Mr Lincoln's Army (28 page)

McClellan argued, and Halleck, an expert at
conducting disputation by telegraph, argued back, and the old business of
Pinkerton's overestimate of Confederate strength arose once more to cripple the
army. If Lee, said Halleck, actually had two hundred thousand men, as McClellan
was insisting, then it was potentially disastrous to leave Lee posted between
the armies of Pope and McClellan: with that strength he could easily hold off
one army and crush the other. In the face of such numbers the only possible
course was to reunite the armies in front of Washington and make the best fight
possible. This was unanswerable, and the withdrawal began—as promptly as possible,
McClellan felt; slowly and with unpardonable delay, Stanton and Halleck
believed.

It was almost a question, by now, whether
McClellan was fighting the Confederates or the authorities at Washington. He
still saw himself as the man who would finally save the country, but he believed
that he would have to do it over the objections of the government, as he was
fully convinced that the men in Washington were determined to get rid of him at
any cost. "Their game," he wrote to his wife, "is to force me to
resign; mine will be to force them to place me on leave of absence, so that
when they begin to reap the whirlwind that they have sown I may still be in a
position to do something to save my country." Reflectively, and as if there
might be doubts about the matter, he added: "With all their faults, I
do
love my countrymen, and if I
can
save them I will yet do so."

So the retreat began, down the peninsula to
the wharves around Fortress Monroe. Along the way McClellan found time to be
the fond husband thinking of the wife and baby girl at home—he did hope the
child wouldn't make too much progress in the way of learning to walk and to
talk before he could get home to see her. He sent his wife a pressed flower,
picked in an old cemetery at Jamestown, and he tried to imagine what things
were like centuries earlier when John Smith first came up this river. He mused
about the state-liness and comfort with which the colonial planters managed to
surround their fives: "It would delight me beyond measure to have you
here to see the scenery and some of the fine old residences which stud its
banks."

And the army marched along the narrow roads,
leaving much behind it: youthful innocence, many comrades, and the bright hope
that the war might yet be won before it settled down into hatred and blind
destruction and the deaths of half a million boys.

On the march the men found that less care was
being exercised now to prevent the destruction of Rebel property. One division
came to a fine old plantation whose owner, somewhat rashly, had defiantly
posted a sign forbidding the burial of any dead Yankees on the grounds. The men
surged in over the lawn, set fire to the house, and resumed the march, a black
pillar of smoke rising behind them in the windless air.

FOUR

An
Army
on
the
March

I.
Indian Summer

To the people of the North it seemed
that September was bringing the outriders of doom up across the Potomac. Lee's
army, so unbelievably thin and ragged in actual appearance, so greatly
magnified and transfigured by rumor and by fear, came splashing through the
shallows of the fording places like a legendary host, and the sound of its
bands playing "Maryland, My Maryland" was like the first far-off
notes of the last trumpet. The rebellion had not been put down, after all; it
was here, over the border, ready with fire and sword to conquer and lay waste.
The great war to save the Union, entered into with so many waving flags, so
many cries and cheers for departing trainloads of young men in bright new
uniforms, might be coming to sudden catastrophe before the autumn leaves had
turned. Here was something government could not handle, after all. The war was
coming to the people.

All across the North the people reacted, as
if the country itself were beleaguered. When the news came that Pope's army had
been crushed and driven, Boston bestirred itself. At the urging of Governor
Andrew churches were made ready to receive wounded men, and freight-car loads
of bandages and medical supplies were hastily prepared and sent to Washington.
Martial law was declared in the Ohio River cities of Cincinnati and
Covington—for in the West Rebel armies

under Braxton Bragg and Kirby Smith had
slipped the leash and were driving north in pace with Lee. A self-organized
"national war committee" met in New York, proposed that Pathfinder
Fremont be reinstated in army command, urged the enlistment of a special corps
of fifty thousand men for his special use, appointed a delegation to meet next
day at Providence with such governors of the New England states as could be on
hand, and then dropped out of sight and was heard of no more. In Pennsylvania,
Governor Curtin called for the formation of volunteer militia companies. At
least fifty thousand men would be needed, he said, "for immediate service
to repel the now imminent invasion by the enemies of the country." The
mayor of Philadelphia called on "all able-bodied men" to assemble at
election-district precinct houses to be organized for service, and places of
business throughout the state were ordered closed at 3
p.m
.
daily so that the new units might drill.

Governor Morton of Indiana told counties
bordering the Ohio River to form military companies as speedily as might be. In
the Susquehanna Valley people prepared to evacuate their towns, if need be; in
Lancaster the citizens formed a committee of public safety and a home-guard
company, and advised sister cities and boroughs to do likewise and "to arrest
every man who uttered a traitorous sentiment against the government."
Several hundred women met in Boston's Park Street Church and resolved that
women throughout the country should form "circles of prayer" to pray
for "the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the entire nation."
Cincinnati reported that "over 1,000 squirrel hunters from the neighboring
counties" had come in to offer their services. From the Army of the
Potomac, Major General John F. Reynolds was detached and sent to Harrisburg, to
give professional direction to Pennsylvania's home-guard levies.
¹

The Army of the Potomac was pulling itself
together in Washington, getting its second wind for a sprint after Lee. The
people of the North might arouse themselves with any number of public meetings,
emergency volunteer companies, massed squirrel hunters, and committees of
public safety on guard against treason: Lee was not going to wait for that
frothy, fluid outpouring to harden into tangible military strength. If he was
to be stopped, it was the army that would have to stop him, and the army knew
it perfectly well.

