LIBRARY 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Received 
 Accession No . ^ 2_ 3 / (0 Class No. 
 

: ^ , 
 
 QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. No. xxix. 
 
 LINCOLN AND STANTON 
 
 A STUDY OF THE WAR ADMINISTRATION OF l86l AND l862, WITH 
 * 
 
 SPECIAL CONSIDERATION OF SOME RECENT STATEMENTS OF 
 
 GEN. GEO. B. McCLELLAN 
 
 D. KELLEY, M. C. 
 
 NEW YORK & LONDON 
 
 G . P . PUTNAM S SONS 
 
 1885 
 
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LINCOLN AND STANTON 
 
 A STUDY OF THE WAR ADMINISTRATION OF lS6l AND 1862, WITH 
 SPECIAL CONSIDERATION OF SOME RECENT STATEMENTS OF 
 
 GEN. GEO. B. McCLELLAN 
 
 BY 
 
 WM. D. KELLEY, M. C. 
 
 NEW YORK & LONDON 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM S SONS 
 
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 I88s 
 
COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 WM. D. KELLEY 
 1885 
 
 Press of 
 
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 New York 
 
7 J 
 
 LINCOLN AND STANTON 
 
 PART I. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN aAj^EcMvin M. Stanton are dead. 
 No member of Mr. Lincoln s Cabinet during the Penin 
 sular campaign is now living. The Hon. Benjamin F. 
 Wade and Andrew Johnson, then U. S. Senators and 
 members of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the 
 War, are voiceless as these their illustrious colaborers. 
 
 Emboldened by the ravages death has made during 
 nearly a quarter of a century, George B. McClellan avails 
 |j|j;iinelf of the pages of the Century to present his expla 
 nation of the failure of the Army of the Potomac, while 
 er his command. The initial article, which appeared 
 in the May number, is an unjustifiable assault upon the 
 lories of Lincoln and Stanton, and but for this fact 
 Id not deserve notice, as it can have no historic value, 
 o the details of the Peninsular campaign it furnishes 
 illegation of fact with which the author s reports, 
 Incriioranda, and correspondence have not made the 
 pp)!;ntry familiar. The statements by which he attempts 
 tv -.akc good his assaults upon the memory of the illus- 
 ious dead are sustained solely by his word, and would 
 sh before a freshman s applications of the primary 
 
2 LINCOLN" AND STANTON. 
 
 canons of criticism. He offers no summary of results 
 achieved by the army under his command,, and the few 
 positive assertions upon which he ventures conflict with 
 each other. He speaks of beliefs and impressions as to 
 malign influences which rendered it impossible for him to 
 execute his oft abandoned intentions, and in this connec 
 tion, says: " The more serious difficulties of my position 
 began with Mr. Stanton s accession to the War Office 
 * * The impatience of the Executive immediately 
 became extreme, and I can attribute it only to the influence 
 of the new Secretary, who did many things to break up 
 the free and confidential intercourse that had heretofore 
 existed between the President and myself * * * The 
 positive order of the President, probably issued under the 
 pressure of the Secretary of War, forced me to undertake 
 the opening of the railroad." 
 
 This is such stuff as dreams are made of. It serves, 
 however, to illustrate the confusion into which the 
 author s morbid imagination led him when in pursuit of 
 an evil genius upon whom to devolve the consequences 
 of his failures. 
 
 Again, he says: "In July, 1861, after having secured 
 solidly for the Union that part of West Virginia north of 
 the Kanawha and west of the mountains, I was suddenly 
 called to Washington on the day succeeding the first 
 battle of Bull Run." 
 
 From this paragraph readers will conclude that the 
 writer was called to Washington to assume command of 
 the armies, because he had "secured solidly for the 
 Union " that portion of Western Virginia of which he 
 gives the boundaries. This was not the case. The 
 forces under his command in West Virginia had achieved 
 victories for which the President and loyal people were 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 3 
 
 grateful though they were not of a decisive character, and 
 much fighting was yet to be done before the territory 
 referred to should be secured to the Union. In intimat 
 ing; that his advancement was due to so doubtful and 
 
 o 
 
 meretricious a claim General McClellan does injustice to 
 himself. His summons to Washington was due to influ 
 ences much more complimentary to him. His call was a 
 tribute to his pre-eminent skill as an organizer, and his 
 capacity as an engineer. 
 
 Lieut.-General Scott recognized these qualities in Mc 
 Clellan, and impressed his sense of their value upon the 
 President as reasons why he should be brought to Wash 
 ington at a time when immense bodies of fresh troops 
 were to be received, for whom camps were to be selected, 
 and for whose training and practice, as well as a 
 measure of defence to the city, fortifications were to be 
 located, planned, and constructed. It was in view of this 
 combination of facts that Scott recommended the organi 
 zation of a district to be known as the Division of the 
 Potomac, which should embrace the troops in and around 
 Washington, and that McClellan should be brought to 
 the capital to organize and command this new and im 
 portant division. 
 
 Though General McClellan knew that his advancement 
 had been promoted by the Lieutenant-General, he entered 
 upon his new duties with a studied course of insubordina 
 tion. By his contumelious treatment of that venerable 
 soldier he had, by the gth of August, a period of less than 
 a fortnight, reduced him to a condition in which the 
 preferable alternative was to ask the President to allow 
 him to be placed on the officers retired list. The letter 
 in which he made this request bore date August 9, 1861. 
 As further efforts at direct communication with his sub- 
 
4 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 ordinate were incompatible with self-respect, it was 
 addressed to the Secretary of War, and said : " I received 
 yesterday, from Major-General McClellan, a letter of that 
 date, to which I design this as my only reply." : 
 
 President Lincoln could not consent to the retirement 
 of Scott under such circumstances without an effort, on 
 his part, to save the old soldier s feelings. The effort was, 
 however, not destined to succeed, for, while they were yet 
 together, the General received a fresh indignity from his 
 aspiring subordinate, and, in a letter addressed to the 
 Secretary on the 1 2th, insisting upon his request to be 
 retired, he said : 
 
 " On the loth inst. I was kindly requested, by the Presi 
 dent, to withdraw my letter to you of the pth, in reply to 
 one I had received from Major-General McClellan of the 
 day before ; the President, at the same time, showing me 
 a letter to him from General McClellan, in which, at the 
 instance of the President, he offered to withdraw the 
 original letter on which I had animadverted. * * * 
 It would be as idle for me, as it would be against the 
 dignity of my years, to be filing daily complaints against 
 an ambitious junior who * * has unquestionably 
 
 very high qualifications for military command." 2 
 
 The President could not refuse to grant Scott s request 
 when thus repeated and enforced. The order of retire 
 ment was made, and McClellan found himself without a 
 military superior other than the President, whom the 
 Constitution named as Commander-in-Chief of the Armies 
 and Navies of the United States, and brief time served to 
 show that restraints imposed or duties demanded by the 
 President were as irksome and irritating to him as had 
 been the consciousness of Scott s superior rank. 
 
 1 "Official Records, War of the Rebellion," Vol. XL, Part III., p. 4. 
 2 Ibid,, pp. 5 and 6. 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 5 
 
 He soon permitted himself to be recognized as the head 
 of the party of inaction, and to be surrounded by the 
 leaders of the reactionary political faction of the North. 
 To avoid misinterpretation and misrepresentation, I pause 
 to say that I allude to no Democrat who believed, as 
 Jackson had done, that the Union was a blessing worth 
 preserving, when I refer to the leaders of the reactionary 
 force of that day. They were Northern pro-slavery dis- 
 unionists who preferred the destruction of the Union to 
 the destruction of slavery, of whom Clement L. Vallan- 
 digham was a brilliant type. They sought the advan 
 tages of union and organization, and established secret 
 orders such as the " Knights of the Golden Circle " ; and 
 when addressing meetings of illiterate men in opposition 
 to the enforcement of the draft, to the suspension of the 
 habeas corpus, to the enlistment of colored troops in the 
 army, or to any other vital measures, not infrequently 
 spoke of President Lincoln as a " Mulatto Buffoon." In 
 their familiar parlance, those who supported the adminis 
 tration in its efforts to save the country, were character 
 ized as " Black Republican Disunionists " and " Nigger 
 Lovers," and, if they wore the national uniform, as 
 " Lincoln s Hirelings." 
 
 But for the instant, earnest, and persistent co-operation 
 of national Democrats, the government could not, I be- 
 believe, have crushed the rebellion and restored the 
 Union. Dix and Stanton were Democrats who had 
 served till the close of Buchanan s administration in his 
 Cabinet ; Morton, of Indiana, and Tod and Brough, of 
 Ohio, who were distinguished for courage and energy 
 among the illustrious group of war governors, had been 
 life-long Democrats, and I might add the names of hun 
 dreds of Democrats of State or national reputation who 
 
6 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 promptly sought service in the Union army. But the 
 highest enthusiasm for the national cause was exhibited 
 by the rank and file who, ignoring party names or distinc 
 tions, with the jubilant shout: "We are coming, Father 
 Abraham, three hundred thousand more," swarmed into 
 the Union camps of every State, and illustrated the popu 
 lar devotion to country and flag by compelling the 
 President to accept the services of tens of thousands of 
 men for whom he had not called, but whose services 
 \vould evidently be needed. Yet the head-quarters of the 
 General-in-Chief soon became a rendezvous for the master 
 spirits of the reactionary force. Here frequent confer 
 ences \vere held, in which Messrs. Vallandigham and 
 George H. Pendleton, of the House, and Senators Milton 
 S. Latham and Henry M. Rice were conspicuous. These 
 meetings were characterized by a prominent Democrat, 
 who revolted from their objects, as a " continuing caucus 
 for the consideration of plans of resistance to all measures 
 which proposed to strengthen the army or the navy ; to 
 provide means for their pay, sustenance, the munitions of 
 war, and means of transportation ; and to devise means of 
 embarrassing the government by constitutional quibbles 
 and legal subtleties. 1 It was here, so it was then said, 
 that Vallandigham was inspired to take such a course with 
 reference to the surrender, by the Administration, of Mason 
 and Slidell as might result in war with Great Britain. Here, 
 too, a preliminary draft of the resolution of Mr. Pendle 
 ton, which declared that Congress alone has the power, 
 under the Constitution of the United States, to suspend 
 the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, was said to 
 have been discussed ; and here assembled for consultation 
 the men who arranged the working details of a scheme 
 1 Moses F. Odell, of N. Y. 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 7 
 
 which, having received the sanction of McClellan and the 
 endorsement of an apparent majority of division command 
 ers, would, they believed, compel the President to sur 
 render his well-digested plan of approaching Richmond, 
 and accept one of the difficulties of which, as experience 
 proved, the General-in-Chief had no conception, and 
 which, but for what I cannot help regarding as a provi 
 dential interposition, the unexpected appearance of Erics 
 son s monitor, would have destroyed the Army of the 
 Potomac and cost us from fifty to eighty thousand men 
 with their supplies and munitions of war, including horses 
 for artillery and cavalry. 
 
 Here, too, at the head-quarters of the General-in-Chief, 
 indignities as gross, if not more gross, than those which 
 drove General Scott into retirement, were flagrantly in 
 flicted upon the President of the United States. 
 
 Among General Scott s complaints was that his subordi 
 nate refused to confer with him ; and when the President, 
 impelled by anxiety for the country, waived questions of 
 official etiquette and proceeded to head-quarters, the an 
 nouncement of his presence was more than once greeted 
 with boisterous and derisive laughter, evidently intended 
 for his ears ; and there was one occasion when it was 
 more than whispered by those immediately about the 
 President, that he was made to wait nearly an hour while 
 men who denied the right of the government to maintain 
 the Union by force of arms engaged McClellan s atten 
 tion ; and when at his own good time the General con 
 cluded to see his Commander-in-Chief, his departing 
 guests visibly sneered at that officer as they passed the 
 door of the cold chamber in which he had been so long 
 imprisoned. That was, I believe, the last time President 
 Lincoln sought an interview with McClellan in his head- 
 
8 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 quarters at Washington. He did, however, visit him at 
 those of the Army of the Potomac, in camp near Harri 
 son s Landing, July 8, 1862, in the season of that army s 
 profoundest humiliation. 
 
 If, as General McClellan asserts, it was after Mr. Stan- 
 ton s accession to the War Office that the impatience of 
 the Executive became extreme, history will ascribe the 
 impatience not to the words or deeds of Edwin M. 
 Stanton, but to those of George B. McClellan and his 
 chosen companions. The people had been told by the 
 General that the military action of the government should 
 be " prompt and irresistible," that " we should crush the 
 rebellion at one blow, and terminate the war in one cam 
 paign." It is true that his inspiring rhetoric was addressed 
 to the Executive, but ours is a popular government, and 
 it reached the people and excited expectations which he 
 would not permit his magnificent army to fulfil. 
 
 In a memorandum addressed to the President on the 
 4th of August, 1 86 1, he said: 
 
 " The object of the present war differs from those in which 
 nations are usually engaged mainly in this : that the purpose 
 of ordinary war is to conquer a peace and make a treaty on 
 advantageous terms. In this contest it has become necessary 
 to crush a population sufficiently numerous, intelligent, and 
 warlike to constitute a nation. We have not only to defeat 
 their armed and organized forces in the field, but to display 
 such an overwhelming strength as will convince all our antag 
 onists, especially those of the governing aristocratic classes, of 
 the utter impossibility of resistance. * * * The authority 
 of the government must be supported by overwhelming physi 
 cal force. Our foreign relations and financial credit also 
 imperatively demand that the military action of the govern 
 ment should be prompt and irresistible." * * * 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 9 
 
 " The force I have recommended is large ; the expense is 
 great. It is possible that a smaller force might accomplish 
 the object in view, but I understand it to be the purpose of 
 this great nation to re-establish the power of its government, 
 and restore peace to its citizens in the shortest possible time. 
 The question to be decided is simply this : Shall we crush the 
 rebellion at one blow, terminate the war in one campaign, or 
 shall we leave it as a legacy for our descendants ? " 1 
 
 After nearly three months of inactivity during which 
 the enthusiasm of the troops was sinking under the dreary 
 monotony of camp life, the impatience of the people 
 became so vociferous as to require to be allayed. Mc- 
 Clellan could not ignore the popular impulse, and in the 
 course of a communication addressed to Secretary Came 
 ron in the latter part of October, said : 
 
 " So much time has passed, and the winter is approaching 
 so rapidly, that but two courses are left to the Government, 
 viz. : either to go into winter quarters, or to assume the offen 
 sive with forces greatly inferior in numbers to the army I re 
 garded as desirable and necessary. * * * The nation 
 feels, and I share that feeling, that the Army of the Potomac 
 holds the fate of the country in its hands. All the information 
 we have from spies, prisoners, etc., agrees in showing that the 
 enemy have a force on the Potomac not less than 150,000 
 strong, well-drilled, and equipped, ably commanded and 
 strongly intrenched. 2 * * * I have thus indicated in a 
 general manner the objects to be accomplished and the means 
 by which we may gain our ends. A vigorous employment of 
 these means will, in my opinion, enable the Army of the 
 Potomac to assume successfully this season the offensive 
 
 1 " Records, War of the Rebellion," Vol. V., Series I., pp. 6 and 8. 
 
 2 Such stories were intrinsically improbable, and the Confederate records 
 show incontestably that the enemy never had 150,000 men in Northern Vir 
 ginia, and that their army had not at that time been strongly intrenched. 
 
10 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 operations which, ever since entering upon the command, it 
 has been my anxious desire and diligent effort to prepare for 
 and prosecute. The advance should not be postponed beyond 
 the 25th of November if possible to avoid it." 1 
 
 The impatience of the President needed no other stim 
 ulant than General McClellan gave it by his spirited sug 
 gestion of the early application of force coupled with his 
 persistent inaction. The summer and autumn months, 
 including December, were exceptionally fine. They were 
 bright, dry, and of moderate temperature. I will not say 
 the season was in these respects without parallel, but I 
 can say that for a succession of months it was peculiarly, 
 well adapted to the organization of camps of instruction 
 and to the movement of large bodies of troops of all arms. 
 It was not until the latter days of the last week of 
 December that rain set in. Of one morning just before 
 the Christmas of 1861, I have recollections as distinct as 
 those of yesterday. Hon. Charles Sumner and I walked 
 from near the Treasury building to the Capitol, each 
 carrying a light overcoat upon his arm. Our topics of con 
 versation were the inaction of McClellan, the indulgence 
 extended to him by the Administration, and whether in 
 permitting such a succession of months of fine weather to 
 be wasted in inaction we were not sinning away the 
 country s day of grace. 
 
 As yet Stanton was but a private citizen and could not 
 have disturbed the harmony between the President and 
 General McClellan. Yet it was disturbed, and the country 
 rang with the impatient cry of " On to Richmond ! " and 
 the Executive and the General were satirized anew each 
 morning by the telegraphic announcement that " all was 
 quiet on the Potomac." The rank and file of the army 
 
 1 Ibid. t pp. 9 and II. 
 
LINCOLN AND STANTON. I I 
 
 complained of inaction ; young men who had sought 
 subordinate commands as openings to the pathway to dis 
 tinction, grieved as the bright weeks and months followed 
 each other, while no portion of the Army of the Potomac 
 was permitted to indulge even in armed reconnoissances as 
 practice in something beside the daily routine of camp-life 
 for themselves and their commands. 
 
 Before Mr. Stanton entered the Cabinet the people 
 knew that our troops had long been held at bay by the 
 "Quaker" or wooden guns which lowered upon them 
 from the earthworks at Munson s Hill. Discussion, 
 popular and congressional, excited their discontent. In 
 the course of the debate on his resolution of the 5th of 
 December, 1861, the object of which was to appoint 
 a Senate Committee to inquire into the failures of the 
 war Mr. Chandler of Michigan said : 
 
 " One of our number (Baker of Oregon) has been slain, and 
 the verdict of the army is that nobody is to blame. One 
 thousand eight hundred men were sent across the Potomac 
 River with two old scows, and overwhelmed and cut to pieces, 
 without any means of retreat. I think the Senate owes it to 
 itself to look into the cause of this disaster." 1 
 
 The total negative vote on the adoption of this resolu 
 tion as finally modified was cast by General McClellan s 
 senatorial guardians, Latham and Rice, with Senator 
 Carlisle of Virginia. 
 
 Nor had the people forgotten that they had been told 
 by McClellan that the advance of his army should not be 
 later than November; yet the beautiful summer and 
 autumn and the summer-like month of December had 
 passed and been succeeded by a winter of unprecedented 
 
 1 Congressional Globe. Vol. LVII., page 29. 
 
12 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 rains. They had not only believed that the advance 
 would be made in November, but had hoped that the 
 " young general " had named a day unnecessarily late 
 that he might surprise them by an earlier movement, and 
 expressed their disappointment in language which might 
 well excite the President s impatience. The advance had 
 not been made, nor had the General carried into effect the 
 alternative he had suggested in his communication to 
 Secretary Cameron, and put the army into winter quar 
 ters. During January and February the rain was almost 
 incessant ; and letters which went from camp to most of 
 the post-offices in the Northern States describing the de 
 plorable condition of the rank and file swelled the discon 
 tent of the country. As spring approached, Major-General 
 David B. Birney, who had recruited and was then Colonel 
 of the 23d Pennsylvania Volunteers, said to me : " The 
 inaction during the months of fine weather did much to 
 demoralize the army, but under this protracted deluge it 
 is being wasted by disease, death, and desertion. When 
 General McClellan abandoned the idea of an advance he 
 should have put us into winter quarters." 
 
 Meanwhile, the General s congressional friends con 
 tinued to stir the impatience of the country by their 
 efforts to embarrass and restrain the military authorities. 
 On the loth of December, Mr. Pendleton, as a member of 
 the Judiciary Committee, submitted to the House, on his 
 own behalf, a minority report, and introduced the follow 
 ing resolution, in support of which he proceeded to make 
 an elaborate argument. 1 
 
 Resolved, That the Congress alone has the power, under the 
 Constitution of the United States, to suspend the privilege of 
 the writ of habeas corpus j that the exercise of that power by 
 
 1 Congressional Globe, Vol. LVII., p. 40. 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 13 
 
 any other department of the government is a usurpation, and 
 therefore dangerous to the liberties of the people ; that it is 
 the duty of the President to deliver Charles Howard, William 
 H. Gatchell, and John W. Davis to the custody of the marshal 
 of the proper district, if they are charged with any offence 
 against the laws of the United States, to the end that they may 
 be indicted, and " enjoy the right of a speedy and public trial by 
 an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime " 
 is alleged to have been committed. 
 
 Having previously introduced a resolution deprecating 
 the action of the government in the premises, Mr. Val- 
 landigham, on January 7th, made a rhetorical protest 
 against the surrender of Mason and Slidell as an act of 
 cowardice, which would probably tempt England to make 
 war upon us. He was specially severe upon the Adminis 
 tration for the time and manner of the surrender. In 
 opening his remarks, he said : 
 
 " I avail myself of this, the earliest opportunity yet presented, 
 to express my utter and strong condemnation, as one of the 
 Representatives of the people, of the act of the Administration 
 surrendering Mr. Mason and Mr. Slidell to the British Gov 
 ernment. For six weeks, sir, they were held in close custody 
 as traitors/ in a fortress of the United States, by order of 
 the Secretary of State, and with the approval and applause 
 of the press, of the public men, of the Navy Department, of 
 this House, and of the people of the United States, with a 
 full knowledge of the manner and all the circumstances of 
 their capture ; and yet, in six days after the imperious and 
 peremptory demand of Great Britain, they were abjectly 
 surrendered upon the mere rumor of the approach of a hostile 
 fleet ; and thus, sir, for the first time in our national history, 
 have we strutted insolently into a quarrel without right, and 
 then basely crept out of it without honor ; and thus, too, for 
 
14 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 the first time, has the American eagle been made to cower 
 before the British lion." 1 
 
 The question involved in what is known as the Trent 
 case was the right of a belligerent to search vessels fly 
 ing a neutral flag on the high seas. It was as a protest 
 against the exercise of this power that we declared war 
 against England in 1812; and, however well meant was 
 the " bringing to" of the Trent and the transfer to a 
 United States war-steamer of Mason and Slidcll, it was 
 in contravention of our own principles, and brought the 
 Administration into a false position. In the course of an 
 immediate reply to Mr. Vallandigham, Mr. Kelley, of 
 Pennsylvania, appreciating the circumstances, said : 
 
 " I do not wish to see a war with England. Nor do I feel 
 humiliated by the settlement of the Trent difficulty. I see 
 that in an hour when our pride was sorely touched, when the 
 act seemed to be one of humiliation we were able to maintain 
 the position for which our country has contended for more 
 than half a century, and for the maintenance of which it had 
 once involved itself in war. The Trent case is settled on a 
 doctrine which has always been the doctrine of the American 
 people. I cannot sympathize with those who say : Settle our 
 domestic difficulties, and then turn on England for the insult 
 and outrage she put upon us. Sir, let us settle our domestic 
 difficulties. Let us do so promptly the more humanely be 
 cause so promptly and vigorously with no reference to 
 foreign nations, but with an eye single to what is due to our 
 own great country, its grand though brief history, its grander, 
 and, I trust, more enduring future. Let us take care that, 
 from this day henceforward, the country shall be ready to stand 
 by the law as in its hour of need and wounded pride it settled 
 it. Let us see that, when again the question of neutral rights 
 
 1 Congressional Globe, Vol. LVII., p. 208. 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. I 5 
 
 comes up, the United States shall be ready with force upon the 
 sea and heart upon the land to meet the world in arms in de 
 fence of their cherished doctrine thus sanctified anew to the 
 hearts of their people. 
 
