placed over his head;
but he was no loss, since his impetuous temperament
did not fit him for the duties of a corps commander.
He was succeeded by General Sigel. The fusing
of these independent commands, whose separate existence
had been a wasteful and jeopardizing error, was an
excellent measure.
