Army of the Potomac: McClellan's First Campaign, March 1862-May 1862

by Russel H. Beatie

Overview

The third volume of this masterful Civil War history series covers the pivotal early months of General George McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign.
 
As he did in his first two volumes of this magisterial series, Russel Beatie tells the story largely through the eyes and from the perspective of high-ranking officers, staff officers, and politicians. This study is based upon extensive firsthand research (including many previously unused and unpublished sources) that rewrites the history of Little Mac’s inaugural effort to push his way up the peninsula and capture Richmond in one bold campaign.
 
In meticulous fashion, Beatie examines many heretofore unknown, ignored, or misunderstood facts and events and uses them to evaluate the campaign in the most balanced historical context to date. Every aspect of these critically important weeks is examined, from how McClellan’s Urbanna plan unraveled and led to the birth of the expedition that debarked at Fort Monroe in March 1862, to the aftermath of Williamsburg. To capture the full flavor of their experiences, Beatie employs the “fog of war” technique, which puts the reader in the position of the men who led the Union army. The Confederate adversaries are always present but often only in shadowy forms that achieve firm reality only when we meet them face-to-face on the battlefield.
 
Well written, judiciously reasoned, and extensively footnoted, McClellan’s First Campaign will be heralded as the seminal work on this topic. Civil War readers may not always agree with Beatie’s conclusions, but they will concur that his account offers an original examination of the Army of the Potomac’s role on the Virginia peninsula.
 
“If you want to understand the war in the east, this series is essential.” —Civil War Books and Authors
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611210217
Publisher:	Savas Beatie
Publication date:	02/20/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	864
Sales rank:	555,467
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Russel H. "Cap" Beatie graduated from Princeton University and Columbia Law School, has been a trial lawyer in New York City for more than three decades, and is the author of several articles and books, including Road to Manassas (Cooper Square, 1961). His interest first began at a young age when he read Douglas Southall Freeman's Lee's Lieutenants. A Kansas native and former lieutenant in the field artillery and infantry, Cap has lived in the New York City area most of his life. He is currently writing the fourth volume of this series.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

"It means it's a damned fizzle. It means that he doesn't intend to do anything."

— Secretary Stanton to President Lincoln after learning about the canal boats and the locks

The Bridge at Harpers Ferry

Around February twentieth, McClellan began to concentrate his divisions at Point of Rocks and prepare to cross the Potomac River to Harpers Ferry and the lower end of the Shenandoah Valley. This made him consider the effect the concession represented by this plan would have on his longstanding intention to change his base by water and seize a position deep behind the Confederates at Centreville. He assigned the Comte de Paris, who had already proven his ability to collect and assess information, especially geographic information, to study the Yorktown and Centreville areas. If he could not move by Urbanna, he thought, the peninsula between the York River and the James River would serve as an acceptable second choice.

Stone's old division, the Corps of Observation, now commanded by John Sedgwick, made ready for the Valley. It had not forgotten the Ball's Bluff nightmare any more than McClellan had. "You need not fear for the result," wrote one of the men in Baker's old regiment the Seventy-first Pennsylvania. "We got rid of the traitorous general. (Stone) God be praised: so that we will not be led into another such trap." In the evening of February twenty-third, Colonel John W. Geary received orders to take a large part of his oversized regiment and artillery by train to Sandy Hook across from the Ferry. Leaving detachments at Point of Rocks and other nearby towns, he took seven companies and two guns, collecting additional companies and two more guns as he proceeded upriver. During the nighttime downpour of Monday, February twenty-fourth, the regiments of Banks' division began to mass at Sandy Hook for the crossing. Next day, Geary deemed the weather "slightly perverse" as he described it in his report. A strong wind, fleecy white clouds scooting across the sky, and ice on the ground marked a cold morning. Six hundred men of Geary's regiment rigged a rope ferry across the river. From "perverse" the weather changed to "exceedingly violent," a full fledged storm that joined forces with the river to kill six of Geary's men. As it had in October the river rose dramatically; but the following morning the storm cleared enough for Geary to take men across to create the bridgehead McClellan wanted on the Harpers Ferry side.

The major general planned to cross the river in two places simultaneously: at Harpers Ferry and below the mouth of the Occoquan. Hooker, a man of experience and talent, could handle the assaults on the Potomac batteries himself. Perhaps in the unstated capacity as a member of the German General Staff, John Barnard would work with Hooker. Banks, a politician with no military experience or proven talent, McClellan could not allow to proceed alone. He would go to Harpers Ferry for the more significant and more problematic of the two strokes.