 " War, sir, terrible as it is, has its laws. It is also said to 
 have its amenities ; and I believe it has, though the foe with 
 which we are now engaged has found no opportunity to illustrate 
 them. It is said on this floor, by the gentleman from Ohio 
 (Mr. Vallandigham), that the settlement of the Trent case will 
 invite war or insult from England. I think that England 
 would, for reasons of state policy, like very much to engage 
 in war with America at this time not the English people, but 
 the governing classes of England. And, sir, I think our own 
 course of action or, to speak more precisely, of inaction in 
 vites them to declare war. I think that the condition of this 
 capital to-day invites war from any Power that feels disposed 
 to make its own terms with armed impotence. Look at it, sir. 
 The city is surrounded with newly made earthworks, scientifi 
 cally planned and well constructed, well manned, and well sup 
 plied with approved armaments. Soldiers tell us that thirty 
 thousand men would hold this capital against any force that 
 can be brought against it. It is environed within a narrow 
 circuit by two hundred thousand men in arms. And yet, sir, 
 the short river which leads to this capital of a great and proud 
 country, thus defended and encircled by patriot troops, is so 
 thoroughly blockaded by rebels that the government, though 
 its army has not an adequate supply of forage, cannot bring 
 upon it a peck of oats to feed a hungry horse. Is not this a 
 sight which jealous nations may behold with exultation, and 
 from which they may deduce a want of spirit, courage, mili 
 tary capacity call it what you please ? It is a sight at which 
 men may w.ell wonder, and which the gods must pity ! We have 
 six hundred thousand men in the field. We have spent, I know 
 not how many hundred millions of dollars ; and what have we 
 done ? What one evidence of determined war or military skill 
 
1 6 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 have we exhibited to foreign nations or our own people ? Why, 
 sir, we are carrying on war on peace principles. We have 
 been engaged in it for seven months, and if the Government 
 of England will infer from the conduct of this war what our 
 treatment of her would be in the event of war, she will con 
 clude that if she were to put her troops into Canada, the 
 American Government would plant an army of a quarter of a 
 million of men on the American shore of the lakes, whose sole 
 duty it should be to prevent Canadians from deserting the 
 English standard, and periling their lives in the cause of con 
 stitutional republicanism. Our army does not seem to be 
 engaged in war. Our men, it is true, are liable to be murdered 
 when serving as pickets. They are liable to be slaughtered, as 
 my townsmen were at Ball s Bluff. They are liable to en 
 counter masked batteries, served by concealed foes. But they 
 are not led to where they might hurt anybody. Their busi 
 ness seems to be to prevent desertion from the standard of the 
 enemy, to prevent men in the enemy s lines from quitting their 
 work at digging the enemy s trenches, or bearing the enemy s 
 arms, or serving the enemy in any other manner prejudicial to 
 
 our cause. 
 
 ******* 
 u* * * Q ur g enera i s mus t learn that these are not the 
 piping times of peace, and throw something of the vigor of 
 war into their doings. England may not respect international 
 law ; but she does respect power. Let her hear by the next 
 west wind the booming of cannon and the rattle of musketry. 
 Let her hear the shouts of a victorious army. Nay, sir, if it 
 need be, let the groans of the dying and the wailing and 
 lamentations of the bereaved go mingling with the shouts of 
 the victors, and England and the Powers of the continent will 
 pause with bated breath. Let the power of our army be put 
 forth in the contest in which we are now engaged, and we shall 
 have no trouble with foreign nations. But so long as our army 
 is used, .as it now is, as a mere band of armed police to prevent 
 
LINCOLN- AND STAN TON. 1 7 
 
 the laborers of the rebels and the disaffected men of their 
 country from escaping and serving us, to secure the enemy 
 plenty of men to dig their trenches and perform their labor ; 
 so long, I say, as we employ six hundred thousand .armed men 
 to secure to the rebels the laborers to raise their crops and 
 provide clothes for the next year, nations will insult and deride 
 us, and we will be in danger of foreign war." 1 
 
 In view of the general feeling induced by the facts re 
 ferred to in these remarks, it will not be doubted that the 
 President felt his responsibility and partook of the general 
 impatience, and while it will be admitted that he might 
 well be impatient, it must also be remembered that 
 Stanton had never been a member of his Administration. 
 The season when the rain must cease and armies might 
 again move was approaching ; and it was now, in this 
 season of almost universal despondency, that the loyal 
 heart was thrilled by the announcement that the Presi 
 dent, having determined to put at the head of the War 
 Department a man of convictions, courage, and will, who 
 would constrain the General-in-Chief to permit our soldiers 
 to fight or to retire from their command, had sent to the 
 Senate the nomination of Edwin M. Stanton, as Secretary 
 of War. 
 
 Having been promptly confirmed, Mr. Stanton assumed 
 control of the War Department on the 2Oth of January, 
 and on the 2/th the President issued the order for an ad 
 vance, which is known as General War Order Number One. 
 
 It directed : "That the 22d day of February, 1862, be 
 the day for a general movement of the land and naval 
 forces of the United States against the insurgent forces." 
 It was followed on the 3ist by what is known as Special 
 War Order Number One, ordering : 
 
 1 Congressional Globe, Vol. LVII., pp. 213-14. 
 
I 3 LINCOLN AND STAN TON, 
 
 " That all the disposable force of the Army of the Potomac, 
 after providing safely for the defence of Washington, be 
 formed into an expedition for the immediate object of seizing 
 and occupying a point upon the railroad southwestward of 
 what is known as Manassas Junction, all details to be in the 
 discretion of the Commander-in-Chief, and the expedition to 
 move before or on the 22d of February next." 
 
 Of course these orders evoked a protest from McClellan 
 to which, on the 3d of February the President made the 
 following characteristic rejoinder: 
 
 "Mv DEAR SIR. You and I have distinct and different 
 plans for a movement of the Army of the Potomac yours to 
 be down the Chesapeake, up the Rappahannock to Urbana> 
 and across land to the terminus of the railroad on the York 
 River ; mine to move directly to a point on the railroads 
 southwest of Manassas. 
 
 " If you will give me satisfactory answers to the following 
 questions I shall gladly yield my plan to yours : 
 
 " i st. Does not your plan involve a greatly larger expendi 
 ture of time and money than mine ? 
 
 " 2d. Wherein is a victory more certain by your plan than 
 mine ? 
 
 " 3d. Wherein is a victory more valuable by your plan than 
 mine ? 
 
 4th. In fact, would it not be less valuable in this, that it 
 would break no great line of the enemy s communications, 
 while mine would ? 
 
 " 5th. In case of disaster, would not a retreat be more dif 
 ficult by your plan than mine ? " 1 
 
 To this letter no direct reply was made, but a memo 
 randum of even date, addressed to the Secretary of War, 
 may be found on pages 42-5 Series I., Vol. V., of the 
 
 1 Pa~e 41, Vol. V., Series I., "Records, War of the Rebellion." 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 19 
 
 Records of the Rebellion, which it was intimated to the 
 President might be considered as the General s reply to 
 his direct interrogatories. 
 
 He opened this paper with an elaborate defence of his 
 military conduct. After which he proceeded to present 
 his estimate of the plans suggested by the President and 
 himself. He said that two bases of operations seemed to 
 present themselves for the Army of the Potomac, and 
 proceeded to consider, first, the President s that of 
 Washington for a base, which he condemned with a large 
 exhibition of detail ; and, second, that of the lower Ches 
 apeake Bay, which would have Urbana on the Rappa- 
 hannock as its base of supplies. This was his supreme 
 choice; but to Urbana should circumstances prevent the 
 use of that point there was available an alternative : Mob 
 Jack Bay. In view, however, of the uncertainties of war, 
 it was admitted that both these points might fail ; and if 
 for any reason both should have to be abandoned, and 
 the " worst come to the worst," he suggested as a dernier 
 ressort the use of Fortress Monroe as a base. For the 
 Washington base, with Manassas as the first point to be 
 assailed which was the President s plan he could find 
 no commendation ; and his condemnation seemed at 
 times to be absolutely derisive. To it he preferred Fort 
 Monroe, saying: " So much am I in favor of the southern 
 line, that I would prefer the move from Fortress Monroe 
 as a base * * * to an attack upon Manassas." 
 
 Thus we have McClellan s deliberate official assurance 
 given to the Government on the third day of February, 
 less than five weeks before the assembling of the council 
 of division commanders to consider a plan of which 
 Fortress Monroe was the base, that it was one to be 
 resorted to only when " the worst had come to the worst." 
 
 ITT 
 
20 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 It was an evident object of this memorandum to con 
 vince the President that its author was thoroughly familiar 
 with the topography and geography of the Peninsula. 
 Among his statements in support of the Peninsula route 
 was that " The roads in that region are passable at all 
 seasons of the year"; that " the country is much more 
 favorable for offensive operations than that in front of 
 Washington, much more level, more cleared land, the 
 woods less dense, the soil more sandy, and the spring some 
 two or three weeks earlier." 
 
 I am able to say that though the President did not 
 consider the argument of this incidental reply to his direct 
 communication satisfactory before rejecting it, he con 
 sulted officers of largest experience and highest repute, 
 and after hearing their views adhered to his own plan. 
 But apart from general plans of campaign, and prelim 
 inary to the execution of either of them, two points de 
 manded prompt and successful action. They were the 
 destruction of the rebel batteries on the Potomac, and 
 the release of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, in the 
 neighborhood of Harper s Ferry, from the control of the 
 enemy. 
 
 The propriety of this demand was so obvious that it 
 opened no ground for cavil. Washington was, and had for 
 months been, a beleaguered city, notwithstanding the fact 
 which, with the official records of both armies now before 
 us, we know, that with the army under McClellan, magnifi 
 cent alike in numbers and appointments beyond parallel 
 in modern times, its commander had but to exhibit a 
 determined purpose to free both river and railroad, and 
 the enemy must have retired before the sound of the 
 tread of his advancing legions. Indeed it is undisputed 
 
 1 Vol. V., p. 44, " Records, War of the Rebellion." 
 
LINCOLN- AND STAN TON. 21 
 
 history that General Jos. E. Johnston, whose force num 
 bered not one third of McClellan s, which it had so long 
 held in check, abandoned Centreville March /th-Qth, in 
 pursuance of a conclusion arrived at on or about the 2Oth 
 of February/ because it was known to be inadequate to 
 resist the advance of the Union Army which the Con 
 federate generals believed the impatience of the people 
 would compel as soon as the roads would admit of the 
 movement of troops. The Potomac batteries went with 
 Johnston s retiring army. 
 
 But the release of the railroad was another matter. 
 Harper s Ferry and Winchester were not distinctly cov 
 ered by any of the general movements ordered by the 
 President. They must therefore be specially dealt with, 
 and Mr. Lincoln, knowing not the powers with which he 
 contended, gave his tardy general a new plea for procras 
 tination when he made this demand for a service so simple 
 and, to so great an army, so easy of execution. 
 
 Procrastination was, however, but one of the minor con 
 sequences of this order. The delay consequent upon the 
 failure of a promised surprise humiliated the President, 
 and thus endangered the General s position, to save which 
 became the pretext for the cabal to be referred to. 2 
 
 1 The relative strength of the two armies for the month of February, 1862, 
 as shown by the official reports, was as follows : 
 
 Army of the Potomac, commanded by McClellan present for duty, 185- 
 420 officers and men, with 534 pieces of artillery. (See page 732, Vol. V., Series 
 I., " Record, \Varofthe Rebellion.") And in the Army of Northern Virginia, 
 commanded by Johnston, the aggregate present and absent was 84,222, and 
 the effective total present for duty was 47,617, of whom but 2,976 were in 
 the artillery service. The guns so small a number of men could handle 
 would not have been able to present much resistance to McClellan s 534 
 pieces of field and heavy artillery. (See page 1086, Vol. V., Series I., 
 " Records, War of the Rebellion.") 
 
 a See page 29. 
 
