Thursday, March 12, 2015

Colonel Charles Russell Lowell to Josephine Shaw, June 7, 1863

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

No comments: