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Lincoln's desire by some means to free the loyal people of East Tennessee from the oppressive sway of the Confederates showed itself in the instructions given to all the military officers in the West. He had been pressing the point from the beginning. It had entered into McClellan's and Rosecrans's plans of the last campaign.
The heavy military reverses which attended the failure of McClellan's campaign against Richmond, Pope's defeat at the second Bull Run, McClellan's neglect to follow up the drawn battle of Antietam with energetic operations, the gradual change of early Western victories to a cessation of all effort to open the Mississippi, and the scattering of the Western forces to the spiritless routine of repairing and guarding long railroad lines, all operated together practically to stop volunteering and enlistment by the end of 1862.
It numbered in all, according to General McClellan's report, one hundred and fifty-six thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight men, of whom one hundred and fifteen thousand one hundred and two were effective troops that is to say, present and ready for duty as fighting-men in the field.
As a desperate sort of diversion in favor of the right wing, it might be justifiable; but I believe that no officer or man who knew the actual situation at that bridge thinks that a serious attack upon it was any part of McClellan's original plan.
Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?" And the next day, after receiving McClellan's answer to his inquiry, he responded: "Most certainly I intend no injustice to anyone, and if I have done any I deeply regret it.
McClellan's theory was that the rebels, by the circumstances attendant upon their present retreating movement, had conclusively annulled any chance of their own return by way of Manassas. Banks greatly outnumbered Stonewall Jackson, who had only about 15,000 men, or less, in the Shenandoah Valley. Also Washington was now entirely surrounded by satisfactory fortifications.
McClellan's unready masses were to begin an unlimited mud march through the early spring. roads of Virginia on the twenty-second of February, in honor of Washington's birthday. A reconnoitering staff officer reported the roads as being in their proper places; but he guessed the bottom had fallen out. So McClellan was granted some delay. His grand total was now over two hundred thousand men.
Lincoln was now doing precisely this thing, in his silent, thorough, independent way, neither provoked by McClellan's cavalier assumption of superior knowledge, nor alarmed by the danger of offending the politicians. In fact, he decided to go counter to both the disputants; for he resolved, on the one hand, to compel McClellan to act; on the other, to maintain him in his command.
McClellan, instead of pressing on to Richmond, sat down before Yorktown and let the Confederate conscripts come up. Halleck was crawling southward, when a rapid advance might have robbed the South of a large recruiting area. The reopening of enlistment came on the top of the huge disappointment at McClellan's failure in the peninsula.
To what point shall they move? I write at this time in order that you may be apprised of the condition of things. During the morning D.H. Hill, with no more than 5000 men in his command, had seen the greater part of McClellan's army deploy for action in the wide valley below and to the eastward of Turner's Gap.
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