22 LINCOLN A!\ 7 D STAN TON. 
 
 Though the General now complains of the " Govern 
 ment s great impatience " in regard to the opening of the 
 road and destruction of the batteries, on the receipt of 
 that order he for once seemed to enter upon an aggressive 
 duty with earnestness and alacrity. A great strategetical 
 movement, so he had confidently advised Lincoln and 
 Stanton, was to be made for the release of the railroad 
 and the capture of Winchester and the rebel forces in the 
 vicinity. 
 
 The enemy, he said, was to be beguiled by the construc 
 tion of a light pontoon bridge which would not, as it 
 crossed a river so liable to freshets and which afforded 
 such poor holding ground as the Upper Potomac, excite 
 the apprehension of the rebels by threatening any serious 
 danger. His real and effective plan involved a bridge 
 of canal boats so thoroughly constructed that it would 
 carry masses of troops, including artillery and supplies. 
 Without letting any of his friends know where or when 
 the movement was to occur, the President said confiden 
 tially that a grateful surprise was preparing for the country, 
 the success of which would restore McClellan to popular 
 confidence. When on one occasion the statement was 
 received with incredulity, he said, with a good-natured 
 smile : " But McClellan has, in this case, left himself with 
 out a loop-hole 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/ 
 
 What is here said about the pontoon bridge and the 
 character of the river, must not be understood as implying 
 that I then knew the field from which the country was to 
 expect so inspiring an event as a surprise of any part of 
 the enemy s forces. I refer to the matter here simply to 
 show how gladly the President and Mr. Stanton welcomed 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 2$ 
 
 any promise of successful action on the part of him who 
 now ascribes his want of success to their machinations. 
 
 The day came on which the promised surprise was to be 
 executed. Scott had commended McClellan as an excep 
 tionally gifted organizer and engineer, and he had been for 
 weeks engaged in organizing a minor expedition, which 
 was to avoid the effusion of blood by surprising a relatively 
 feeble force. 
 
 The width of the canal and lift-lock had always been open 
 to measurement by him and his engineer staff. Neither 
 the quartermaster nor any other representative of the 
 President or Secretary of War had controlled him in the 
 selection of boats. Boats and all other necessary material 
 of his own selection had, under his supervision, been con 
 centrated near the lift-lock, and the President had been 
 advised that his promised surprise would be executed on 
 the morning of the 2/th, the next day. I have always 
 thought that McClellan, in that hour of enthusiasm, be 
 lieved that it would be, for he telegraphed Stanton, at 
 10:20 P.M. of the 26th, saying : " The bridge was splendidly 
 thrown by Captain Duane, assisted by Lieutenants Bab- 
 cock, Reese, and Cross " ; that he regarded it as " one of 
 the most difficult operations of the kind ever performed " ; 
 that " he recommended Captain Duane to be made a major 
 by brevet, and Lieutenants Babcock, Reese, and Cross, all 
 of the Corps of Engineers, to be brevetted to captaincies." 
 " Eight thousand five hundred infantry, eighteen guns, 
 and two squadrons of cavalry " had crossed it, he said, 
 and were well posted on the Virginia side, and " ready to 
 resist any attack." " It had," he continued, "enabled us 
 already " to occupy Loudoun and Bolivar heights, as well 
 as the Maryland heights." " Burns brigade," he said, 
 " will be here in a couple of hours, and will cross it at day- 
 
24 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 break. Four more squadrons of cavalry and several more 
 guns pass here." Then came the ominous announcement 
 that he had " reports that G. W. Smith, with fifteen thousand 
 men, is expected at Winchester." But his spirits seem 
 not to have been depressed by so improbable a report, for 
 he added : " We will attempt the canal-boat bridge to 
 morrow. The spirit of the troops is most excellent. They 
 are in the mood to fight any thing." The tone and man 
 ner of this dispatch convinced the Administration that at 
 length McClellan had determined to restore himself and it 
 to popular confidence. 
 
 The President knew that the report that General G. W. 
 Smith and fifteen thousand men could be withdrawn from 
 Centreville and Manassas was preposterous, and did not 
 allow it to mar his happiness ; nor could he see any reason 
 why the regulars r.nd the forces of Hooker and Keyes that 
 had been ordered to strengthen McClellan, and some of 
 whom were already on the road, should not continue their 
 march into Virginia, over the pontoon bridge, should they 
 arrive before the canal-boat bridge had been completed. 
 The day, the 2/th, was advancing, why did not the General 
 advise him or the Department of the progress of affairs ? 
 He was probably too much absorbed by duty to permit 
 him to communicate at least so thought Mr. Lincoln. 
 That he was absorbed was true. He had assumed respon 
 sibilities which involved many orders and other communi 
 cations. Though too much engrossed to telegraph for 
 advice or consent from, or to disclose his purpose to, the 
 President or the Secretary of War, he had found time to 
 send three dispatches to General Marcy, Chief of Staff. 
 They were as follows : 
 
 " Do not send the regular infantry until further orders. 
 Give Hooker orders not to move until further orders." 1 
 
 1 Page 728, Vol. V., Series I., " Records, War of the Rebellion." 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 2$ 
 
 " Revoke Hooker s authority, in accordance with Barnard s 
 opinion. Immediately on my return we will take the other 
 plan, and push on vigorously." l 
 
 " The difficulties here are so great that the order for Keyes 
 movement must be countermanded until the railway bridge is 
 finished or some more permanent arrangement made. It is 
 impossible to supply a large force here. Please inform Garrett 
 at once." 2 
 
 The General s order of countermand to Mr. Garrett, 
 President of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, does not, 
 of course, appear among the official records of the Gov 
 ernment, but that it elicited the following communication 
 to the Chief of Staff is shown on page 729, Vol. V., Series 
 L, of the " Records" : 
 
 " I understand that the General commanding directs that all 
 the arrangements for transportation of troops from Washington 
 be stopped, and that the movements will not take place until 
 further notice. The General commanding also telegraphs to 
 send back all the troops that have started, which order I have 
 communicated to Mr. Smith, now at Relay, in charge of trans 
 portation at that point. Shall the horses and artillery be 
 ordered back ? I have directed the trains held, awaiting your 
 instructions regarding the latter." 
 
 The President, under the inspiration received on the 
 preceding night, hoped anxiously for further news. His 
 confidence in the success of the movement was unabated ; 
 he felt that the enemy had already been surprised, and 
 that at least in confidential official circles he might say 
 that McClellan had occupied important positions in Vir 
 ginia, and that troops enough to resist any force that 
 could be thrown against him were already en route for 
 
 1 Ibid. a Ibid. 
 
26 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 Harper s Ferry, where a pontoon bridge, that would carry 
 them all in brigades, had already been thrown. But as 
 the shadows lengthened those who knew him well could 
 not fail to notice indications of unusual anxiety. He 
 paced the floor of the Executive Chamber ; he was rest 
 less, and not as he had been through the earlier hours of 
 the day, ready to greet visitors with a smile and cheering 
 word. It was evident that his confidence was fading, 
 and that he was under the influence of misgivings lest his 
 General had again deluded him and disappointed the 
 country. A few favorable words from McClellan would 
 have restored his wonted equanimity, but they did not 
 come ; but soon after dark Mr. Stanton came from the 
 War Department and handed him a dispatch he had just 
 received from the General. It was dated Sandy Hook, 
 3:30 P.M., and read as follows : 
 
 " 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. I shall probably be obliged to fall back 
 upon the safe and slow plan of merely covering the reconstruc 
 tion of the railroad. This will be done at once, but will be 
 tedious. I cannot, as things now are, be sure of my supplies 
 for the force necessary to seize Winchester, which is probably 
 reinforced from Manassas. The wiser plan is to rebuild the 
 railroad bridge as rapidly as possible, and then act according 
 to the state of affairs." 1 
 
 It will be observed that this dispatch contained no inti 
 mation that the orders for the advance of troops to sus 
 tain those who had been posted in Virginia against the 
 alleged threatened advance from Manassas had been 
 countermanded. 
 
 1 Tage 728, Vol. V., Series I., " Records, War of the Rebellion." 
 
LINCOLN- AND STAN TON. 2/ 
 
 Before leaving the Department Stanton had replied as 
 follows : 
 
 " If the lift-lock is not big enough, why cannot it be made 
 big enough ? Please answer immediately." 
 
 The reply to which was as follows, and bore date 
 10:30 P.M. : 
 
 " It can be enlarged, but entire masonry must be destroyed 
 and rebuilt, and new gates made an operation impossible in 
 the present stage of water, and requiring many weeks at any 
 time. The railroad bridge can be rebuilt many weeks before 
 this could be done." 1 
 
 This failure, and the ridiculous excuse for it that the 
 engineers had neglected to ascertain the width of the 
 lock through which the boats they were concentrating 
 were to pass, gave rise to a popular fear that the sacri 
 fices and scandals of Ball s Bluff were to be repeated on a 
 grander scale near Harper s Ferry, and at one o clock on 
 the 28th Stanton telegraphed : 
 
 " What do you propose to do with the troops that have crossed 
 the Potomac ? " 
 
 To which McClellan replied : 
 
 " I propose to occupy Charlestown and Bunker Hill, so as 
 to cover the rebuilding of the railway, while I throw over the 
 supplies necessary for an advance in force. I have just men 
 enough to accomplish this. I could not at present supply 
 more." * 
 
 At 9:30 P.M. of the same day the President received a 
 telegram in which McClellan asserted that he knew he 
 " had acted wisely, and that the President would cheerfully 
 
 Page 728, Vol. V., Series I., " Records, War of the Rebellion." 
 2 Page 730, Ibid. 
 
28 LINCOLN AND STANTON. 
 
 agree with him when he explained " ; but the kernel of 
 the message is found in this passage : 
 
 " It is impossible for many days to more than supply the 
 troops now here and at Charlestown. We could not supply 
 and move to Winchester for many days, and had I moved 
 more troops here they would have been at a loss for food on 
 the Virginia side." 1 
 
 Here was a " change of base." The difficulty had sud 
 denly been found to be with the commissariat, and matters 
 could not be expedited because the Union Army, with the 
 use of the canal and railroad, could not be subsisted in 
 sufficient force to repel a possible enemy, who, should he 
 be found, could be subsisted by wagon trains hauling for 
 many miles over peculiarly bad roads. 
 
 Mr. Stanton could, when greatly irritated, find relief in 
 the use of forcible expletives, but it was not so with the 
 great-hearted, patient, long-suffering President, with whom 
 it was my privilege to converse briefly on the night of the 
 2/th. He was more restless than I had ever seen him, 
 and I think more dejected, though he had not yet been 
 advised of the countermanding by McClellan of all orders 
 for the forwarding of troops. His position was pitiable. 
 He knew that the army was aware that Scott had recom 
 mended McClellan s advancement and approved his ability ; 
 that he (McClellan) had placed his confidential friends in 
 every important command of the Army of the Potomac ; 
 and that, whether true or false, the country had been 
 made to believe that the rank and file of the army so wor 
 shipped their " Little Commander " that to displace him 
 might produce consequences which he was not willing to 
 risk ; yet this was a measure he must now contemplate. 
 In conversation with trusted friends he said that he was 
 
 1 Ibid. 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 29 
 
 now compelled to doubt whether McClellan had ever con 
 sidered a plan with a view to its execution ; that he did 
 not believe he had ; and that it was evident he would not 
 execute movements directed by his superiors. Now, with 
 extreme gravity and emphasis, he added, the time has 
 come when such a plan for a movement toward Richmond 
 must be adopted and be promptly executed by McClellan 
 or his successor. The next day he requested an early 
 interview with the General and, whether by accident or 
 arrangement I do not know, Senators Ben Wade and 
 Andrew Johnson were present when it was held. They 
 were thenceforth unreserved in their denunciation of the 
 General as " treacherous " or " incompetent," and of the 
 puerility of his explanations. It was probably due to the 
 unrestrained expression of their indignation that the 
 public so soon learned that the President had a practicable 
 plan of campaign which would be enforced. 
 
