in Washington to call the troops within the defences of the city, and they were accordingly so disposed of on the 2d of September. Besides serious losses in rank and file at Chantilly, two officers of exceptional merit were there killed on the Federal side, Stevens and Kearny. It is grievous to contemplate the necessity of omitting in this memoir all that pure justice would, if untramelled by material bonds, award in mention of merit and sacrifice; but as a hundred such books as the one here contemplated would not suffice to fulfil the wish, it must meet the fate which lies beyond the bounds of the possible. It need hardly be said, moreover, that this work is for a single purpose, to which all else should be subordinated. General Meade did not appear more conspicuously on these particular fields than did many another officer, not so much so as some other officers, and yet all that precedes and is yet to follow chiefly relates, and should relate, to the trace which his presence makes as an episode, great and small, of the war, in a memoir which professes to be devoted to him.

On August 21st, at 10 P.M., General Meade had left Falmouth with his brigade as part of the division of Reynolds, and had marched thence towards Barnett's Ford on the Rappahannock, making but slight progress on account of the darkness of the night and uncertainty as to the road. Continuing the march on the following day, the command reached Rappahannock Station, on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, on the 23d, bivouacking for the night near Warrenton. On the 28th the brigade, while on the march, took some slight part in what finally drifted into the action at Gainesville. On the 29th it was formed in line of battle on the left of Sigel, and joined in the battle at Groveton. On the 30th, the day of the second battle of Bull Run, the brigade advanced along the Warrenton turnpike in line of

battle, occupying a ridge in advance, until withdrawn by orders of the general-commanding to the ridge behind it, from which it had advanced in the morning. About 3 P.M. of that day, Reynolds, under orders from Pope, moved almost entirely across the field of battle, from the south to the north side of the Warrenton turnpike, to reinforce Porter, which his division had no sooner done than it was ordered to march back to the plateau of the Henry House, on account of the pressure of the enemy on the Federal left. There Meade's brigade, in conjunction with Seymour's, deployed in line of battle, and charged down the slope of the Henry House ridge towards the Sudley Springs road, driving before it such portions of the Confederates as had advanced beyond that road, and finally taking position in the road and holding it at that point until relieved by Sykes's regulars under Buchanan. General Meade says, in his official report, with relation to this part of the action, that "it is due to the Pennsylvania Reserves to say, that this charge and maintenance of this position was made at a most critical period of the day."

It was at this critical period of the day, when, if the Pennsylvania Reserves had not repulsed the enemy and compelled him to take shelter temporarily in the woods, the enemy might, as General Meade says, have gained the Henry House ridge, which, as General Meade adds, "might have materially altered the fortune of the day;" that Buchanan's brigade of regulars came up, none too quickly, to reinforce them. McDowell was accused by General R. H. Milroy of refusing to send reinforcements. McDowell claimed, in justification, that in the excitement Milroy had lost his head, or, as he expressed it, "was in a frenzy," and made no communication of the sort upon which he would have been justified in sending him reinforcements. And, McDowell went on to say, before the

court of inquiry in which the case was tried, “whilst in doubt for the moment, in view of the circumstances, as to the course to be taken, I received a clear and definite message from that intelligent, as well as gallant officer, General Meade, on which I knew I could rely, and immediately sent the reinforcements forward."

The fact is most moderately stated by General Meade when he said that but for the Pennsylvania Reserves, at this critical juncture, the fortunes of the day might have been materially altered. The advance of the enemy was very confident, and the ensuing conflict very hot. Here "Old Baldy," the horse which bore the General through many a fight, received one of his wounds. The worst of the disasters of the campaign were now over. Lee's army as well as Pope's had suffered severely. Pope's had lacked that strategic and tactical mastery, and that subtle bond between chief and troops which make them, as has been already remarked, like a single organism of the highest type, in which the directive intelligence permeates the body to parts of the lowest rank. The Army of Virginia, like the leviathan attacked by the skilful swordsmen of the sea, had fruitlessly floundered without direction, and had finally sunk into unknown depths out of the sight of men. But only so

in appearance, only so as to visible presence, for soon, with parts restored and reincorporated, it issued forth as the Army of the Potomac, not invincible, but with honor untarnished, and, as ever, amid all scenes of disaster, in spirit unsubdued.

CHAPTER X.

THE BATTLE OF SOUTH MOUNTAIN.

THE various phases of mental tone which General McClellan exhibited to credible witnesses who were actors with him in the drama of the war, and perhaps, still more, the record which he himself has left in writing, in the form of despatches, private letters, and other documents, show him to have been a man without the poise that is capable of directing to great deeds. At first, amidst the universal acceptance of him on credit by the North, as possessing all the attributes needed for success in command of the armies of the United States, his mental attitude was arrogant. Put to the actual test of war, and suspicions of his shortcomings for his task beginning to invade the sober common sense of the people, not to be in the long run deceived as to what concerns them nearly, some abatement of this arrogance became perceptible, although he still had so false a view of his relations as a military man to the civil power, that he could reconcile himself to writing to the President a letter unprecedented in its assumption of ability to counsel in a sphere the threshold of which he should not have touched. There was, at this time, however, more moderation observable than had been exhibited previously. He no longer exactly admonished, but rather deprecated the conduct of affairs. At this point of time he scarcely doubted that his army would be withdrawn from the Peninsula, and he feared, from news that he had lately received, that he would be superseded. When the army had been withdrawn, and he had reached Alexan

dria, he evidently thought for some time that his occupation had gone, and he entered upon a new mood, unknown to him before, in which he answered a despatch from the President—“Tell me what you wish me to do, and I will do all in my power to accomplish it. I wish to know what my orders and authority are. I ask for nothing, but will obey whatever orders you give," etc.

This moderate frame of mind soon ceased, however, as the following brief account, cited from his own memoirs, proves. According to them he went out on the road towards the front to meet the retreating troops of Pope, under an order from the President to command the fortifications and the troops for the defence of Washington. He meets pretty soon a regiment of cavalry, marching by twos, with Pope and McDowell and their staffs "sandwiched," he says, between them. "Pope," he remarks, "had evidently not troubled his head in the slightest about the movements of his army in retreat, and had early preceded the troops, leaving them to get out of the scrape as best they could." A former suggestion of McClellan's in writing, that Pope should be allowed to get out of his "scrape" as best he could, had been justly the subject of a good deal of animadversion, and yet he here repeats it with gusto. In saying what he does as to the retreat, he fails to see the comparison which he has conjured up, for he too attended to the last of his own retreat in a casual way. The likeness between the two cases is not perfect, however, for there was no such urgency of the enemy in Pope's case as in his own. "Pope and McDowell," he goes on to say, " asked my permission to go to Washington, to which I assented, remarking at the same time that I [italicized] was going to the artillery firing." Evidently some kind power had never conferred upon him the "giftie," for here he did not perceive the difference in their favor, the difference, when there was really no great danger,