provide for the administrative service of the quartermaster, ordnance, commissary, and medical departments. The task of forming au artillery establishment was facilitated by the fact that the country possessed in the regular service a body of accomplished and energetic artillery officers.* As basis of organization it was decided to form field-batteries of six guns (never less than four guns, and the guns of each battery to be of uniform calibre);† and these were assigned to divisions, not to brigades, in the proportion of four batteries to each division; one of which was to be a battery of Regulars, and the captain of the Regular battery was in each case appointed commandant of the artillery of the division. In addition, it was determined to create an artillery reserve of a hundred guns and a siege-train of fifty pieces. This work was pushed forward with so much energy, that whereas, when General McClellan took command of the army, the entire artillery establishment consisted of nine imperfectly equipped batteries of thirty guns, before it took the field this service had reached the colossal proportions of ninety-two batteries of five hundred and twenty guns, served by twelve thousand five hundred men, and in full readiness for active field-duty.+ With equal energy the formation of the engineer establishment was entered upon; and this included not only the training of engineer companies and the Corps of Topographical Engineers, but the organization of engineer and bridge-trains and equipage adequate for an army of first-class proportions. At the same time, the entire system of the defences of Washington, both for the northern and southern side of the Po * The duty of organizing this arm was confided to Major (afterwards Brig· adier-General) Barry, chief of artillery. "It was decided that the proportion of rifled guns should be one-third, and of smooth-bores two-thirds-that the rifled guns should be restricted to the system of the United States ordnance department and of Parrott, and the smooth-bores to be exclusively the light twelve-pounder or Napoleon gun."Barry: Report of Artillery Operations, p. 106. Report of the Engineer and Artillery Operations of the Army of the Potomac, pp. 106-109. organized into brigades of four regiments each, and the brigades had been somewhat disciplined and instructed, formed divisions of three brigades each.* But, in armies of above sixty thousand men, it has been common, since the time of Napoleon, to create from the assemblage of two or more divisions the higher unit of the corps d'armée. As a theoretical principle of organization, General McClellan was in favor of the formation of corps; but he wished to defer its practical application until his division commanders should, by actual experience in the field, acquire the requisite training to fit them for commands so important, and until he should have learned who of his divisional officers merited this high trust.t There was much to justify this course, for there are few men able to command a body of thirty thousand men ; and it is worthy of note that it was not till the Army of Northern Virginia had seen eighteen months of service that those at the head of military affairs in Richmond organized corps.§ This hesitation, however, proved unfortunate for McClellan himself; for, several months afterwards, and just as he was about moving to the Peninsula, the President divided the Army of the Potomac into four corps, and assigned to their command men whom General McClellan would not have chosen ; whereas, had he created corps at first, he might have made his own selection. It next became necessary to create adequate artillery and engineer establishments, to organize the cavalry arm, and to * McClellan : Report, p. 11. + Ibid., p. 53. "An army corps rarely contains more than thirty thousand men, and often lower, even among nations who have the greatest number of troops. Such a command is a great burden, and few men are capable of managing it creditably." Dufour: Strategy and Tactics, p. 81. § The corps organization was created in the Confederate service immediately after the battle of Antietam. | General Hooker cannot be regarded as a partisan of General McClellan, yet I have often heard him say that it would have been impossible for General McClellan to have succeeded with such corps commanders as he had on the Peninsula. provide for the administrative service of the quartermaster, ordnance, commissary, and medical departments. The task of forming au artillery establishment was facilitated by the fact that the country possessed in the regular service a body of accomplished and energetic artillery officers.* As basis of organization it was decided to form field-batteries of six guns (never less than four guns, and the guns of each battery to be of uniform calibre);† and these were assigned to divisions, not to brigades, in the proportion of four batteries to each division; one of which was to be a battery of Regulars, and the captain of the Regular battery was in each case appointed commandant of the artillery of the division. In addition, it was determined to create an artillery reserve of a hundred guns and a siege-train of fifty pieces. This work was pushed forward with so much energy, that whereas, when General McClellan took command of the army, the entire artillery establishment consisted of nine imperfectly equipped batteries of thirty guns, before it took the field this service had reached the colossal proportions of ninety-two batteries of five hundred and twenty guns, served by twelve thousand five hundred men, and in full readiness for active field-duty.