 The account of the Harper s Ferry fiasco has brought 
 me to a consideration of a part of the secret history of 
 the proposal and adoption of the Peninsular plan with 
 Fortress Monroe as a base. 
 
 This chapter of our military history is not found among 
 the records to which I have so frequently referred, yet my 
 statements will not suffer for want of corroboration. 
 
 I have met Gen. Henry M. Naglee but once ; it was 
 casually in the office of the late Hon. Eli K. Price yet I 
 call him as my first witness. I had learned by his own 
 report the part he had taken in the cabal the object of 
 which was to constrain President Lincoln to abandon his 
 well-considered plan and adopt one which his judgment 
 could not approve, and had, on the 3Oth of March, 1862, 
 reported the facts to the Secretary of War. In the course 
 of a public address to my fellow-citizens in September, 
 
30 LINCOLN" AND STAN TON. 
 
 1864, I referred to some of General Naglee s statements, 
 and alluded to some of the disasters which had resulted 
 from the success of the cabal. There was no attempt at 
 a verbatim report of my speech ; the most striking state 
 ments were merely alluded to in the notices of the meet 
 ing. They, however, attracted the attention of Gen. 
 Naglee and evoked an open letter to me in which he was 
 more abusive of Secretary Stanton than of myself. 
 Knowing that the conversation between us on the 
 occasion of our accidental meeting had been heard not 
 only by Messrs. E. K. Price and Henry C. Townsend, but 
 by Jos. B. Townsend and J. Sergeant Price, Esqrs., and 
 had been carefully noted, and that such a paper would 
 serve, in part at least, as a reply to the General s denial 
 of my statement, I addressed a note to my friend Henry 
 C. Townsend, who was, as he now is, an honored member 
 of the Philadelphia bar, requesting him to furnish me with 
 a copy of the memorandum of the interview made immedi 
 ately after its occurrence. The reply bore equal date 
 with my note, October 10, 1864. It is herewith, except 
 the purely formal, introductory parts, submitted as an 
 essential preliminary to my recital of the interview of the 
 3<Dth of March, 1862, with Secretary Stanton, to which I 
 have referred. 
 
 "The time," the paper proceeds, "was immediately 
 after Gen. McClellan s retreat to the James River, and 
 while his army, shattered in battle, wasted by disease, and 
 dispirited by successive retreats, was resting at or near 
 Harrison s Landing. 
 
 "Congress had just adjourned. You were in my office 
 talking on matters of public interest the legislation of 
 Congress, etc.; Gen. Naglee was in the adjoining room, 
 upon legal business with E. K. Price, Esq., whose client 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 31 
 
 he was. When Mr. Price observed you or heard your 
 voice he came forward, and after shaking hands with you 
 said: Judge Kelley, I wish you would step into my 
 office and meet Gen. Naglee he is fresh from the battles 
 of the Peninsula; come in and meet him, and let us see 
 if you and he cannot together throw some light on the 
 darkness that is about us/ and returned to his own room. 
 You turned to me and said : What shall I do ? I do not 
 desire to meet Gen. Naglee ; I know him only as one of 
 Gen. McClellan s pets to whom we owe the disasters of 
 the Peninsula, and if we get into a discussion I may speak 
 my mind so freely as to give offence. To which I 
 replied: Judge, this is no time to cherish personal ani 
 mosities we have a country to save let us all try to 
 work together to that end. General Naglee is a gentle 
 man. You can meet him and discuss matters as one 
 gentleman should with another. Mr. Price asks this as a 
 favor to him, and I advise you to go in. Well, replied 
 you, if you wish it and will accompany me I will go in. 
 
 " We, that is you and I, then entered Mr. Price s office 
 together, and you were introduced to the General by Mr. 
 Price. Your first remark was to this effect : Though 
 both Philadelphians, I believe we have never met before, 
 but I have a very pleasant recollection of your father. I 
 remember meeting him in the office of the clerk of the 
 court of which I was a judge, when he spoke of my 
 resemblance to my father, who had been his friend. Mr. 
 Price then remarked : Gentlemen, I have invited this 
 interview, because you represent respectively the Congress 
 and the Army, in the hope that you can give us some ex 
 planation of the disasters that have befallen our arms, and 
 some hopes of better results in the future. You then 
 remarked : Mr. Price, you will be good enough to bear 
 
32 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 in mind that this interview is of your seeking. I have 
 very clear and decided opinions upon the points to which 
 you refer ; what I shall tell you is derived not from street 
 rumor, or hotel gossip, but from sworn testimony taken 
 befort the Committee on the Conduct of the War, from 
 the President, the Secretary of War, or from official docu 
 ments in the W r ar Department. 
 
 " Soon after the President, in February, 1862, deter 
 mined that General McClellan should make a movement 
 toward Richmond with his army, a council of war, to con 
 sist of the twelve generals of division, was ordered by the 
 General. When it assembled there were eleven generals 
 of division present, and a brigadier representing an absent 
 general of division, and that brigadier was General Naglee 
 (to which General N. bowed his head in assent). * The 
 subjects discussed were the best routes to Richmond, con 
 sistent with the absolute protection of the capital. There 
 were but three routes proposed. The first was from the 
 point where the army then lay, near Manassas, directly 
 overland which was put to a vote and received four in 
 favor of it and eight against it ; the four in favor of it 
 were, I think, Sumner, McDowell, Heintzelman, and 
 probably Barnard, and of course it was lost. The next 
 route proposed was by way of Fredericksburg, which was 
 also discussed and put to a vote, receiving but five, viz., 
 the four above named and perhaps McCall, when that also 
 fell. The third and only remaining route, viz., by way of 
 the Peninsula, with Fort Monroe as its base, was then 
 brought up. General Naglee was its first and principal ad 
 vocate. It was considered, discussed, and finally adopted by 
 a vote of eight in favor and four against it, the four in oppo 
 sition being those whose names I have already mentioned 
 (to which General Naglee again bowed his head in assent). 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 33 
 
 " When this determination was communicated to the 
 President by General McClellan, the former made and in 
 sisted upon his point about the number of men to be left 
 for the protection of the capital, and stated that he thought 
 at least sixty thousand necessary for this purpose, to which 
 General McClellan replied that he thought there was no 
 occasion for any force for that purpose, but if there were, 
 twenty thousand would be amply sufficient ; and after con 
 siderable discussion of the point it was finally decided that 
 forty thousand should be retained for that purpose under 
 General McDowell, so that Washington should not under 
 any circumstances be uncovered. In the consideration of 
 this matter between the President r.nd the Secretary of 
 War, the President said to the Secretary : " We can do 
 nothing else than adopt this plan, and discard all others ; 
 with eight out of twelve division commanders approving 
 it we can t reject it and adopt another, without assuming 
 all the responsibility in case of the failure of tJie one 
 zve adopt." The Secretary said that while agreeing with 
 the President in his conclusion, he dissented from his 
 arithmetic, adding that the generals who dissented from 
 the proposed plan of campaign were independent of 
 the influence of the commanding general, while all the 
 rest owed their positions to him, and were especially 
 under his influence, so that instead of eight to four there 
 was but one against four. " You," he continued, " as 
 a lawyer in estimating the value of testimony, look not 
 only to the words of the witness, but to his manner and all 
 the surrounding circumstances of bias, interest, or influence 
 that may affect his opinions. Now, who are the eight 
 generals upon whose votes you are going to adopt the 
 proposed plan of campaign ? All made so since General 
 McClellan assumed command, and upon his recommenda- 
 
34 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 tion, influenced by his views, and subservient to his wishes, 
 while the other four are beyond these influences, so that 
 in fact you have in this decision only the operation of one 
 man s mind." The Secretary of War told me the Presi 
 dent seemed much struck with this view of the case, and 
 after considering some time said : " I admit the full force 
 of your objection, but what can we do ? We are civilians 
 we should be justly held accountable for any disasters 
 if we set up our opinions against those of experienced 
 military men in the practical management of a campaign 
 we must submit to the action of a majority of the council, 
 and the campaign will have to go on as decided upon by that 
 majority." The Secretary then asked the President about 
 the force to be left for the protection of Washington, and 
 was assured that that part of the President s programme 
 would be firmly adhered to, and that General McDowell 
 was to remain with forty thousand men to cover Wash 
 ington under all contingencies. These facts I had from 
 the Secretary of War himself/ 
 
 " It is proper to state that during all this long recital of 
 facts General Naglee was a most attentive listener, and I 
 thought rather a surprised one at the accuracy of your 
 knowledge of the events attending that historical council of 
 
 1 When early in March, 1862, I formed one of a council of war of twelve 
 general officers to whom this important question was- submitted, I had no 
 other intimation of a serious intention to make such a movement than the 
 casual mention of it to me by Gen. McClellan, in the latter part of 
 November. Not having any reason to suppose that any officer of the 
 council had any more intimate knowledge of the intention than myself, and 
 knowing how much thought the slight intimation I had received had cost 
 me, I naturally expected deliberation and discussion. To my great surprise, 
 eight of the twelve officers present voted, off-hand, for the measure, without 
 discussion ; nor was any argument on my part available to obtain a recon 
 sideration. " The Peninsular Campaign and Its Antecedents.," by Gen. J. 
 G. Barnard, pp. 51, 52. 
 
f 
 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 35 
 
 war, and did not once offer to interrupt your narrative or 
 correct your statements, but, on the contrary, repeatedly 
 signified his assent by an inclination of his head. 
 
 " You then went on to say : We all know how the cam 
 paign opened, the splendid and complete preparation in 
 all respects, the immense force, the long delays in embark 
 ing troops, the slow progress, the final disasters, defeat, 
 and retreat to Harrison s Landing. General Naglee then 
 remarked : Had we received the cooperation of General 
 McDowell s corps, as promised, we could undoubtedly have 
 been entirely successful. To which you replied : But, 
 sir, the campaign, on that route and in that manner and 
 with an army less in force than that to which it was sub 
 sequently increased by the addition of Franklin s and 
 McCall s divisions of McDowell s corps, was undertaken 
 by General McClellan with the most positive, distinct, 
 and expressed determination on the part of the President 
 that McDowell should remain with his corps for the pro 
 tection of Washington ; and I can tell you, General Naglee, 
 a fact which you do not probably know, I saw in the hands 
 of the Secretary of War, and was present when it was 
 received, a dispatch from General McClellan, in these 
 words : " I acknowledge the arrival of General McCall s 
 division, and am fully prepared for the enemy in any 
 force he can bring against me." General Naglee ex 
 pressed much surprise at this statement, and remarked : 
 * We were always told that General McDowell was to 
 come down from Fredericksburg and cooperate with us in 
 the capture of Richmond. The failure to do this was the 
 chief cause of our want of success. Another cause that 
 interfered seriously with our progress up the Peninsula 
 was the unprecedented rains of the season the oldest 
 inhabitant of the region frequently remarked that such a 
 
36 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 wet season had never been known there. As a conse 
 quence we found a country that in ordinary times was 
 quite favorable for military movements converted into 
 swamps and rendered impassable/ I then put to General 
 Naglee the following question : * Do you, with your 
 experience of this summer, consider General McClellan 
 equal to the task of properly handling so large an army 
 and conducting so vast a campaign ? To which General 
 Naglee replied : While he may not be, I do not know his 
 superior I do not know that we have a general that can 
 properly handle a hundred thousand men in the field/ 
 To which I replied : But, sir, we have a government to 
 protect a country to save, and because one general or 
 another fails we cannot settle down into submission, under 
 the theory that the work cannot be done, we must go on 
 and try another until we find one that can succeed/ and 
 then added : l So much for the past, now what is to be 
 done next ? To which General Naglee responded : ( We 
 have to do what is always mortifying to a military man, 
 admit that we have made a mistake in our line of approach 
 to Richmond, get the army away from there as rapidly as 
 possible and try another route, or add large reinforcements 
 to it, if we move again in the same direction/ This ter 
 minated the interview, and General Naglee took leave of 
 us. He spoke but little, and then only in reply to ques 
 tions, but was a respectful and apparently attentive 
 listener to your long and interesting narrative. This was 
 certainly the substance, and almost, if not quite, the 
 exact language of the interview between you and General 
 Naglee. HENRY C. TOWNSEND." 
 