On February twenty-fifth, the day before he left Washington to head north, McClellan sent Barnard downriver to meet Hooker and Lieutenant R. H. Wyman. Sedgwick began to march the ten thousand men of the Corps of Observation overland toward Harpers Ferry through thin, watery, reddish-yellow mud, which changed during the rising temperature to deep, sticky, slippery mud. Preparing to participate, the divisions under McCall and Smith packed three days cooked rations and mended their tents for their march toward Harpers Ferry.

The next day, McClellan met the president and the secretary of war to remind them that the chief object of the operation would be to cross the river in force at Harpers Ferry in order to open the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, a slight withdrawal from seizure of Winchester and Strasburg. He said he had collected the materiel for a permanent bridge of canal boats but doubted that, with the nature of the river, a bridge of that sort could be constructed. If it could not, he would rebuild the railroad bridge after occupying the ground in front of Harpers Ferry to cover the work. When he had made communications "perfectly secure," he would move on Winchester. In an uncharacteristic act he told the president, "If this move fails, I will have nobody to blame but myself."

After the meeting with Lincoln he gathered a plentiful collection of his personal aides and thirty-one cavalrymen at the train station, where they loaded their horses and "huge boxes of provisions so rich and well furnished that they were impractical for an active campaign," wrote the Comte de Paris in his large diary and boarded the train for the trip north. At eight they departed. "The countryside we are passing is very pretty," noted the Count in his small, traveling diary. Past the Cotoctin Mountains, past Leesburg, alongside the rapid-flowing Potomac they went. Finally at one o'clock in the afternoon, they reached Sandy Hook, where they met Banks in the middle of breakfast. McClellan found his engineers, a crew of pontooniers, and a detail of one hundred men from the Third Wisconsin hard at work on the pontoon bridge that would precede the span of canal boats. McClellan and Banks had lunch; and when the men finished the pontoon bridge, McClellan tested it by being the first to cross. At once, he ordered across the brigades of Gorman and Hamilton. In the gloomy "dark damp fog" the Second Massachusetts Infantry Regiment crossed to Harpers Ferry on unsteady, slippery planking. There, band music and McClellan greeted it. The men passed through Harpers Ferry to the upper part of the town and took refuge in a few buildings. The commanding general watched the eight thousand men and twelve guns with great pride. At last he could exercise the power of the giant creature he had created during the last seven months. "It was a magnificent spectacle," he wrote Ellen, "one of the grandest I ever saw." He and Banks ordered Geary to bring across the entire Twenty-eighth Pennsylvania.

He inspected the town including the old armory and the munitions factory, now charred ruins, but earlier made famous by John Brown. Most civilians had fled, only approximately seventy-five still remaining. Passing beyond the town and through the long swale that separated the town from Bolivar Heights, he and Banks reached the heights, where the ground, without a wind, proved better than he had anticipated. Although much lower than the crests of Loudon Heights and Maryland Heights, Bolivar Heights gave them a magnificent view. Two more brigades, one from Banks' division and one from Sedgwick's Corps of Observation, hurried along the east bank to reach the bridge. McClellan telegraphed for a regiment of Regular cavalry and four batteries of heavy caliber artillery to arrive the next day and sent orders for Keyes' division of infantry to come forward on Friday, February twenty-eighth. At this point divisions under Banks, Sedgwick, Williams, Lander, Smith, and McCall, more than fifty thousand men, converged on the crossing at Harpers Ferry. The storm, accompanied by heavy rain, continued; but the fragile pontoon bridge held. According to the Comte de Paris "whatever the skill with which they threw up the bridge, one can't help trembling upon thinking about all the ways it could be carried away. It was built American style, that is, with just enough means necessary to bring it into existence, the boats are small, the planks are thin, the way is very narrow, each boat is anchored fore and aft by a simple cord, a tree trunk or a flood of it cut the cord of only one of these boats, the violence of the current would tear the whole bridge to pieces. Therefore, the General regards it as a provisional tool for taking the troops to the other side and occupying Harpers Ferry, and not a permanent link he can rely on." After dark the two generals recrossed "under a driving rain and darkness worthy of the gloom of Egypt" and picked their way slowly through a crush of wagons, each awaiting its turn at the bridge.