Even
before the army had fully reassembled in the Washington lines, the men in the
ranks could see that there had been a great change. The Popes and the McDowells
were gone, and the organization was running smoothly once more; scattered
brigades were pulled together without fuss, the frantic running around and
feverish activity at army headquarters had given way to quiet competence,
regular rations were being issued again, new uniforms and equipment were being
passed out, and in general it began to look as if there was a man at the top
who knew what he was doing. Once again the lounging stragglers were swept up
off the streets. Stray detachments of men, posted at odd spots in and around
the capital, not knowing why they were posted there and strongly suspecting
that no one else knew either, were called in and given regular assignments.
There is record of one cavalry command that had been camped in a suburban field
for weeks, "waiting for orders," completely forgotten by the
authorities; it was found and put to work after someone thought to make a check
on the rations issued by the commissary department. In Alexandria a huge camp
suddenly came into existence for returning convalescents, wandering soldiers
who had lost their papers, detailed men whose regiments had moved off without
them, paroled prisoners awaiting exchange, and the like, and there were arrangements
for getting these men back where they belonged with a minimum of fuss and
delay.

Squadrons
of regular cavalry patrolled the streets; they straightened out the endless
traffic jams caused by the great wagon trains and put a stop to the ceaseless,
useless galloping of couriers, mounted orderlies, and other overenthusiastic horsemen.
The encircling lines of forts, which had never been quite finished, were put
into final shape and were strongly garrisoned as new troops came in from the
North. Watching it all, seemingly fascinated and heartened at the way order was
swiftly replacing disorder, was President Lincoln; almost daily he would
saunter into the offices which had been set up for the defenses of Washington,
to inquire gently, "Well, how does it look today?" He remarked that
now, for a change, he was not bothered all day and could sleep all night if he
chose.

While all of this was going on the army began
to move north and west out of Washington, in pursuit of Lee. It was the same
army that had gone up the river just a year earlier to picket the fords and
season itself in the open country, the same that had embarked from the river
wharves that spring with banners flying and hearts high; but it knew a great
deal more than it had known then, and many things had happened since the
halcyon autumn when the war seemed more than half for fun. Gallic Colonel Regis
de Trobriand, leading the Frenchmen of his 55 th New York past their old camp
at Tennalfy-town, mused sadly on the changes:

"What
a contrast between the departure and the return! We had started out in the
spring gay, smart, well provided with everything. The drums beat, the bugles
sounded, the flag with its folds of immaculate silk glistened in the sunshine.
And we were returning before the autumn, sad, weary, covered with mud, with
uniforms in rags. Now the drummers carried their cracked drums on their backs,
the buglers were bent over and silent; the flag, riddled by the balls, torn by
shrapnel, discolored by the rain, hung sadly upon the staff without cover.

"Where
were the red pantaloons? Where were the Zouave jackets? And, above all, those
who had worn them, and whom we looked in vain along the ranks to find, what had
become of them? Killed at Williamsburg, killed at Fair Oaks, killed at
Glendale, killed at Malvern Hill; wounded or sick in the hospitals; prisoners
at Richmond; deserters, we knew not where. And, to make the story short, scarce
300 revisited Tennallytown and Fort Gaines on their way to fight in upper
Maryland."
²

But if the colonel fell into a
neiges
d'antan
melancholy when he looked back on the past,
the army as a whole marched out of Washington in the highest of spirits. It
had its old commander back, and it devoutly believed that he would make right
all that had gone wrong. It had the pride of men who had fought hard and well,
and it was sure that it would win the war the next time it went into battle.
Getting into Maryland, too, was like coming home. No longer did the Westerners
and the New Englanders feel that this slave state was foreign soil. The farms
and the countryside might not be like Massachusetts and Indiana, but they were
even less like the flat, dank, wooded country of the Virginia peninsula, and
they had not been scorched by the usage of war.

Best of all, the people themselves were
friendly. In western Maryland, at least, public sentiment had settled on the
side of the Union by the fall of 1862, and the inhabitants welcomed the army
joyfully.

Young
Captain Noyes, on Doubleday's staff, remarked that girls with buckets of cold
spring water waited at almost every gate to give tired soldiers a drink.
"If my hat was off once, it was off thirty times," he wrote, adding
ecstatically: "Fine marching weather; a land flowing with milk and honey;
a general tone of Union sentiment among the people, who, being little cursed by
slavery [Captain Noyes was the staunchest of abolitionists], had not lost their
loyalty; scenery, not grand but picturesque, all contributed to make the march
delightful."
³

Nearly all of the soldiers who made that
march and left a record of their thoughts made the same sort of comment. A
diarist in the 22nd Massachusetts felt that the combination of beautiful
country and friendly people did wonders for the army; around the campfires, he
said, there was universal agreement that they would beat Lee decisively next
time they met him. In the 27th Indiana it was agreed that getting back into
Maryland made all the difference; the men felt better, and it wasn't because of
McClellan—this regiment had never served under him before and had no ingrained
hero worship to respond to. General Abram Duryee's brigade—97th, 104th, and
105th New York, plus 107th Pennsylvania—straggled badly coming out of
Washington; too many men had loitered, as one writer confessed, to enjoy
"the comforts of civilization," and the first day's march was hard.
But the stragglers all caught up after a while, and the brigade stepped out
gaily; in the town of Frederick, the brigade historian recalled,
"hundreds of Union banners floated from the roofs and windows, and in
many a threshold stood the ladies and children of the family, offering food and
water to the passing troops, or with tiny flags waving a welcome to their
deliverers." The 3rd Wisconsin found it hardly needed its army rations in
Frederick, "so sumptuous was the fare of cakes, pies, fruits, milk, dainty
biscuit and loaves" which the citizens were passing out. A regimental
diarist added fondly: "Of all the memories of the war, none are more
pleasant than those of our sojourn in the goodly city of Frederick."