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THE NEW YORK! PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.

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GENERAL MCCLELLAN.

Brevet Second Lieutenant of Engineers. In the Mexican war he was distinguished in the battles of Contreras and Churubusco, of Molino del Rey, and for his services at the battle of Chapultepec was breveted to a captaincy, and assigned the command of a company of sappers and miners. When the army returned home we find him at West Point diligently employed in the study of military tactics, the results of which he embodied in a manual, which was adopted in the service. In the next few years he was engaged in the multifarious duties of engineering and military command, which give to the officers of the American service so large a practical experience. He superintended the construction of Fort Delaware, was with Major Marcy in the expedition for the exploration of the Red River, took part in the river and harbor survey in Texas, and in 1853, in coöperation with Governor Stevens, commanded the western division of the North Pacific Railroad route. In 1855, holding the rank of Captain in the First Regiment of Cavalry, he was selected by the War Department, one of the three commissioners who were sent to Europe to investigate the extended field of military operations and devices opened by the Crimean war. His coadjutors were Major Richard Delafield and Major A. Mordecai of the Ordnance Department. The commission was signed and the directions were drawn up by Jefferson Davis, at that time Secretary of War. Captain McClellan presented to the Department the results of his observations abroad in an elaborate quarto volume on the "Organization of European Armies and the Operations of the War," which was printed by order of Congress, and which has been accepted in a new popular edi

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tion as a standard authority on the subjects of which it treats.

The army now presenting no active field of duty to the engineering ability of Captain McClellan, in 1857 he resigned his military rank to enter into the more profitable service of the great corporation the Illinois Central Railroad, of which he was created Vice President and Engineer. At the end of three years he left this position for the Presidency of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad, being at the same time General Superintend

ent.

He was still engaged in these occupations when the rebellion of the South turned the eyes of the authorities of the North upon him as one who could not be spared from the national service. He was appointed at once by the Governor of Ohio a Major-General of the Volunteer forces of that State, and had barely entered upon his new duties when he was recalled to the United States Army, his new commission as Major-General bearing date May 14, 1861. The military department of the Ohio to which he was assigned comprised all of the States of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio and that part of Virginia north of the Kanawha river and the Maryland line, with part of Pennsylvania.

His appearance on the field in Virginia was heralded by a stirring proclamation to the people of Western Virginia, dated at Cincinnati, May 26th. "Virginians," was its language, "the General Government has long enough endured the machinations of a few factious rebels in your midst! Armed traitors have in vain endeavored to deter you from expressing your loyalty at the polls. Having failed in this infamous attempt to deprive you of the exercise of your dearest rights, they now seek to inaugurate a

reign of terror, and thus force you to yield to their schemes and submit to the yoke of the traitorous conspiracy, dignified by the name of Southern Confederacy. They are destroying the property of citizens of your State, and ruining your magnificent railways. The General Government has heretofore carefully abstained from sending troops across the Ohio, or even from posting them along its banks, although frequently urged by many of your prominent citizens to do so. It determined to await the result of the State election, desirous that no one might be able to say that the slightest effort had been made from this side to influence the expression of your opinion, although the many agencies brought to bear upon you by the rebels were well known. You have now shown under the most adverse eircumstances, that the great mass of the people of Western Virginia are true and loyal to the beneficent Government under which we and our fathers have lived so long. As soon as the result of the election was known, the traitors commenced their work of destruction. The General Government cannot close its ears to the demand you have made for assistance. I have ordered troops to cross the river. They come as your friends and brothers as enemies only to the armed rebels who are preying upon you. Your homes, your families and property are safe under our protection. All your rights shall be religiously protected. Notwithstanding all that has been said by the traitors to induce you to believe that our advent among you will be signalized by interference with your slaves, understand one thing clearly not only will we abstain from all interference, but we will, on the contrary, with an iron hand, crush any attempt at

insurrection on their part. Now that we are in your midst, I call upon you to fly to arms and support the General Government; sever the connection that binds you to traitors; proclaim to the world that the faith and loyalty so long boasted of by the Old Dominion are still preserved in Western Virginia, and that you remain true to the Stars and Stripes."