Some of the commanding general's party slept in wagons close to the telegraph office, others in the dark green railroad car. McClellan and the Comte de Paris spent the better part of the night at work in the telegraph office. McClellan's telegram to Secretary Stanton praised the engineer officers, recommended them for brevets, and described the force across the river. Special praise went to Colonel Geary, "for the manner in which he occupied Virginia and crossed after construction of the bridge." He reported the rumor about G. W. Smith, which he did not believe, and closed, "We will attempt the canal boat bridge tomorrow." In his large, contemplative diary, the Comte de Paris noted, "In short, the day has been excellent. A very difficult operation has been crowned with the greatest success, two brigades have cross the Potomac, and two others will cross tomorrow. The General decided to take advantage of the opportunity and capture Winchester."

Meanwhile, in Virginia an elderly black woman gave Gordon and Dwight of the Second Massachusetts shelter and a short political lecture. "De Union is broderly love," she said. "Dat's what de Union is. Dese yere secesshnists ain't got no sich principle. In de Union de do good to one another, but dese yere sesseshnists dey don't do no good to you. Dey won't help yer out when yer's in trouble. Lord bress yer! Dey can't help derselves out, let alone other folks. I'se for de Union. Dat's what I'se for."

At three A.M. on Thursday, February twenty-seventh, Gordon received orders to make a reconnaissance to Charlestown "soon after sunrise." In the sharp wind and clear cold dawn of morning he gathered his reconnaissance party, four squadrons of the First Michigan Cavalry, two sections of artillery, the Second Massachusetts, and the Third Wisconsin at Bolivar Heights beyond the town and took the road. The storm had abated. Covered by clear skies, the column confronted winds described by the Comte de Paris as "strong enough to unhorn a bull." As the column approached Charlestown, Gordon separated the cavalry from the infantry and artillery in order to charge through the town. A few rebel horsemen fled from the rear of the town. Beyond it, Gordon scouted the roads with his cavalry.

Summoned to army headquarters in the large, green passenger car, civilian topographer David Hunter Strother, kin to Major General David Hunter, arrived at one in the afternoon. He met an old friend who was engrossed in a conversation with a thin, pallid officer wearing a uniform of high rank. After a few moments Strother realized that his friend was talking to the post-typhoid version of the fresh, florid, vigorous Major General McClellan he had seen at Edwards Ferry in October. Colonel John Jacob Astor, the wealthy New York Democrat, managed introductions to the staff. A lifetime resident of the lower Valley, Strother quickly identified the best routes to the Valley Pike for Lander and Williams. "The prompt, clear, and soldierly manner in which McClellan discussed the subject in hand showed that the fever had in no wise attainted the vigor of his mind," wrote Strother after the war. McClellan and Banks then crossed the pontoon bridge again.

That morning the men at the lift locks prepared to pass the canal boats into the river for the surprise construction of the permanent bridge. In an instant the plan went awry. Built for the class of boats from the Shenandoah canal, the locks were infinitesimally ... four to six inches ... too narrow for the boats from the Potomac canal. Although ten thousand men, infantry, artillery, and cavalry, along with some supplies had crossed on the flimsy pontoon bridge, McClellan found himself suddenly unable to build the strong bridge of canal boats that would withstand the racing, raging waters of the rising Potomac. The storm and the powerful current threatened the pontoon bridge. And the old railroad bridge existed only as masonry abutments, beckoning fingers of fire-blackened stone in the swirling river. Wagons clogged the narrow approach to the bridge. The river might sweep away the pontoon bridge at any moment, reconstruction of the railway bridge would require many days, and the summer and fall grain bin in Loudon County lay under a vicious blanket of snow and rain. He could not supply the Virginia column for a march on Winchester. McClellan concluded that he could cross no more supplies than would be sufficient for the men already in Virginia, that more troops should not cross, and that they would only be in the way if they waited on the Maryland side. He decided to adjust his plan.

He would control Harpers Ferry and the crossing, he would then occupy the foot of the Valley as far south as Winchester and Strasburg if he could do it without undue risk. But he countermanded the order for Keyes to come to Harpers Ferry and exerted himself to amass enough forage and subsistence on the Virginia side to make the column independent of the pontoon bridge. He would hold Charlestown with Banks and would concentrate Lander and Williams at Martinsburg and Bunker Hill in Jackson's rear. From his field headquarters at Sandy Hook and the Washington headquarters, he released a blizzard of telegrams to defer his original goal of marching on Winchester and Strasburg. In practical effect McClellan would complete his plan for the Harpers Ferry flank ... but not on the original schedule.

