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the golden days of autumn to pass away. In the meantime, the government was urging him to do something, as the rebel forces were massing in his front, and the country was clamorous for action. Instead of holding the commanding General responsible for these delays, the country blamed the government, and manifested its dissatisfaction by its votes in the fall elections.

All that autumn passed away, and not a blow was struck. The Potomac was closed to government war vessels and transports, by a few batteries which the over-cautious General was afraid to touch.

Mr. Lincoln was determined to break the spell which seemed to hold the General's mind; and, on the twenty-seventh of January, he issued an order that on the twenty-second day of February, 1862, there should be a general movement of the land and naval forces of the United States, against the insurgent armies-especially the army at and about Fortress Monroe, the army of the Potomac, the army of Western Virginia, the army near Mumfordsville, Kentucky, the army and flotilla at Cairo, and a naval force in the gulf of Mexico. He further declared "that the heads of departments, and especially the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, with all their subordinates, and the General-in-Chief with all other commanders and subordinates of land and naval forces, will severally be held to their strict and full responsibilities for prompt execution of this order." On the thirty-first of Januaryfour days afterward-he issued another order, specially to the army of the Potomac, to engage, on or before the twentysecond of February, in the attempt to seize upon and occupy a point upon the railroad south-west of Manassas Junction, the details of the movement to be in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief.

To this last order of the President, General McClellan replied in a long letter to the Secretary of War. He objected to the President's plan, that the roads would be bad at the season proposed; and wished to substitute a plan of his own, which had in its favor a better soil for the moving of troops.

He wished to move by the Lower Rappahannock, making Urbana his base. He would throw upon the new line from one hundred and ten thousand to one hundred and forty thousand troops, according to circumstances, hoping to use the latter number, by bringing such fresh troops into Washington as would protect the capital. He "respectfully but firmly" advised that he might be permitted to make this substitution of his own for the President's plan. So firm was he that he was willing to say: "I will stake my life, my reputation, on the result,―more than that, I will stake on it the success of our cause." His judgment, he declared, was against the movement on Manassas. On the third of February, Mr. Lincoln addressed a note to the General on this difference of opinion, which ought to have shown him that his superior was a competent adviser and a keen critic:

"My dear Sir:-You and I have distinct and different plans for a movement of the army of the Potomac; yours to be done by the Chesapeake, up the Rappahannock, to Urbana, and across land to the terminus of the railroad on the York River; mine to move directly to a point on the railroad south-west of Manassas. If you will give satisfactory answers to the following questions, I shall gladly yield my plans to yours:

"1. Does not your plan involve a greatly larger expenditure of time and money than mine?

"2. Wherein is a victory more certain by your plan than mine? "3. Wherein is a victory more valuable by your plan than mine? "4. In fact, would it not be less valuable in this: that it would break no great line of the enemy's communications, while mine would?

"5. In case of disaster, would not a retreat be more difficult by your plan than mine?”

General McClellan replied to this through the Secretary of War, after his fashion; but the President was not convinced, and finally agreed to submit the two plans to a council of twelve officers. This council, eight to four, decided in favor of the General's plan. The President acquiesced; but the rebels rendered both plans useless by withdrawing from Manassas on the ninth of March to the other side of the Rappa

hannock-which date will be seen to be two weeks later than the date fixed for the advance of all the armies by the President.

On the eighth of March, the President ordered General McClellan to organize that part of his army which he proposed to engage in active operations, into four Army Corps, to be commanded respectively by General McDowell, General Sumner, General Heintzelman and General Keyes; and directed the order to be executed with such dispatch as not to delay operations already determined on-alluding to the movement by the Chesapeake and Rappahannock. On the same day, he issued another order: that no change of base should take place without leaving in and about Washington such an army as should make the city secure; that no more than two army corps should move before the Potomac should be cleared of rebel batteries; and that the movement should begin as early as the eighteenth of March.