In similar energetic phrase was his address to the soldiers of the advancing column:-" You are ordered to cross the frontier and enter upon the soil of Virginia. Your mission is to restore peace and confidence, to protect the majesty of the law and to rescue our brethren from the grasp of armed traitors. You are to act in concert with the Virginia troops and support their advance. I place under the safeguard of your honor the persons and property of the Virginians. I know that you will respect their feelings and all their rights. Preserve the strictest discipline-remember that each one of you holds in his keeping the honor of Ohio and the Union. If you are called upon to overcome armed opposition, I know that your courage is equal to the task, but remember that your only foes are the armed traitors and show mercy even to them when they are in your power, for many of them are misguided. When under your protection the loyal men of Western Virginia have been enabled to organize and arm, they can protect themselves, and you can then return to your homes with the proud satisfaction of having preserved a gallant people from destruction." The respect inculcated for "the peculiar institution" of the South is very noticeable in both these manifestoes. Nothing could be clearer or more explicit than the strong language which was employed. It might have satisfied the

COLONEL KELLEY'S EXPEDITION.

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South, if indeed it had been inclined to troops may serve as an indication of the accept any assurances or facts, that the spirit of the time. At Cameron, a station insane cry of an abolition crusade, which in Marshall County, says he, "we found had been raised with such deadly effect a crowd assembled of three hundred, against the Administration, was utterly perhaps, who insisted in standing out in groundless, for no voice from Wash- a pelting rain and cheering the soldiers. ington checked the unsparing denuncia- The report of the advance of Southern tions on this subject of the new General. troops had been received the night before, The first active military movement in and a hundred riflemen had been under this western region of Virginia was di- arms guarding the town all night; and rected against a number of armed insur- at this time men with rifles were coming gents who had made their appearance on in from all directions. It really looks the line of the Baltimore and Ohio road just like what we read of as having taken at Grafton. Some injuries had been in- place in the days of '76, when men left flicted on the track in the burning of the plough standing in the furrow, dropbridges over Buffalo Creek, and the well ped the uplifted hammer, and rushed to disposed inhabitants were obliged to pro- the defence of their country." A regitect themselves from the aggressions of ment of Ohio troops, which followed, was gangs of secessionists who threatened the received with even greater demonstradestruction of their property. In fact, tions, as the people assembled on the way Colonel Porterfield, who was in command to hail their deliverers. Here and there of the rebels at Grafton, was especially bridge-burners and secessionists were charged at this time by Governor Letcher hunted out and became prisoners or freed with cutting off the telegraph and break- themselves by taking the oath of allegiing up the railroad, to prevent communi- ance. Warned by these proceedings, the cation and the passage of troops between rebels at Grafton fled at Colonel Kelley's Wheeling and Washington.* It was ne- approach, holding their next position at cessary that the friends of the Union in Philippi, the chief town of Barbour the country should have military pro- County, twenty-two miles to the southtection. This service was entrusted to ward. Colonel Benjamin Franklin Kelley, a native of New Hampshire, who had been called from civil life to command the 1st Regiment of Virginia volunteers at Wheeling. Setting out with the regiment from the latter place on the 27th of May he was received at the different stations of the railroad with the utmost enthusiasm, as he alighted in the midst of a population hourly in fear of an attack from the enemy. One incident related by a reporter who accompanied the

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There, on the 30th May, Colonel Porterfield issued a proclamation to the people of north-western Virginia, which reads very much like the appeals of the commanders on the other side. In fact, with the important substitution of State rights and Virginia for national loyalty and Washington, there was little difference in the spirit or the terms. "Virginians," was its language, "allow me to appeal to you, in the name of our common mother, to stand by the voice of your State, and to defend her against all enemies, and especially to repel invasion

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