The failure of the canal boat bridge and the need to rebuild the railroad bridge delayed execution of the original plan, but no more than briefly. The modified plan had less "brilliance and celerity" than the original version. If McClellan's earlier fears and later assessments were accurate, his movement would not only give the Union bloodless control of the foot of the Valley but would cause the Rebels to abandon their defensive positions in the Manassas-Centreville area. At the least they would withdraw to a new main line of resistance along the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers as McDowell had predicted before Bull Run.

In the morning of February twenty-sixth McClellan had reported to Stanton that the pontoon bridge had been "splendidly thrown by the engineer officers" and recommended many of them for brevets. But by midafternoon the next day he told Stanton, "The lift-lock is too small to permit the canal-boats to enter the river so that it is impossible to construct the permanent bridge, as I intended ... The wiser plan is to rebuild the railroad bridge as rapidly as possible, then act according to the state of affairs."

A flurry of telegrams in which the secretary showed his distraught grasp of the obvious followed. Why not make the lift locks larger? What about the troops across the river? Patiently, McClellan answered each question and explained his answer. Then he mounted his horse and rode in the evening darkness to examine the positions of his men about Charlestown "to give more importance in the eyes of the public to a movement which he was forced to be content with," the Count noted.

This was the first venture McClellan had undertaken since Stanton had become secretary of war. The new appointee probably watched it with anticipation ... and apprehension. Although no one else had failed with the major-general, neither had anyone succeeded. Stanton undoubtedly wanted to avoid that list of frustrated men. When he received McClellan's telegram about the canal boats, he knew that Lincoln, anxious with anticipation, had already told a few friends in confidence that a "grateful surprise was preparing for the country." Occasionally greeted with incredulity, the president would say, "But McClellan has, in this case, left himself no loophole through which to escape; for he has said to both Stanton and myself, 'If this move fails, I will have nobody to blame but myself.'"

With McClellan's two telegrams in hand Stanton stormed into the White House at seven P.M. and locked the door behind him. He read the first dispatch about the "splendidly thrown" pontoon bridge.

"The next is not so good," said the secretary. The two men ignored the precise wording of the second telegram and concluded that McClellan intended to abandon the movement on Winchester.

"It means it's a damned fizzle," Stanton fumed. "It means that he doesn't intend to do anything."

Although Lincoln virtually never swore, the Harpers Ferry events disappointed and frustrated him so greatly that one Washington correspondent reported the president "swore like a Philistine." He slammed his fist on the table. "Why in hell didn't he measure first?"

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Army of the Potomac, Vol. III"
by .
Copyright © 2007 Russel H. Beatie.
Excerpted by permission of Savas Beatie LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments,
Dramatis Personae,
Chapter 1: The Bridge at Harpers Ferry,
Chapter 2: Power Over Promotion Fades,
Chapter 3: Another Busy Month of March,
Chapter 4: Lincoln Takes Charge,
Chapter 5: Pursuit-After a Fashion,
Chapter 6: A Courier Arrives Late,
Chapter 7: The New Plan and the Navy,
Chapter 8: Banks up the Valley ... Timidly,
Chapter 9: Shields Reconnoiters from Winchester,
Chapter 10: Kimball Shines at First Winchester,
Chapter 11: Shields And Sumner: A Contrast in Officer Pools,
Chapter 12: Old Problems Become New Problems,
Chapter 13: A New Organization for New Battles,
Chapter 14: Fort Monroe: Place of Surprises,
Chapter 15: The Safety of Washington,
Chapter 16: Yorktown: Place of Disappointments,
Chapter 17: The Plans go to Hell,
Chapter 18: The Search for a New Plan,
Chapter 19: Lees Mill: Chance for a Breakthrough,
Chapter 20: The Navy: A Dichotomy and a Conundrum,
Chapter 21: The Decision (April 17, 1862),
Chapter 22: The Siege of Yorktown,
Chapter 23: The Confederates Flee,
Chapter 24: McClellan Chooses the Wrong Position,
Chapter 25: The Cavalry Pursues,
Chapter 26: Williamsburg: The Corps Organization Debuts,
Chapter 27: McClellan, Battlefield Leader,
Chapter 28: McClellan's Performance Versus Lincoln's Contribution,
Bibliography,
Index,

Editorial Reviews

...If you want to understand the war in the east, this series is essential. ...we really have our hands on the most detailed, most challenging, and perhaps the most controversial scholarship for this period to date.
—A Wagenhoffer

Civil War Books and Authors