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Ellet to Pittsburg to create it. Thirty-five days later the necessary craft had been secured and rebuilt by Ellet into rams and gunboats; eight days later they were manned by the nerviest men in the West, specially enlisted for "extra hazardous" service; fourteen days later they were anchored one thousand miles from where they were built to ask help from the navy to attack the enemy; six days later, at dusk, without that help, they had destroyed, captured, or driven away every insurgent craft!

Before the battle closed Colonel Ellet's nineteen-year-old son (Charles R.) with a small squad from the fleet, entered Memphis and replaced the Confederate flag on the Federal post-office with the Stars and Stripes.

And thus was Memphis secured, the Mississippi cleared to Vicksburg, the insurgent cause greatly crippled, and Stanton set to dancing with glee in his dingy office at Washington!

Owing to the displeasure of Secretary Welles* and the death of Ellet, who was a man of fiery courage and extraordinary energy and ability, Stanton's river navy was transferred by the act of July, 1862, to the Navy Department. Its previous feat under Stanton was described by General Sherman as one of the most remarkable of the war. After the transfer Stanton at once chartered and armed "patrol boats" for the Western rivers-especially the Ohio-which performed effective service; and no one succeeded in having them transferred from his control, although there were several sharp attempts in that direction.

*Secretary Welles, in his various postbellum writings, omitted no opportunity to criticize Stanton. As, without consulting him, Stanton took personal command of a portion of Mr. Welles's navy for the purpose of capturing Norfolk and blockading the James River, and created a new War Department navy of his own, which, without the aid of the regular navy officers present, almost instantly cleared the upper Mississippi of insurgent gunboats, the Secretary of the Navy naturally felt very sorely aggrieved. He interpreted both proceedings as severe reflections upon himself and his Department. Besides, Stanton paid no attention to Mr. Welles in cabinet meetings or elsewhere. He never visited the Navy Office and Mr. Welles never called at the War Office. Hence, if, after Stanton's death, Mr. Welles thought he could "get even” by attacking the Secretary of War in history, it was human nature for him to do so, and he did it.

CHAPTER XXX.

A MUTILATED TELEGRAM SAVES MCCLELLAN.

Stanton continued to forward troops and munitions to McClellan; Lincoln to send telegrams and letters. The latter declared on May 28: "You [McClellan] must either attack Richmond or give up the job and come to Washington." Four days later (June 2) Stanton telegraphed:

Your telegram received. We greatly rejoice at your success.

You have received, of course, the order made yesterday in regard to Fortress Monroe. The object was to place at your command the disposable force of that Department. * * All interest now centers

on your operations, and full confidence is entertained of your brilliant and glorious success.

On June 7 he telegraphed that four regiments from Baltimore and one from Washington had been sent; that three more would follow that day and that McCall would move as soon as transportation arrived.

At last, on June 26, the Confederates attacked McClellan's right at Mechanicsville unsuccessfully; but on the following day, at Gaine's Mill, they renewed the attack with great slaughter. On the succeeding day (the 28th) he ordered the entire army to retreat, telegraphing to Stanton that he was "not responsible" for the result and closing: "If I save the army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or any person in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army."

"Had such language been used to a superior in any other country," says General E. D. Townsend, "and it was directed to the President as well as to the Secretary, the offender would have been cashiered, and, in most countries, shot."

But the words quoted were omitted* from the copy of the tele

*Neither the full nor the mutilated telegram is on file in the War Department. The original, written by McClellan, is possessed by the McClellan family, and the correct cipher copy of it as received at Washington, is in the hands of General T. T. Eckert of New York.

gram that was furnished to Stanton and by him in turn handed to Lincoln. Thus, no one can say what would have occurred had the message been delivered as indited. McClellan appreciated the gravity of his offense, for in a letter to his wife concerning it he said: "Of course they will never forgive me for that. I knew it when I wrote it. His [Stanton's] reply may be to avail himself of the first opportunity to cut my head off."

Having no knowledge of the offense that had been committed, Stanton telegraphed:

We have every confidence in your ability to drive Jackson back, and shall lose no time in aiding you. With every wish for your success and good fortune (and I have never had any other feeling) I am, etc.

He ordered General Halleck to send twenty-five thousand men from Corinth, Tennessee, and General Hunter to forward "all he could spare-ten thousand at least"-from Hilton Head, North Carolina. Halleck, however, was unable to detach so many men, but ample supplies and help, supposed to be needed though in fact they were not, were sent forward with a rush.