 For a time General Naglee delighted in repeating the 
 facts recited in this memorandum, and in my interview of 
 March 3<Dth with Mr. Stanton, and in boasting of the tact 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 37 
 
 with which he and his associates had constrained the 
 President to surrender his judgment on so vital a matter 
 as the conduct of the Army of the Potomac in an active 
 campaign, or to assume a responsibility so overwhelming as 
 to cause him and his heroic Secretary of War to shrink 
 from its assumption. But by Sept., 1864, the comments 
 of the living or the shades of the tens of thousands of 
 victims of his cabal who had perished in the swamps and 
 hospitals of the malarious Peninsula had impressed him 
 with the wisdom of silence ; and in apparent forgetfulness 
 of the interview we had had in Mr. Price s office, on the 
 27th of September he addressed me an open letter in 
 which he assumed that I had obtained my information 
 from Mr. Stanton, and said : " Now, my dear sir, this state 
 ment is simply false, and on the part of your friend, Mr. 
 Edwin M. Stanton, maliciously false." I immediately re 
 sponded in an open letter in which, after informing him 
 that he was mistaken in supposing I had derived my in 
 formation from Mr. Stanton, I named himself as my 
 author, and endeavored to recall to his memory the 
 buoyancy with which, in his conversation with Messrs. 
 Moore and Hacker, both of whom were then living, he 
 had stated every fact to which I had referred. 1 The con 
 clusion of my reply was as follow r s : 
 
 " But, sir, you have also boasted to others of the suc 
 cess Messrs. Latham, Rice, and yourself had in constrain 
 ing the President to retain General McClellan in command. 
 You know General Gilman Marston, and, doubtless, 
 remember the fact that you and he travelled together 
 some time later from Fortress Monroe to Washington, he 
 being at the time in command of a regiment of New 
 Hampshire volunteers. Do you not remember how fully 
 
 1 Mr. Hacker is dead, but Mr. Moore is an active citizen of Philadelphia. 
 
38 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 you detailed to him all the facts I have recited ? I do not 
 doubt that you then spoke the truth ; the collateral facts 
 prove that you did. But if error there be, it is you who 
 are responsible. General Marston is a brave and truthful 
 man. I know him well, and cheerfully refer any of our 
 military friends to him for proof that you are yourself the 
 author of the story you wantonly ascribe to the Secretary 
 of War, and denounce as maliciously false." 
 
 MILITARY OPERATIONS. 
 
 Immediately after Mr. Stanton entered upon the duties 
 of Secretary of War he requested me to call at his room 
 in the Department every morning before going to the 
 House if I could without neglect of committee business 
 or other duty. I regarded the request as a command 
 and presented myself daily. Observation soon convinced 
 him that access to the Department was too easy and indis- 
 
 1 Gen. Marston is still an active and a justly distinguished citizen of New 
 Hampshire. 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 39 
 
 criminate for the times, and he issued an order restricting 
 the hours in which calls might be made and regulating the 
 manner of admission. On the morning on which this 
 order was promulgated he handed me a card, the original 
 of which I still have, and of which the cut on the preced 
 ing page is a facsimile. 
 
 Our relations were as confidential as our intercourse was 
 unrestrained. On the morning of Sunday, the 3Oth of 
 March, I went to the War Department, presented my 
 card, and was admitted. In the ante-room I wrote on my 
 card : " Will probably detain you but a few minutes, but it 
 is important that I should see you." The messenger 
 quickly returned, saying : " The Secretary will see you in 
 a few minutes," and, leaning over my shoulder, whis 
 pered : u General McClellan is with him." The General 
 soon took his departure, and I entered, saying : " Mr. 
 Stanton, I may have brought you a mare s nest ; if so, 
 as you are involved in the story, you can soon terminate 
 our interview by letting me know that I have been de 
 ceived." He replied : " Well, put me to the test " ; and I 
 proceeded to make the following statement : 
 
 General Henry M. Naglee, who commands a brigade in 
 Hooker s Division, is reported by gentlemen well known 
 to me and in whose veracity I have perfect confidence as 
 having left the depot at Broad and Prime streets, Phila 
 delphia, on the sleeping car for Washington at eleven 
 o clock last evening. My informants say he entered the 
 car some time before that fixed for the departure of the 
 train, and recognizing old friends in Messrs. George H. 
 Moore and George W. Hacker, seemed anxious to im 
 press them with a sense of his military and political 
 importance and proceeded, without suggestion that the 
 communication was of a confidential character, to tell 
 
40 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 them that the President had been so incensed by McClel- 
 lan s failure to effect his promised surprise by the use of 
 canal-boats for a bridge on the Upper Potomac, that he 
 had given him notice that he would be relieved of his 
 command, if he did not within ten days submit a practica 
 ble plan of campaign which he would undertake to exe 
 cute ; this situation had been brought to the attention of 
 Senator Latham of California, who had written to him 
 (Naglee) that something must be done immediately by 
 McClellan s friends or he would lose his command, as 
 Lincoln s patience would bear no further strain. The 
 Senator had then named the time and place at which 
 they should meet in Washington for conference ; but that, 
 on reaching Washington, instead of meeting Latham he 
 found a letter from him at the designated place of meet 
 ing, which told him that he had been suddenly called to 
 New York on Pacific Mail business, but had, before leav 
 ing, arranged a meeting with Senator Rice, with whom he 
 directed Naglee to confer as freely as he would with him 
 self, as Rice understood the delicacy of McClellan s situa 
 tion, and must be treated, as he could safely be, with 
 the utmost frankness. The interview with Senator Rice, 
 General Naglee said, had been satisfactory, and the plan 
 agreed upon was to prepare memoranda as notes for a 
 campaign against Richmond, from Fortress Monroe as 
 a base, on loose slips of paper of different color, texture, 
 and ruling, so as to impress the President with the convic 
 tion that McClellan, in spite of the labor in which he had 
 been involved by the Harper s Ferry movement and the 
 excitement caused by the President s imperative demand 
 for a plan under penalty of dismissal, had stolen intervals 
 in which to jot down a point or two at a time, and thus 
 outline a plan which he was willing to submit not only to 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 41 
 
 the President but to the judgment of a council of division 
 commanders, of whom there were twelve. 
 
 As I proceeded to report this part of General Naglee s 
 alleged statement, Mr. Stanton rose in evident excitement 
 and passed to a case in which there were a number of blue- 
 paper boxes, alphabetically arranged, and drawing from 
 one several slips of paper such as General Naglee was re 
 ported to have described, he said : " Yes ! Here are the 
 slips ; these were the implements by which effect was 
 given to a conspiracy to deceive the President, and in con 
 sequence of which 80,000 of our best troops are afloat in 
 wooden bottoms ; and should the Merrimac get among 
 the fleet of transports she could sink them all as easily 
 as she sunk the Congress and the Cumberland." 
 
 I pause here for a brief digression : the following state 
 ment by the Prince de Joinville, of the condition of things 
 he found when, as a member of McClellan s Staff, he ar 
 rived at Fortress Monroe, illustrates the recklessness of 
 the cabal and justifies the terrible apprehensions that 
 filled Mr. Stanton s mind. It must be remembered that 
 the Monitor never demonstrated her power to restrain 
 the Merrimac ; the battle between them having been a 
 drawn one. Each disabled the other and both retired for 
 repairs. 1 " These," says the Prince, " were the circum 
 stances in which I arrived at Fortress Monroe. Soon the 
 roads were filled with vessels coming from Alexandria or 
 Annapolis, and filled some with soldiers, some with horses, 
 cannon, and munitions of all kinds. Sometimes I counted 
 several hundred vessels at the anchorage, and among them 
 twenty or twenty-five large steam transports waiting for 
 
 1 See " The First Fight of Iron-Clads," page 738 of the Century for 
 March, 1885, and " In the Monitor Turret," same number of Century, page 
 754 for accounts, one by a Confederate and the other by a Union officer, 
 who assisted in conducting this drawn battle. 
 
42 LINCOLN AND STANTON. 
 
 their turn to come up to the quay and land the fifteen or 
 twenty thousand men whom they brought. The reader 
 may judge how fearful would have been the catastrophe 
 had the Mcrrimac suddenly appeared among this swarm 
 of ships, striking them one after another, and sending to 
 the botton these human hives with all their inmates ! The 
 Federal authorities, both naval and military, here under 
 went several days of the keenest anxiety. Every time 
 that a smoke was seen above the trees which concealed 
 the Elizabeth River, men s hearts beat fast." 
 
 Continuing my report I said to Mr. Stanton that my 
 informants had told me that General Naglee added that a 
 good deal of tact had to be exercised in the preparation 
 and management of the council. It would not do, he 
 said, for McClellan to attend, as the plan was inconsistent 
 with that which he had pressed upon the President as the 
 most feasible, and if he were there he would have to 
 explain and defend details he had not considered ; that it 
 would not do to have Hooker there, as the proposed cam 
 paign was in opposition to his known views and he would 
 undoubtedly oppose it ; and that McDowell, who he said 
 regarded himself as one of the most thoroughly educated 
 officers of the army, and was fond of talking, must be 
 silenced, which could be done by placing him in the chair, 
 as might be done in the absence of McClellan. He added 
 they had been sure they could count on at least seven to 
 five in the way the thing would be managed, as he had 
 prevented notice being sent to Hooker, and would repre 
 sent him on the assumed ground that he was sick and had 
 requested Naglee to represent him in the council. 
 
 Here, again, Mr. Stanton interrupted me by saying: 
 " The story lacks no point of detail; let the President put 
 what question he might, Naglee would answer to the 
 
LINCOLA T AND STANTOX. 43 
 
 exclusion of the generals who ranked him " ; and at length 
 I said to him : " This is a council of division commanders 
 and you are in command but of a brigade ; what are you 
 doing here ? When, as you have stated, he answered that 
 his brigade was in Hooker s division, and Hooker finding 
 himself seriously indisposed had conferred with him and 
 requested him to represent him in the council." Mr. Stan- 
 ton then proceeded to relate what occurred in the subse 
 quent conference between the President and himself, the 
 salient points of which will be found in the memorandum 
 of Mr. Townsend. 
 
 It is proper, before leaving this part of the subject, that 
 I should add what I seem to have omitted from my inter 
 view with General Naglee : that Mr. Stanton had said, 
 that General Blenker neutralized his vote by admitting 
 that he did not understand the plan, but voted for it 
 because it was submitted by the commanding general, 
 whom it was his duty to support ; and that General 
 Keyes qualified his support by the condition that no 
 change of base should be made until the Potomac had 
 been cleared of rebel batteries. 
 
