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The tenth of September passed, and the eleventh, mild, balmy and extremely still. The twelfth found the landscape for miles around Frederick still dozing. At noon, however, upon this day things changed. McClellan's strong cavalry advance came into touch with Jeb Stuart a league or two to the east. There ensued a skirmish approaching in dignity to an engagement.
Lincoln had so long kept McClellan in command of the Army of the Potomac. He perfectly understood that general's defects, his want of initiative, his hesitations, his delays, his never-ending complaints. But he had long foreseen the difficulty which would and did immediately arise when, on November 5, 1862, he removed him from command. Whom should he appoint as McClellan's successor?
If we are anxious to guard our civilization according to Hanoverian precedents, there is one name commonly given to the Commander-in-chief at Culloden which Congress should add to the titles it is preparing against McClellan's successful advance.
I construed McClellan's retreat into an order for me to advance, and have come to you as soon as I could to report progress." "Why could you not have come before? why could you not have told me?" she asked, a little reproachfully. "Some day perhaps you will know," he replied, turning away for a moment.
He himself narrates a dramatic tale, which would seem incredible if his veracity were not beyond question, of an interview, occurring March 8, 1862, in which the President told him, apparently with the air of expecting an explanation, that he was charged with laying his plans with the traitorous intent of leaving Washington defenseless. McClellan's Own Story, 195.
But, as things turned out, it was in itself an indecisive action, spoilt for the Federals, first, by McClellan's hesitating strategy, and then by his failure to press the attack home at all costs, with every available man, in an unbroken succession of assaults. He had over 80,000 men with 275 guns against barely 40,000 with 194 guns of inferior strength.
All recognised the strategic skill which had wrought the overthrow of McClellan's host; and the hard marches and sudden blows of the campaign on the Shenandoah, crowned by the swift transfer of the Valley army from the Blue Ridge to the Chickahominy, took fast hold of the popular imagination.
In the rapidly changing scenes of service, trusting to chance for news of his family, Maxime Valois' whole nature is centred upon the grave duties of his station. Southern victories are hailed from the East. The victorious arms of the Confederacy roll back McClellan's great force. Bruised, bleeding, and shattered from the hard-fought fields of the Peninsula, the Unionists recoil.
Fortune indeed favoured the Confederates. At the time of the battle a large portion of McClellan's army was at sea, and the attack was delivered at the very moment when it was most dreaded by the Northern Government.
A tribunal was organized at Paris, under the presidency of the Duc d'Aumale, son of Louis Philippe the same who with the Prince de Joinville had been on McClellan's staff during the peninsular campaign in our Civil War. Before this court Bazaine was haled as a traitor to his country. He was tried, convicted and condemned to degradation and death.
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