Camp Brightwood, June 7, 1863.
Don't suppose I approve of McClellan's present position; nor
do I wish to see the Administration forced to take him back; but I should feel
very thankful if he were now at the head of affairs and were out of the hands
of the men who are now duping him. I am afraid it may yet be necessary to call
on McClellan, when the Government cannot do it with much dignity; I hope not,
however. I consider him more patriotic and more respectable than the men who
are now managing the Army of the Potomac. Will you pardon this? you know I must
tell you what I think, and you know I am very fond of McClellan: that
Copperhead meeting did expose him to the worst imputations, — but I know him to be a good and true patriot.1
_______________
1 Colonel Lowell's opinion of McClellan as man,
citizen, and soldier, should carry some weight, as coming from a man of high
standards and “in friendship stern,” who had been closely associated with
McClellan in times of his severest trial, by the enemy before him and the
Administration behind him. As to politics, and his becoming a candidate in
opposition to Lincoln, evidently Lowell felt that McClellan had made a great
mistake, but, like many another honest soldier in the field before and since,
was innocently the victim of a party whose designs he did not fathom. It should
be remembered too, that, rightly or wrongly, McClellan evidently felt that
interference by a civilian Administration had thwarted and clogged his
movements and plans in carrying on the war, which, of course, was, at the time,
the one great issue for the country. Lowell also often felt that the
President's course with regard to matters relating to army discipline and the
conduct of the war was halting or unwise, yet, as matters stood, he considered
it all-important that he be reelected and McClellan defeated. Mrs. Lowell wrote
of her husband, that he “cared very much for General McClellan, and had a great
respect for him as a man and a patriot. He always defended him against attacks.
I remember his saying that the trouble with him as a general was, that he had a
very high ideal of excellence for his army and felt painfully every deficiency,
never realizing that the enemy was in much worse plight than he himself, but
fancying them to be in perfect condition in every particular, and so was
anxious not to come to close quarters until he could bring his army to a state
of perfection too.”
Major Henry L. Higginson has done me the kindness to send me
this little wayside memory, as it were, of the Antietam campaign, much to the
purpose.
November
5, 1906.
“In September, 1862, our regiment
(First Massachusetts Cavalry) had just been brought from the South. The senior
officers were away, and I was in command of such part of it as was together —
one battalion having been left at the South. As we went through Washington,
coming from Alexandria, I went into Headquarters to see if I could find Charles
Lowell; and he was there, and in very good spirits, because General McClellan
had just been put into command again; for the army had had a terrible lot of
beating under Pope, was much disorganized by these reverses, and was just going
through Maryland in such order as the soldiers came in.
“I
didn't see Charles again until one day during the same week, when we stopped
for our nooning. The country was covered with soldiers in every direction, — in
the roads, and fields, and everywhere else, — and they were all marching
northerly. Noticing a lot of good tents near by, I asked what they were, and
was told it was Headquarters; so I went up and found Charles there. He and I
lay on the grass during an idle half hour, and he told me about General
McClellan. He had been on his staff some time, after having served with his
regiment on the Peninsula, and he had pretty distinct ideas about the man on
whom so much depended. He said to me, ‘He is a great strategist, and the men
have much faith in him. He makes his plans admirably, makes all his
preparations so as to be ready for any emergency, just as the Duke of
Wellington did, and unlike the Duke of Wellington, when he comes to strike, he
doesn't strike in a determined fashion; that is, he prepares very well and then
doesn't do the best thing — strike hard.’ Now, of course, that conversation was
confidential and couldn't have been repeated at the time, nor was it; but look
at the two battles! In a day or two we fought at South Mountain, and I lay on
the extreme outpost the night before the fight. I saw the troops come by, —
these demoralized troops, full of the devil, laughing and talking, — and saw
them go up South Mountain on all sides and pitch the enemy out quickly and
without hesitation. It was a beautiful field to see and the fight was
beautifully done, but the Johnnies never had a chance. We were in greater
force, and the attack was made at various points. It was a very gallant action.
That was Sunday morning, and the fight continued through the day.
“If General McClellan had pushed right
on with the army on all sides, both there and at Crampton's Gap, and everywhere
else, he would have beaten the Southern army more readily at the next fight. We
could have gone on that night, for we did no fighting at all, and there was
cavalry enough and plenty of infantry that also could have gone on. Monday we
crossed the mountain and rode along until we came to Sharpsburg and the
Antietam Creek. There lay Lee's men in excellent position, and there they
remained until we fought them. The army was up that night, and McClellan came
by somewhere about six o'clock, and was cheered all along the line as he rode
to the front. It was Tuesday afternoon before we did anything, and Wednesday
came the great fight. If you will read McClellan's diary, you will see that he
fought at one point, then fought at another, and then at another. He told
Burnside to move at either eight or half-past eight. Charley took the order to
Burnside. Burnside moved at twelve. If McClellan had been a little ugly, he
would have dropped Burnside right out, at nine o'clock, and somebody would have
made the attack at once that was made at twelve. If this had been done,
striking hard on the left, it would have cut off Lee from Shepherd's Ford, and
he would have had no other retreat. If McClellan had struck on the left and on
the right at the same time, it would have been very confusing to General Lee,
and it would have cut off the reenforcements that came in that day.
“I am not accurate, of course, in my statements
about details, but the general story is this: that, having made excellent
preparations, and having an army that was fighting well, he didn't strike as
hard as he could — and it was just what Charley had said. His strategy was
excellent, but his movements were slow, and when the decisive moment came, he
hesitated. You should remember, by the way, that General McClellan had Lee's
order to his subordinates in his own hands on Saturday night. You may remember
that General D. H. Hill lost his orders; one of our men found them and took
them to General McClellan, and he read them Saturday night, which of course was
an immense advantage to us.
“Charles's
opinion about McClellan was of course confidential, then. Now it is a matter of
history; but there was the judgment of a very keen, clear-sighted man, who had
great powers of analysis, and who had a very high opinion of his commanding
officer, and who was entirely loyal to him.”
Lowell, then, though quite aware of General McClellan's
limitations, respected his character, and, withal, his important services to
the country in creating and training an efficient army, — services which are too often ignored. It is
well to recall the facts: an engineer officer — with short but creditable
experience in the war with Mexico, then employed as teacher at West Point and
as explorer on the Plains and in the Mountains, who had had indeed an
opportunity at British headquarters in the Crimea to watch an ill-conducted
war, and then returned to command of a cavalry squadron in peace at home, then
resigned and became for four years a railroad manager — found himself, at the
age of thirty-six, commander of a vast but unskilled and untrained army, in a
fierce and determined struggle for the existence of a nation. General F. A.
Palfrey, a military critic who admits McClellan's failure as a great commander,
yet says, “ Under him ‘the
uprising of a great people’ became a powerful military engine. His forces were
never worsted, or decisively beaten by the enemy. They never came in contact
with the enemy without inflicting a heavy loss upon him. He never knocked his
head against a wall, as Burnside did at Fredericksburg; never drew back his
hand when victory was within his grasp, as Hooker did at Chancellorsville; he
never spilt blood vainly by a parallel attack upon gallantly defended works, as
Grant did at Cold Harbour. He took too good care of his army. His general
management of the move from the lines before Richmond to the James was wise and
successful, though, if he had been a fighter instead of a planner, . . . the
movement might have been, as it ought to have been, attended with vastly
greater proportionate loss to the Confederates, and perhaps have been concluded
by a crushing defeat at Malvern Hill.”
SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of
Charles Russell Lowell, p. 255, 419-24
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