The world has never known how the mutilation of McClellan's unsoldierly telegram occurred. The full story is now told for the first time by Major A. E. H. Johnson, Stanton's confidential clerk:

Colonel E. S. Sanford was supervisor and censor of telegraphic messages. He said to Assistant-Secretary Eckert that the charge against the Secretary contained in the telegram of June 28 was false-a charge of treason; that the defeat of McClellan's army was due to his own unfitness to command; that his whole course showed that he was afraid of Lee and every telegram he sent was proof of it; that while it was doubtful whether the censor had authority to suppress a telegram from General McClellan, and especially one to the Secretary of War, yet this was such an outrageous, such an infamous untruth, that he, as telegraphic censor, could not allow himself to be used to hand it to the Secretary. The telegram, minus the offensive words, was then recopied, and the copy handed to Stanton and taken by him to the President. Neither knew of its mutilation, and both acted upon it in perfect ignorance of the terrible charge it had previously contained against them.

I never knew Colonel Sanford in person to bring a telegram into the Secretary's room till that morning, nor did he often come to the War Department, having no office in the building. Major Eckert had sent for him to know what to do with this telegram, which was evidently intended by McClellan to reach the public as a means of shifting the cause of his defeat from his own to other shoulders. The suppression of it destroyed the purpose of the sender, as he himself dared not publish it, and it was

not heard of until brought forth as a campaign document* in the presidential canvass of 1864, when its author was snowed under.

The telegram was in cipher and the first copy of it was destroyed; but the true message is in the cipher book now in possession of General Eckert. The multilated copy, published in the Rebellion Records, was taken from the collection made to be delivered to Stanton at the end of the war; it may also be found on p. 302, Vol. I., Report of the Committee on the Conduct of the War.

McClellan's "Own Story" published in 1887, charges Stanton with mutilating the telegram of June 28, which charge the world may now see is as false as the one expurgated from McClellan's message by Colonel Sanford.

say:

Of this telegram, Nicolay and Hay, President Lincoln's biographers,

"Early on the morning of the 28th of June, he sent the Secretary of War his memorable telegram, which was a mere blind cry of despair and insubordination. The kind and patient words with which President Lincoln replied to this unsoldierly and unmanly petulance, and the vigor put forth by the War Department to mitigate the danger with all available supplies and reinforcements, have been related."

As Lincoln never saw the "unsoldierly and petulant" part of the telegram, his "kind and patient" words were not in answer to it; and Stanton's vigorous action was not based on McClellan's charge of treason, but on that part of the telegram which said: "Not a man in reserve, and I shall be glad to cover my retreat and save the material and personnel of the army."

Thus Colonel Sanford's expurgation saved McClellan from dismissal, court-martial, and perhaps something immeasurably worse; but it has led easy-going writers into producing some remarkable "history."

*Congress ordered 5,000 copies of McClellan's final report to be printed and it was circulated as a Democratic campaign document.

CHAPTER XXXI.

MCCLELLAN'S THREAT TO SURRENDER.

Not knowing that the false and offending words of the message described in the previous chapter had been suppressed, and receiving no reproof for sending them, McClellan made bold to despatch his father-in-law and chief of staff (General R. B. Marcy) to say to Stanton in person that unless certain things were done and he were given more perfect independence, he should have to surrender his army to Lee! Stanton, having a dying child at his country home, was greatly distressed when Marcy presented this startling ultimatum. Major A. E. H. Johnson, who was present at the interview, says:

Mr. Stanton was profoundly stirred, perhaps I might say frightened. He was already staggering under the demands of the country for military activity on the peninsula, Secretary Chase's appeal for decisive army movements as a basis for national credit, McClellan's inexplicable droning, and the critical condition of his child, yet he instantly measured the awful disaster that would follow the delivery of McClellan's army to Lee-the loss of the capital and perhaps the nation. He talked very earnestly to General Marcy, but before the interview was concluded he was called away by a message saying that his baby was dying. The promise that General Marcy expected to exact, was, therefore, I think, never put in [written] form.

There is corroborative testimony in the official records of the War Department and among McClellan's papers of the truth of Major Johnson's relation, beginning with this telegram, which announced the required promotions:

Major-General G. B. McClellan:

July 5, 1862; 2:30 P. M.

I have nominated for promotion General E. V. Sumner as brevetmajor-general of the regular service and major-general of volunteers; Generals Heintzelman, Keyes, and Porter as brevet-brigadiers in the regular service and major-generals of volunteers.

The gallantry of every officer and man in your noble army shall be suitably acknowledged.

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