 But, it will be asked, did General McCIellan combine 
 with this cabal to defraud the President of his constitu 
 tional rights as Commander-in-Chief and conservator of 
 the nation? On this point, there seems to be no room 
 to doubt. It was his plan he requested the President to 
 permit him to submit to a council of division command 
 ers, as to a board of arbitration between them, by whose 
 judgment he was willing to be bound ; he did not intimate 
 to the President that Senator Latham and Senator Rice 
 in concert with General Naglee had made the plan which 
 as yet he had not had time to consider, but claiming it as 
 his own staked his future upon its adoption by what his 
 
44 LINCOLN AND STANTON. 
 
 friend General Naglee frequently described as a packed 
 council of war. But what settles this point beyond all 
 peradventure is the fact that, referring to an interview with 
 the President on pages 140 and 141 of the May number of 
 the Century, the General says: " I then explained the pur 
 pose and effect of fortifying Washington, and as I thought 
 removed his apprehensions, but informed him that the 
 division commanders were to be at head-quarters that 
 morning, and suggested that my plans should be laid before 
 them, that they might give their opinion as to whether the 
 capital would be in danger. I also said that in order to 
 leave them perfectly untrammelled I would not attend the 
 meeting. Accordingly they met on the 8th of March and 
 approved my plans 
 
 Again General McClellan is a most accomplished engi 
 neer, but it is impossible to study the movements of his 
 army in the Peninsula without discovering that its General 
 was utterly ignorant of the topography and geography 
 of the country, with which in his letter of February 3d, 
 he professed to be so familiar, and into which he had 
 taken his army ; and that he did not know the course of its 
 streams, the extent and character of its swamps, or of the 
 military obstructions which his persistent procrastination 
 had permitted the enemy to construct. His once devoted 
 friend, who was Chief of Engineers from the organization 
 of the Army of the Potomac to the end of the Peninsular 
 campaign, General Barnard, astounded by the discovery 
 of his ignorance, exclaimed: 
 
 " What, then, is our astonishment when we find that he car 
 ried his army into a region of which he was wholly ignorant 
 that the quasi information he had about it was all erroneous 
 that within twelve miles of the outposts of troops under his 
 command a powerful defensive line had been thrown up during 
 
LINCOLN AND STANTON. 45 
 
 the winter and spring, of which he knew nothing whatever, 
 though it lay across his meditated line of march, and altered 
 the whole character of the problem that the roads which he 
 had said were passable at all seasons were of the most 
 horrible character, and the country a wilderness." : 
 
 But on this question the testimony of no witness but 
 McClellan himself need be invoked, for in his report of 
 the campaign 2 he said : 
 
 " As to the force and position of the enemy, the information 
 then in our possession was vague and untrustworthy. Much 
 of it was obtained from the staff officers of General Wool, and 
 was simply to the effect that Yorktown was surrounded by a 
 continuous line of earth works, with strong water batteries on 
 the York River, and garrisoned by not less than 15,000 troops, 
 under command of General J. B. Magruder. Maps, which 
 had been prepared by the topographical engineers under Gen 
 eral Wool s command, were furnished me, in which the War 
 wick River was represented as flowing parallel to, but not 
 crossing the road from Newport News to Williamsburg, making 
 the so-called Mulberry Island a real island ; and we had no 
 information as to the true course of the Warwick across 
 the Peninsula, nor of the formidable line of works which it 
 covered." 
 
 Men move with caution in the dark, and to McClellan s 
 profound ignorance of the country into which his political 
 friends had induced him to bring his army is due most of 
 the delays and failures by which he confounded so many 
 of his earlier military admirers. Thus, for weeks Magru- 
 der s army, which had never included more than 11,500 
 available troops, held the vast Army of the Potomac before 
 Yorktown, and drove its general to resort to the tardy 
 
 1 " The Peninsular Campaign," Gen. J. G. Barnard, p. 18. 
 3 Cited on pp. 18-19, Ibid. 
 
46 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 operation of a siege and to demand from Washington a 
 large supply of siege-guns; to which demand the Presi 
 dent, enlightened by recent experiences, replied May ist : 
 
 " Your call for Parrott guns from Washington alarms me, 
 chiefly because it argues indefinite procrastination. Is any 
 thing to be done ? " 1 
 
 But all shams must come to an end ; and when Magru- 
 der found that his army of 11,500 required but 8,000 
 rations per day to feed it, he felt that the time had come 
 when he could no longer check McClellan s entire force 
 by " clatter," and must get out of the way. The evacua 
 tion of Yorktown was arranged, and it was the pursuit of 
 its retreating forces that brought on the battle of Wil- 
 liamsburg. It is not my purpose to examine any of the 
 battles of the Peninsula in detail, but as illustrative of 
 many things in McClellan s management of the Campaign, 
 I submit the following extracts from General Hooker s 
 report of the battle of Williamsburg : 
 
 " Being in pursuit of a retreating army, I deemed it my duty 
 to lose no time in making the disposition of my forces to 
 attack, regardless of their number and position, except to 
 accomplish the result with the least possible sacrifice of life. 
 By so doing my division, if it did not capture the army before 
 me, would at least hold them, in order that some others might. 
 Besides, I knew of the presence of more than 30,000 troops 
 not two miles distant from me, and that within twelve miles 
 four hours march was the bulk of the Army of the Potomac. 
 My own position was tenable for double that length of time, 
 against three times my number. * * * 
 
 "From the earliest moment of the attack it was an object of 
 deep solicitude to establish a connection with the troops in my 
 immediate neighborhood on the Yorktown road, and as that had 
 
 1 " Records, War of the Rebellion," Vol. XL, Series I., Part III., p. 130. 
 
LINCOLN AND STANTON. 47 
 
 been accomplished, and as I saw no signs of their advance at 
 1 1 120 A.M., I addressed the subjoined note to the assistant adju 
 tant-general, Third Corps, under the impression that his chief 
 was still there. It is as follows : 
 
 " * I have had a hard contest all the morning, but do not despair 
 of success. My men are hard at work, but a good deal ex 
 hausted. It is reported to me that my communication with 
 you by the Yorktown road is clear of the enemy. Batteries, 
 cavalry, and infantry can take post by the side of mine to whip 
 the enemy. 
 
 ******* 
 
 " At this juncture word was received from Col. Taylor that 
 the regiments of his command longest engaged were falling 
 short of ammunition, and when he was informed that the sup 
 ply train was not yet up, a portion of his command presented 
 an obstinate front to the advance of the enemy with no other 
 cartridges than were gathered from the boxes of the fallen. 
 
 " Again the enemy were reenforced by the arrival of Long- 
 street s division. His troops had passed through Williamsburg 
 on their retreat from Yorktown, and were recalled to strengthen 
 the rebel forces before Williamsburg. No sooner had they 
 joined than it was known that they were again moving to drive 
 in our left. After a violent and protracted struggle they were 
 again repulsed with great loss. Simultaneous with this move 
 ment an attempt was made to drive in our front, and seize the 
 batteries by the troops from Fort Magruder, aided by ree n- 
 forcements from the redoubts on the left. The withdrawal of 
 the supports invited this attack, and it was at this time that 
 four of our guns were captured. They could have been saved, 
 but only at the risk of losing the day. Whatever of dishonor, 
 if any, is attached to their loss belongs to the brigadier-general 
 commanding the division, and not to his chief of artillery, or 
 to the officers or men serving with the batteries, for truer men 
 never stepped upon the field of battle. 
 
48 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 " History will not be believed when it is told that the noble 
 officers and men of my division were permitted to carry on 
 this unequal struggle from morning until night unaided, in the 
 presence of more than 30,000 of their comrades with arms in 
 their hands ; nevertheless it is true. If we failed to capture 
 the rebel army on the plains of Williamsburg it surely will not 
 be ascribed to the want of conduct and courage in my com 
 mand." 
 
 " In entering upon the narrative of the operations of 
 the campaign," says Gen. Alex. S. Webb, in his admirable 
 little volume, entitled, "The Peninsula," " the two leading 
 facts to be met and dealt with are: 
 
 " First. That while General McClellan succeeded in 
 reaching the vicinity of his objective point the Confed 
 erate capital, the results at each stage of his progress 
 were inadequate and disappointing. 
 
 " Second. That when that point seemed to be within 
 his grasp, his army suddenly encountered reverses, and 
 retreated from its advanced position to the banks of the 
 James." 
 
 The justness of General Webb s propositions is estab 
 lished by McClellan s own commanders, who, in their 
 testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the 
 War, swore that he might have overwhelmed the rebel 
 force arrayed against him and taken Richmond five times 
 during the Peninsular Campaign at Manassas, YorktOwn, 
 Williamsburg, Fair Oaks, and Malvern Hill; and the Con 
 federate General, D. H. Hill in his article on the battle of 
 Games Mill, in the June number of the Century, says: 
 " During Lee s absence Richmond was at the mercy of 
 McClellan ; but Magruder was there (at Yorktown) to keep 
 up a clatter, as Swinton expresses it. No one was better 
 fitted for such a work. When McClellan landed on the 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 49 
 
 Peninsula, he had 118,000 men, and Magruder had 11,500 
 men, to cover a defensive line of fourteen miles. * 
 The fortifications around Richmond at that time were very 
 slight. He could have captured the city with but little loss 
 of life. The want of supplies would have forced Lee to 
 attack him as soon as possible, with all the disadvantages 
 of a precipitated movement. But the Federal commander 
 seems to have contemplated nothing of the kind." 
 
 Throughout the entire period of his command, Mc- 
 Clellan filled the public ear with complaints against Mr. 
 Lincoln and his administration, and from the time Mr. 
 Stanton became Secretary of War with assertions of his 
 malign influence in thwarting his plans, and constraining 
 the President to withhold from him adequate forces, in 
 cluding sometimes those which had been distinctly prom 
 ised. To these charges, especially those which are revived 
 on page 142 of the Century for May, I propose that 
 President Lincoln shall reply from the Executive Cham 
 ber on the Qth of April, 1862. The text of this reply will 
 be found in McClellan s report, page 15, Vol. XL, Part I., 
 " Records of the Rebellion." But as the marks by which 
 certain words were emphasized, and the quotation marks 
 which indicate that a pregnant question had previously 
 been put to the General, have been disregarded in copy 
 ing it for the report, I have followed the original manu 
 script : 
 
 "WASHINGTON, April 9, 1862. 
 
 " MAJOR GENERAL MCCLELLAN : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR. Your dispatches complaining that you are 
 not properly sustained, while they do not offend me, do pain 
 me very much. 
 
 " Blenker s division was withdrawn from you before you left 
 
50 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 here ; and you know the pressure under which I did it, and, 
 as I thought, acquiesced in it certainly not without reluctance. 
 
 " After you left I ascertained that less than twenty thousand 
 unorganized men, without a single field battery, were all you 
 designed to be left for the defence of Washington and Man- 
 assas Junction ; and part of this even was to go to General 
 Hooker s old position. General Banks corps, once designed 
 for Manassas Junction, was diverted and tied up on the line of 
 Winchester and Strasburg, and could not leave it without 
 again exposing the Upper Potomac and the Baltimore and 
 Ohio Railroad. This presented, or would present, when Mc 
 Dowell and Sumner should be gone, a great temptation to the 
 enemy to turn back from the Rappahannock and sack Wash 
 ington. My explicit order that Washington should, by the 
 judgment of all the commanders of the Army Corps, be left 
 entirely secure, had been neglected. It was precisely this that 
 drove me to detain McDowell. 
 
 " I do not forget that I was satisfied with your arrangement 
 to leave Banks at Manassas Junction ; but when that arrange 
 ment was broken up, and nothing was substituted for it, of 
 course I was not satisfied ; I was constrained to substitute 
 something for it myself. And now allow me to ask: Do 
 you really think I should permit the line from Richmond, via 
 Manassas Junction, to this city to be entirely open except 
 what resistance could be presented by less than twenty thou 
 sand unorganized troops ? This is a question which the 
 country will not allow me to evade. 
 
 " There is a curious mystery about the number of the troops 
 now with you. When I telegraphed you on the 6th, saying 
 you had over a hundred thousand with you, I had just ob 
 tained from the Secretary of War a statement, taken, as he 
 said, from your own returns, making 108,000 then with you 
 and en route to you. You now say you will have but 85,000 
 when all en route to you shall have reached you. How can 
 the discrepancy of 23,000 be accounted for ? 
 
LINCOLN AND STANTON. 51 
 
 " As to Gen. Wool s command, I understand it is doing for 
 you precisely what a like number of your own would have to 
 do if that command was away. 
 
