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Updated: June 15, 2025
About November 1st, General McClellan was appointed commander-in-chief of all the armies in the field, and by telegraph called for a report from me. General L. THOMAS, Adjutant-General, Washington, D. C. Sir: In compliance with the telegraphic orders of General McClellan, received late last night, I submit this report of the forces in Kentucky, and of their condition.
White Oak Swamp is an extensive morass, similar to that skirting the banks of the Chickahominy, and the passage through it is over narrow, winding, and difficult roads, which furnish the worst possible pathways for wagons, artillery, or even troops. It was necessary, however, to use these highways or none, and General McClellan resolutely entered upon his critical movement.
Such were Lincoln's harrowing experiences; and thus did his noble and sympathetic nature assert itself over his momentary weakness and depression. In August of 1862 General McClellan was ordered to withdraw his army from the Peninsula. "With a heavy heart," says McClellan, "I relinquished the position gained at the cost of so much time and blood."
On this visit to Washington the President and Secretary of War had offered to Burnside himself the command of the Army of the Potomac. He had refused it, earnestly asserting his faith that McClellan was much fitter for the command than he, and trying hard to restore confidence and a mutual good understanding between his friend and the government. "FORT MONROE, Aug. 2, 1862.
He is young, and the elevation of his position, his standing before the civilized world, will inspire and purify him, I hope. Nay, I ardently wish he may go to the camp, to the camp. McClellan published a slave-catching order. Oh that he may discard those bad men around him! Struggles with evils, above all with domestic, internal evils, absorb a great part of every nation's life.
About November 1st, General McClellan was appointed commander-in-chief of all the armies in the field, and by telegraph called for a report from me. General L. THOMAS, Adjutant-General, Washington, D. C. Sir: In compliance with the telegraphic orders of General McClellan, received late last night, I submit this report of the forces in Kentucky, and of their condition.
General McClellan had been educated at West Point, and had graduated first of the class in which Jackson was seventeenth. He had been appointed to the engineers, had served on the staff in the war with Mexico, and as United States Commissioner with the Allied armies in the Crimea.
The disaster at Bull Bun was followed, as the reader knows, by a long period of masterly inactivity, so far as the Army of the Potomac was concerned. McDowell, a good soldier, but unlucky, retired to Arlington Heights, and McClellan, who had distinguished himself in Western Virginia, took command of the forces in front of Washington, and bent his energies to reorganizing the demoralized troops.
Even the bitterest enemies of nationalism, even those who were believed by all others to desire the breaking of the Union, had not thought it safe to say so. They had veiled their intent in specious words. McClellan in accepting the Democratic nomination had repudiated the idea of disunion. Whether the Democratic politicians had agreed with him or not, they had not dared to contradict him.
Lincoln was forced into what General McClellan calls a radical policy by the necessity of the case. The Rebels themselves insisted on convincing him that his choice was between that and failure.
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