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The original dissemination of the Federal forces was thus gravely accentuated, and the Confederates had now to deal with four distinct armies, McClellan's, McDowell's, Banks', and Fremont's, dependent for co-operation on the orders of two civilians, President Lincoln and his Secretary of War. And this was not all. McDowell had been assigned a most important part in McClellan's plan of invasion.
Frequently, by pretending to know, we could get from him a full idea of things concerning which we were ignorant before. Of this character was McClellan's advance on Richmond. The captain admitted that he was moving with an overwhelming force, and that they had then but a comparatively small army to resist him.
In 1855 he was elected a United States Senator from Massachusetts to succeed Edward Everett, and in 1859 was re-elected for the full term. In the recess of Congress in the summer of 1861, he raised the Twenty-Second Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, of which he was commissioned Colonel. He subsequently served on General McClellan's staff, until the meeting of Congress in December.
It is the faculty of being a present man, instead of a prospective one; of being ready, instead of getting ready. Though we think great injustice has been done by the public to General McClellan's really high merits as an officer, yet it seems to us that those very merits show precisely the character of intellect to unfit him for the task just now demanded of a statesman.
Severe marches, bad food, and other causes which make war exhausting, were constantly in action, until certain men were doing their work with too small a margin of reserve-power. Then came such a crisis as the last days of McClellan's retreat to the James River, or the forced march of the Sixth Army Corps to Gettysburg, and at once these men succumbed with palsy of the legs.
He at once sought a new Secretary of War, free from all party entanglements, who could not be influenced by contractors or jobbers or scheming politicians, who was absolutely honest and who had a boundless capacity for work. Strangely enough, his eye rested on Edward M. Stanton, his arch enemy, the man who had become McClellan's confidential attorney.
They could not, indeed, bring themselves to move it by water, as McClellan desired; but the President ordered McDowell to move down from Fredericksburg, where he now lay, towards McClellan's right wing, which McClellan was ordered to extend to the north of Richmond in order to meet him. But, in the words of the Comte de Paris, "an absurd restriction revealed the old mistrusts and fears."
One of his most successful raids was made around McClellan's army on the peninsula, shaking its sense of security and threatening its communications. On another occasion, he dashed into Pope's camp, captured his official correspondence and personal effects and made prisoners of several officers of his staff, Pope himself escaping only because he happened to be away from headquarters.
No sooner had it become evident that McClellan's position was impregnable than he turned his thoughts to some more vulnerable point. He would allow the enemy no respite. In his opinion there should be no "letting up" in the attack. The North should be given no leisure to reorganise the armies or to train recruits.
It may also account in some degree for the failure of those distinguished generals to work as harmoniously with each other to the common end, as was necessary to ensure success. Before following this interesting subject to its conclusion, the part actually played by General Smith in McClellan's Peninsular Campaign should be briefly recounted.
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