CHAPTER LV.

HE army of the Cumberland reached Louisville, Septem

THE

ber 29, 1862, in such condition for campaigning that it

began its return march, following Bragg's Confederate army in two or three days' time, as soon as the situation was understood. The dread of Bragg's army was sincere, and prevailed everywhere, among friends and foes, for the good reasons that it supplied itself wherever it could, wholly indifferent about prices or values, for it paid for nothing, but was energetic and swift in taking the best, and all it could carry away.

When it reached Louisville, most of the command had been on continuous march from below the south line of Tennessee. We had been without any word but rumors, and had no reliable information concerning the progress of the war. We were indignant at our own useless retreat; but more, if possible, to learn that the army of the Potomac, that had neither lack of men and supplies nor want of means for concentration, and supposed to have a brave and capable commander, had been as badly managed, and that its campaigns had been as disastroulsy conducted as our own; worse, indeed, because of its position, greater strength, and responsibility. We learned that after several hotly-contested engagements, and one quite decisive battle at Malvern Hill, while the army was safely and securely holding position on James River, only a few miles from Richmond, McClellan in utter abandonment of his well and hardly-won base, had given it up in anxiety for the "Defense of Washington!" What else of profound military necessity there was for this retreat we heard not;

but learned that our Halleck made a run with Lee, and beat him a little to Washington, saved it, headed him off on the north side of the Potomac in Maryland, where he fought another pretty decisive battle at Antietam, and drove him across and back to his own side of the famous river. All in all, he defeated Lee there as easily as he could have done on James River. He might then have taken Richmond, which that valiant army, had need to do later. It would seem that he could have taken it and saved Washington more effectually by doing so. During this flight of armies and Lee's march to capture Washington, as was supposed, and finally to take Maryland and perhaps Pennsylvania, McClellan fell into the trap to defend Washington at all hazards, when these Southern armies were doing their best in recruiting and plundering raids.

General John Pope, who had won merited distinction in moving forward and taking things in his vigorous Western campaigns, was an Illinois soldier and a personal friend of Governor Yates and President Lincoln. In this flight to a base of supplies and to save Washington, he was placed in command of some emergency-gathered and rapidly-organized forces, called "The Army of Virginia." By the rules of conservatism, this inadequate force was to hold back Lee's advancing army until McClellan could, in easy time, without discomfort, locate Lee's army, and place his own where it could properly "defend Washington," as it should be done.

Lee was one of the chiefs of conservatism, but, not appreciating the delicate situation of the slavery sympathizers at the head of our army, although he was second man in the Confederacy, began fighting Pope in earnest at Manassas in August, regardless of McClellan's ambition to be first man on the Union side, where he could "defend Washington" and make it as little of an "Abolition war" as possible. Lee appeared to be indifferent to the precarious counter

poise of holding up half-made friends on both sides, or at least those not opposed to, but as deeply tinctured as possible with the conservatism of slavery, as the leaders of our army. McClellan apparently believed that, with something of war and fighting, which could not then be avoided, concessions could be made, and a compromise or a treaty would give slavery all it started out to get, which so many of our weak statesmen were ready to give. Lee altogether upset this plan by assaulting Pope in deadly joined battle, and was so furious in his attacks that he made Pope believe he was determined to take Washington. Pope, thinking that the Capital was in real danger, and, being a soldier ready to fight, not only held Lee's army back, but, in two or three days, with blow for blow, repulsed it, with serious and heavy losses. But he was so heavily outnumbered that he had to fall back on the defenses at Washington, as conservatism predicted and desired.

Before doing so, Pope called on Halleck, whom he knew and till then trusted, for the help and re-enforcement he had been promised. Halleck stormed in and about the War Department, and wrote fierce letters to McClellan, Franklin, and others, until it really looked as though a desperate effort was made to support and re-enforce Pope. But the conservative division and corps leaders who had fought and marched and stood the shot and shell and heard every sound afar off, from the Chickahominy to Malvern and half-way down James River, could not hear the thunder of twenty batteries of mixed artillery five miles away, at the second Bull Run. One of them could not read a plain order of Pope's, who was in command, and obey it, until the next day. All this and multiplied insubordination, with no effective support given, as evidenced in piles of orders, letters, records, and testimony, establish the truth that the Achilleses and Ajaxes of conservatism "sulked in their tents," on the roads, in camps, and in hearing of hostile

guns. It was all done that General Pope might be smothered for his presumption in fighting Lee's army with all the men he could gather, as duty led him. As settling this, McClellan wrote, on August 29th, at 3 P. M., when Pope was sorely pressed and falling back for want of one division, or even as much as a fresh brigade: "I am clear that one of two courses should be adopted: first, to concentrate all our available forces to open communication with Pope; second, to leave Pope to get out of his scrape and at once use all our means to make the Capital perfectly safe."

Two corps leisurely joined Pope the day after his defeat. "Washington was safe;" indeed, it had not been in any real danger. Pope's campaign and defeat were of real benefit to the country, as he bore his sacrifice like a soldier, and returned to the West again in faithful service. Although he was defeated at Bull Run, he and the brave men who fought with him inflicted such severe losses on Lee's army that the army of the Potomac, under McClellan, got the full benefit of this sacrifice, and defeated Lee at Antietam all the more easily on the following 17th of September, only three weeks later. Besides this, the useless retreat from James River, that brought only delay and more waste and campaigning, till the same fighting contest had to be renewed; the maneuvering about the disobedience and the desertion of Pope, all revealed McClellan, the last of the conservative commanders of our armies, to the President and the country as nothing else could have done.

It is an unpleasant task to place these great army leaders, who were not all made up of defects, where they should be; but the truth is, and should be told, that the three, with opportunities that could not have been improved, all failed in the terrible crisis when the Nation was in its deathgrapple with slavery. No one of them seemed to realize and understand that the time was come when God would destroy one or the other. They were in the stupor of con

servatism, the fatalism of social, economical, moral, religious, and political affairs, that never moved an inch forward for human rights since the world began. It is no exaggeration to say that this fatal conservatism in the war for the Union cost thousands on thousands of 'brave men's lives and countless treasure, for which, in the nature of things, there can be no restitution or apology. These are gone, and we can only revere the memory of those whose sacrifice brought the Nation to its knees in repentance.

It was nothing to these conservatives and their apologists that so many died or suffered, or would suffer; the sounding braggadocio ran and the more impudent and impertinent in detail it was written, the better; for instance, when they loudly asserted "that there never were such generals as theirs, such organizers, such strategists, such masters of military science, engineering, and equipment, as these heroes of the backward and paralleling retreats or scientific movements." They said "none had organized, and none could organize, brigade, divide, and maneuver such splendid armies, the like of which had never been seen, such that can not be equaled, and that they and their generals had saved every other army and command from disaster and defeat, as no other discipline or organization ever had done or ever would do." Then, too, they could easily prove by the Confederates that all they said of their great generals was true; that they were the greatest and most capable military leaders living, except Lee, Jo Johnston, Longstreet, and Stonewall Jackson. Further, they could prove and establish it as well by the small Counts of Orleans and Paris, and Lord John Russell, the Dukes of Dublin, and another splinter of aristocracy that wanted to be a duke and have Wellington's fame in succession as well as his place at the head of the British army. Besides these there were numerous counts and lords all over Europe who would indorse everything done for the men and the cause of the