ARMY OPERATIONS. 



85 



I will brine you now face to face with the rebels, and 

 only pray that God may defend the right In whatever 

 direction you may move, however strange my actions 

 may appear to you, ever bear in miud that my fate is 

 linked with yours, and that all I do is to bring you, 

 where I know you wish to be on the decisive battle 

 field. It is my business to place you there. I am to 

 watch over you as a parent over his children ; and you 

 know that your General loves you from the depths of 

 his heart. It shall be my care, as it has ever been, to 

 gain success with the least possible loss ; but I know 

 that, if it is necessary, you will willingly follow me to 

 our graves, for our righteous cause. God smiles upon us, 

 victory attends us : yet I would not have you think that 

 our aim is to be attained without a manly struggle. I 

 will not disguise it from you: you have brave foes to 

 encounter, foemen well worthy of the steel that you 

 will use so well. I shall demand of you great, heroic 

 exertions, rapid and lonw marches, desperate combats, 

 privations, perhaps. We will share all these together ; 

 and when this sad war is over we will return to our 

 homes, and feel that we can ask no higher honor than 

 the proud consciousness that we belonged to the Army 

 of the Potomac. GEO. B. McCLKLLAN, 



Major-Geueral Commanding. 



The Prince de Joinville, in a narrative of the 

 campaign on the peninsula, has described with 

 much detail the reasons for the evacuation of 

 Manassas by the Confederate forces, and the 

 change of the plan for the campaign under Gen 

 McClellan. He states as follows : 



' While we were riding forward, grave events 

 were occurring in the highest regions of the 

 army. There exists in the American army, as 

 in the English, a commander-in-chi^f, who exer- 

 cises over the head of all the generals a supreme 

 authority, regulates the distribution of the troops, 

 and directs military operations. These func- 

 tions, which have been greatly curtailed in 

 the British army since the Crimean war, were 

 still exercised in all their vigor in America. 

 From the aged General Scott, who had long 

 honorably discharged them, they had passed to 

 General McClellan. We learned, on reaching 

 Fairfax, that they had been taken away from 

 him. It is easy to understand the diminution 

 of force and the restrictions upon his usefulness 

 thus inflicted upon the general-in -chief by a 

 blow in the rear at the very outset of his cam- 

 paign. 



" Yet this was but a part of the mischief done 

 him. McClellan had long known, better than 

 anybody else, the real strength of the rebels at 

 Manassas and Centreville. He was perfectly 

 familiar with the existence of the ' wooden can- 

 non' by which it has been pretended that he 

 was kept in awe for six months. But he also 

 knew that till the month of April the roads of 

 Virginia are in such a state that wagons and artil- 

 lery can only be moved over them by constructing 

 plank roads a tedious operation, during which 

 the enemy, holding the railways, could either 

 retreat, as he was then actually doing, or move 

 for a blow upon some other point. In any event, 

 had McClellan attacked and carried Cen- 

 treville, pursuit was impossible, and victory 

 would have been barren of results. A single 

 bridge burned would have saved Johnston's 

 whole army. Such are the vast advantages of 

 a railway for a retreating army advantages 



which do not exist for the army which pursues 

 it. 



" "We have the right, we think, to say that 

 McClellan never intended to advance upon Cen- 

 treville. His long-determined purpose was to 

 make Washington safe by means of a strong 

 garrison, and then to use the great navigable 

 waters and immense naval resources of the 

 North to tfansport the army by sea to a point 

 near Richmond. For weeks, perhaps for months, 

 this plan had been secretly maturing. Secrecy 

 as- well as promptness, it will be understood, 

 was indispensable here to success. To keep the 

 secret it had been necessary to confide it to few 

 persons, and hence had arisen the long ill feeling 

 toward the uncommunicative general. 



" Be this as it may, as the day of action drew 

 near, those who suspected the general's project, 

 and were angry at not being informed of it ; 

 those whom his promotion had excited to envy ; 

 his political enemies (who is without them in 

 America ?) ; in short, all those beneath or beside 

 him who wished him ill, broke out into a chorus 

 of accusations of slowness, inaction, incapacity. 

 McClellan, with a patriotic courage which I have 

 always admired, disdained these accusations, 

 and made no reply. He satisfied himself with 

 pursuing his preparations in laborious silence. 

 But the moment came in which, notwithstand- 

 ing the loyal support given him by the President, 

 that functionary could no longer resist the tem- 

 pest. A council of war of all the divisional gen- 

 erals was held ; a plan of campaign, not that of 

 McClellan, was proposed and discussed. McClel- 

 lan was then forced to explain his projects, and 

 the next day they were known to the enemy. 

 Informed no doubt by one of those female spies 

 who keep up his communications into the domes- 

 tic circles of the Federal enemy, Johnston evacu- 

 ated Manassas at once. This was a skilful manoeu- 

 vre. Incapable of assuming the offensive, threat- 

 ened with attack either at Centreville, where de- 

 fence would be useless if successful, or at Rich- 

 mond, the loss of which would be a great check, 

 and unable to cover both positions at once, John- 

 ston threw his whole force before the latter of 

 the two. 



" For the Army of the Potomac this was a mis- 

 fortune. Its movement was nnmasked before 

 it had been made. Part of its transports were 

 still frozen up in the Hudson. Such being the 

 state of affairs, was it proper to execute as rap- 

 idly as possible the movement upon Richmond 

 by water, or to march upon Richmond by land ? 

 Such was the grave question to be settled by 

 the young general in a. miserable room of an 

 abandoned house at Fairfax within twenty- 

 four hours. And it was at this moment 

 that the news of his removal as general-in- 

 chief reached him ; the news, that is, that he 

 could no longer count upon the cooperation of 

 the other armies of the Union, and that the 

 troops under his own orders were to be divided 

 into four grand corps under four separate chiefs 

 named in order of rank a change which would 

 throw into subaltern positions some yonng gen- 