On the next day, as has already been stated, the enemy retired unsuspected and undisturbed from his defenses; and then General McClellan moved forward, not to pursue, according to his own authority, but to give his troops some exercise, and a taste of the march and bivouac, before more active operations. On the fifteenth, the army moved back to Alexandria.

On the eleventh of March, General McClellan was relieved from the command of other military departments, because he had personally taken the field. Major-General Halleck received the command of the department of the Mississippi, and General Fremont that of the mountain department. On the thirteenth, a council of war decided that, as the enemy had retreated behind the Rappahannock, the new base of operations should be Fortress Monroe, on certain conditions which touched the neutralization of the power of the Merrimac, (an iron plated rebel vessel which had already destroyed the frigates Cumberland and Congress, and been beaten back by the Monitor,) means of transportation, and naval auxiliaries sufficient to silence the batteries on York River. On the same day, Mr. Stanton wrote to General McClellan, stating that the

President saw no objection to the plan, Lut directing that such a force should be left at Manassas Junction as would make it entirely certain that the enemy should not repossess it, that Washington should be left secure, and that, whatever place might be chosen as the new base, the army should move at once in pursuit of the enemy, by some route.

The President was impatient for action. Not a blow had been struck. Back from the Potomac blockade, and back from Manassas, the enemy had been permitted to retire without the loss of a man or a gun.

On the thirty-first of March, Mr. Lincoln ordered Blenker's division from the army of the Potomac to join General Fremont, who had importuned him for a larger force, and who was supported in his request by exacting friends. In a note to General McClellan, he said, "I write this to assure you that I did so with great pain, understanding that you would wish it otherwise. If you could know the full pressure of the case, I am confident that you would justify it." General Banks, who had been ordered to cover Washington by occupying Manassas, was ordered on the first of April to force General Jackson back from Winchester.

Transportation had already been provided by the War Department for moving the troops to any new base that might be determined on, and General McClellan was not obliged to wait. On the first of April, there were under his command, by the official report of the Adjutant-general, 146,255 men in the four corps, with regular infantry and cavalry and other troops to raise the number to 158,419. In all the orders given by the President concerning the movements of this army, there was one condition that he insisted upon, viz, that troops should be left sufficient to protect Washington; and by General McClellan's order only twenty thousand effective men were to be left with General Wadsworth, the military governor of the District. The force was much smaller than was necessary, according to General McClellan's previous calculations; and General Wadsworth was so much impressed with its inadequacy that he called the attention of the war department to

the subject. The letter was referred to Adjutant-general Thomas and General E. A. Hitchcock, whose decision was embodied in the words: "In view of the opinion expressed by the council of the commanders of army corps, of the force necessary for the capital, though not numerically stated, and of the force represented by General McClellan as left for that purpose, we are of opinion that the requirement of the President that this city shall be left entirely secure, not only in the opinion of the General-in-chief, but that of the commanders of all the army corps also, has not been fully complied with." In the meantime, General McClellan had gone forward to Fortress Monroe, and all but two corps of the troops had left for the new base. When, therefore, Generals Thomas and Hitchcock made their report, and the President saw that Washington was about to be left without sufficient defense, he directed the Secretary of War to order that one of the two corps not then embarked should remain in front of Washington, and that the other corps should go forward as speedily as possible. This was under date of April third. The first corps, under General McDowell, was designated for this protective service, numbering 38,454 men. Two new military departments were at once erected-the Department of the Rappahannock, under General McDowell, and the Department of the Shenandoah, lying between the mountain department and the Blue Ridge, under General Banks.

General McClellan pushed a portion of his troops toward Yorktown at once-toward a line of intrenchments held by the enemy, stretching across the Peninsula. On the fifth of April he wrote to the President, dating his letter "Near Yorktown," and stating that the enemy were in large force in his front, and that they apparently intended to make a determined resistance. At that time, the rebel force at that point, according to subsequent reports by the rebels themselves, did not exceed ten thousand men. No one doubts now that General McClellan's cautiousness betrayed his judgment, and that a strong and well-directed attack would have swept the rebels out of their works.

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