+ With equal energy the formation of the engineer establishment was entered upon; and this included not only the training of engineer companies and the Corps of Topographical Engineers, but the organization of engineer and bridge-trains and equipage adequate for an army of first-class proportions. At the same time, the entire system of the defences of Washington, both for the northern and southern side of the Po * The duty of organizing this arm was confided to Major (afterwards Brigadier-General) Barry, chief of artillery. "It was decided that the proportion of rifled guns should be one-third, and of smooth-bores two-thirds-that the rifled guns should be restricted to the system of the United States ordnance department and of Parrott, and the smooth-bores to be exclusively the light twelve-pounder or Napoleon gun.”— Barry: Report of Artillery Operations, p. 106. Report of the Engineer and Artillery Operations of the Army of the Potomac, pp. 106-109. tomac, was planned and carried into execution.* Washington, in fact, assumed the aspect of a fortified capital, with a system of defences so formidable that the enemy at no time throughout the war attempted seriously to assail that city.† Such is but a faint setting forth of the manifold activities evoked and directed towards the creation of the Army of the Potomac by its new commander. It was a season of faithful, fruitful work, amid which that army grew into shape and substance. And with such surprising energy was the work of organization pushed forward, that whereas General McClellan in July came into command of a collection of raw, dispirited, and disorganized regiments, without commissariat or quartermaster departments, and unfitted either to march or fight, he had around him at the end of three months a hundred thousand men, trained and disciplined, organized and equipped, animated by the highest spirit, and deserving the fond name of THE GRAND ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. And certainly, if there are portions of McClellan's subsequent military career that are open to animadversion, he yet challenges from all impartial minds the credit due this mighty performance.‡ Looking at the work he then initiated, in the only light in which we can rightly appreciate it-as it stands related to *These works were planned and executed by Major (afterwards MajorGeneral) Barnard, chief-engineer of the Army of the Potomac. The theory of the system of defences of Washington is that upon which the works of Torres Vedras were based—the occupation of commanding points within cannon-range of each other by field-forts, the fire of which shall sweep all the approaches, a connection being formed by infantry parapets easily improvised. The line, as it encircles the capital on both sides of the Potomac, has a development of thirty-three miles. As to the value of this system of defences for the safeguard of Washington, that is a vast, complex, and difficult question, not to be entered on here. It has been very severely criticised by Colonel Lecomte in his work, "Campagne de Virginie et de Maryland en 1862;" and to these animadversions a warm rejoinder has been made by General Barnard in "The Peninsular Campaign and its Antecedents." History will not refuse to affirm of this work the judgment pronounced by General McClellan himself: "The creation of such an army in so short a time from nothing, will hereafter be regarded as one of the highest glories of the administration and the nation." what went before, and what came after it-it is manifest that what gives it significance is that it represents science displacing sciolism, the untutored enthusiasm of a nation unused to war, taught by a bitter experience to yield itself to the cunning hand of discipline-that power which Carnot calls "the glory of the soldier and the strength of armies."* If the Army of the Potomac afterwards performed deeds worthy to live in history, it is in no small degree due to the fact that the groundwork of victory was laid deep and broad in that early period of stern tutelage, when it learnt the apprenticeship of war. If other generals, the successors of McClellan, were able to achieve more decisive results than he, it was, again, in no small degree, because they had ready to hand the perfect instrument which he had fashioned.+ "It is military discipline that is the glory of the soldier and the strength of armies, for it is the foremost act of its devotion, and the most assured pledge of victory (le plus grand acte de son dévouement et le gage le plus assuré de la victoire). It is by it that all wills unite in one, and all partial forces conspire to wards one end." Carnot: De la Défense des Places Fortes, p. 505. "Had there been no McClellan," I have often heard General Meade say, "there could have been no Grant; for the army made no essential improvement under any of his successors." It was common throughout the war to ascribe a high degree of discipline to the Confederate army-even higher than that of the Army of the Potomac. But the revelations of the actual condition of that army since the close of the war do not justify this assertion. On the contrary, they show that the discipline of the Army of Northern Virginia was never equal to that of the Army of the Potomac, though in fire and elan it was superior. "I could always rely on my army," said General Lee, at the time he surrendered its remnant at Appomattox Courthouse-"I could always rely on my army for fighting; but its discipline was poor." At the time of the Maryland invasion, Lee lost above twenty-five thousand men from his effective strength by straggling, and he exclaimed with tears, " My army is ruined by straggling!" Nothing could better illustrate the high state of discipline of the Army of the Potomac, than its conduct in such retreats as that on the Peninsula and in the Pope campaign, and in such incessant fighting as the Rapidan campaign of 1864 |