 " I suppose the whole force which has gone forward for you is 
 with you by this time, and, if so, I think it is the precise time 
 for you to strike a blow. By delay the enemy will gain faster 
 by fortifications and reinforcements than you can by reenforce- 
 ments alone. And once more let me tell you it is indispensa 
 ble to you that you strike a blow. / am powerless to help this. 
 You will do me the justice to remember I always insisted that 
 going down the Bay in search of a field, instead of fighting 
 at or near Manassas, was only shifting and not surmounting 
 difficulty ; that we would find the same enemy and the same 
 or equal intrenchments at either place. The country will not 
 fail to note, is now noting, that the present hesitation to move 
 upon an intrenched enemy is but the story of Manassas re 
 peated. 
 
 " I beg to assure you that I have never written you or spoken 
 to you in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a 
 fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as, in my most anxious 
 judgment, I consistently can. But you must act. 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " A. LINCOLN." 
 
 Though this letter does not name Mr. Stanton, it is his 
 thorough vindication, and illustrates to the generation 
 which has come to maturity since the great President s 
 death, the gentleness of his nature, by showing how, when 
 stirred, by persistent misrepresentation, to what General 
 McClellan still regards as extreme impatience, he could 
 reason with a pampered and petulant egotist. 
 
PART II. 
 
 THE purpose with which I finished reading Gen. McClel- 
 lan s paper was to prepare within the limits of a magazine 
 article a defence of my silent friends. Having found it 
 impossible to compress my materials into such limited 
 space, I submit this brochure in vindication of the truth of 
 history, and in justice to the illustrious dead, whose mem 
 ory the writer of that article has so wantonly aspersed. 
 
 I do not propose to follow the Army of the Potomac 
 through the disasters which incompetence or covert design 
 inflicted upon it, in slow succession, from Fortress Monroe 
 and Yorktown to Harrison s Landing, but I cannot resist 
 the temptation to borrow a summary of the results of its 
 patriotic toil and suffering, from the pages of the latest, 
 and, in my judgment, the best life of Abraham Lincoln 
 that has yet appeared. The author of this admirable 
 volume, Hon. Isaac N. Arnold, says : 1 
 
 " On the 8th of July, 1862, the President visited the camp 
 of General McClellan, and was depressed on finding that of 
 the magnificent army with which that general had started to 
 capture Richmond, and with all the reinforcements which had 
 been sent to it, there were now remaining only 85,000 effective 
 men. There is a touching- story in Roman history, of the 
 Emperor Augustus calling in vain upon Varus to give him 
 back his legions. The President might well have said to 
 McClellan at Harrison s Landing : Where are my soldiers? 
 
 1 Page 287. 
 
 52 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 53 
 
 where are the patriotic young volunteers, vainly sacrificed in 
 fruitless battles from Yorktown to Malvern Hill, and the still 
 larger numbers who have perished in hospitals and in the 
 swamps of the Chickahominy ? * What has been gained by 
 this costly sacrifice ? 
 
 " The records of the Confederates make it perfectly clear 
 that there were several occasions when the Army of the Po 
 tomac could have broken through their thin lines and gone 
 into Richmond, but McClellan had not the sagacity to discover 
 it, and if he had known of their weakness, he would probably 
 have hesitated until it was too late." 
 
 What a contrast to the enervating inaction and fruitless 
 expenditure of money and men summed up in this para 
 graph, do Grant s military movements present ! Indeed, 
 McClellan s incompetency, or want of fidelity to the 
 cause, to the command of whose armies President Lin 
 coln had assigned him, is absolutely demonstrated by a 
 study of Grant s army record. 1 McClellan was as a Major- 
 
 1 June 28, 1861. Mustered into U. S. Service as Colonel 2ist Illinois 
 Infantry. 
 
 August 8, 1861. -Assigned to command of the " District of Ironton," Mo. 
 
 August 9, 1861. Appointed Brig.-Gen. U. S. Vols., to date from May 
 17, 1861. 
 
 August 28, 1861. Assigned to command of all troops in Southern 
 Missouri ; this command was extended over Southern Illinois and Western 
 Kentucky, and was exercised by Grant till he took the field in Feb., 1862. 
 
 Sept. 6., 1861. Occupied Paducah, Ky. 
 
 Nov. 7, 1861. Commanded U. S. forces in the battle of Belmont, Mo. 
 
 Feb. 6, 1862. Commanded land forces at capture of Fort Henry, Tenn. 
 
 Feb. 14, 1862. Assigned to command of District of West Tennessee. 
 
 Feb. 16, 1862. Captures Fort Donelson, Tennessee. Appointed Major- 
 General U. S. Vols. 
 
 Feb. 17 to Oct. 25, 1862. Commanding District of West Tennessee. 
 
 March 4 to April 13, 1862. Commanding expedition up the Tennessee 
 River. 
 
 April 6 and 7, 1862. Commanding United States forces at the battle of 
 Pittsburg Landing. 
 
54 LINCOLN AND STANTON. 
 
 General in command of the Union forces in West Vir 
 ginia when Grant was employed as a citizen clerk in the 
 office of the Adjutant-General of the State of Illinois, 
 from which humble position he was promoted by Gover 
 nor Yates to the colonelcy of the 2ist Regiment of State 
 Volunteers. Three weeks thereafter, on June 28th, he 
 was mustered into the United States Service, and thence 
 forth manifested a desire to strike the enemy whenever it 
 could be done. His advancement was rapid beyond prece 
 dent, but he won it fairly, step by step, by availing him 
 self of possibilities which had been presented to McClellan, 
 but which neither the voice of military ambition, promis 
 ing present plaudits and future fame, nor the persuasive 
 powers of Lincoln and Stanton could induce the immedi 
 ate successor of Winfield Scott in the coveted position 
 of General-in-Chief, to successfully test. 
 
 The delays and disasters to which this splendid and 
 
 April 13 to June 10, 1862. Second in command to Major-General Hal- 
 leek, commanding Department of the Mississippi. 
 
 July 1 6, 1862. Succeeded General Halleck in command of forces about 
 and west of Corinth. 
 
 Oct. 16, 1862. Assigned to command of the I3th Army Corps and Depart 
 ment of the Tennessee. 
 
 Oct. 25, 1862, to Oct. 16, 1863. Commanding Department of Tennessee. 
 
 Oct. 31, 1862, to Jan. 10, 1863. In immediate command of operations 
 along the Mississippi Central Railroad. 
 
 Jan. 30 to July 4, 1863. In immediate command of operations against 
 Vicksburg. 
 
 July 4, 1863. Appointed Major-General U. S. Army. 
 
 Oct. 16, 1863. Assigned to command of the Military Division of the 
 Mississippi, embracing the Departments of the Cumberland, Ohio, and 
 Tennessee. 
 
 Oct. 18, 1863, to March 17, 1864. Commanding Military Division of the 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Nov. 23 to 27, 1863. Defeats Confederate Army of Tennessee at Mis 
 sionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, pursuing it to Ringgold. 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 55 
 
 thoroughly appointed army had been so long subjected, 
 had had the effect of impairing the confidence of many 
 of its officers in each other, and in many instances of 
 begetting mutual bitterness of feeling. In the West hap 
 pier conditions prevailed. There success had inspired 
 both officers and men with confidence in themselves and 
 each other, and had turned the thoughts of the country 
 toward that section of the Union as the field from which 
 a successful commander of our Eastern forces must be 
 sought. It was therefore natural that when the President 
 had been convinced that nothing could be hoped for from 
 McClellan s leadership he should commit the com 
 mand of the army to a Western man, in whom the 
 country might hope if not confide. Accordingly Halleck 
 was appointed General-in-Chief, and assumed command on 
 the nth of July. About the same time the President, 
 by an Executive order, created the Army of Virginia, 
 
 Nov. 25, 1863. Dispatches Granger, and afterward Sherman, to the suc 
 cor of Knoxville, Tenn. 
 
 March 2, 1864. Appointed Lieutenant-General of U. S. Army. 
 
 March 17, 1864. Assumes command of the Armies of the United States. 
 
 May 4, 1864. Takes the field with the Army of the Potomac and gth 
 Army Corps. 
 
 May 4 to June 14, 1864. Engaged in the campaign from the Rapidan to 
 the James as follows : 
 
 May 5-7. Wilderness. 
 
 May 8-iS. Spottsylvania. , 
 
 May 25-27. North Anna. 
 
 June 1-12 Cold Harbor. 
 
 June 14-15. Crosses James River. 
 
 April 15, 1864, to April 2, 1865. Operations against Petersburg. 
 
 March 29 to April 9, 1865. Final campaign of the Army of the Potomac. 
 
 April 2, 1865. Captures Petersburg. 
 
 April 3, 1865. Occupation of Richmond. 
 
 April 9, 1865. Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. 
 
 July 25, 1865. Appointed General of the Armies of the United States. 
 The first one so appointed under our Constitution. 
 
 )X 
 
56 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 which he assigned to the command of General John Pope, 
 whose success at Island No. 10, and at New Madrid, on 
 the Mississippi, had illustrated his tact and gallantry. 
 But events soon showed that Pope s discretion was not 
 equal to his courage, for, on assuming command of the 
 three corps- those of Fremont, Banks, and McDowell 
 which constituted his force, and gave him about 38,000 
 men with whom to defend Washington, hold the valley 
 of the Shenandoah, and repel the expected approach of 
 Lee, he issued an address to his army which was calcu 
 lated to wound McClellan s susceptibilities, but which 
 cannot be accepted as a plea in extenuation of the course 
 pursued toward him and his gallant command by McClel- 
 lan and Friz-John Porter. 
 
 It had become known through an intercepted dispatch 
 from Lee to Stuart as early as the i6th of July, that Lee 
 was preparing to mass an overwhelming army in front of 
 Pope and crush him before he could be reenforced by the 
 Army of the Potomac. Thus advised of his danger, Pope 
 retired behind the Rappahannock. Two patriotic move 
 ments were now open to McClellan : To move on Rich 
 mond and force Lee back to its defence, for which 
 operation he still had ample resources ; or by prompt 
 movements to reenforce Pope, and by their combined 
 forces overwhelm Lee while en route to Maryland. Un 
 happily for his fame, he did neither. The object of this 
 paper does not require me to discuss their motives, or the 
 conduct of McClellan and his most trusted chieftains 
 towards Gen. Pope and his command. The story consti 
 tutes one of the most painful and ignoble chapters of our 
 history. As an exhibition of military insubordination and 
 persistent disobedience, within the sound of an enemy s 
 guns, it is unparalleled in modern history. The facts are 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 57 
 
 proven by official papers, and may be read in orders of the 
 President, the Secretary of War, and the General-in-Chief, 
 which may be found at length in the report of the Com 
 mittee on the Conduct of the War, in the Official Records, 
 of the War of the Rebellion, and admirably collated and 
 condensed in the biographies of Lincoln by Raymond and 
 Arnold, to which I have referred. It is enough for me to 
 say here that, in consequence of the disregard of orders 
 by McClellan and his chiefs, Pope s army, after three days 
 of desperate fighting, was broken and driven within the 
 defences of Washington. Such was the inglorious termi 
 nation of the Peninsular Campaign, with Fortress Monroe 
 as a base, during which Gen. McClellan, " from first to 
 last, never made his personal presence felt on a battle 
 field." 
 
 Here I would pause, but that my arraignment would lack 
 completeness if I failed to consider two questions which 
 incredulity sometimes propounds. 
 
 First. What motive could have impelled McClellan to 
 forego the fame of a successful general and the grandest 
 object of a noble ambition the restoration of peace and 
 the preservation of the unity of his country, when torn 
 and distracted by fratricidal war? 
 
 Second. If he were contumacious, faithless, or incom 
 petent, why did Mr. Lincoln continue him in command 
 and restore him thereto after Gen. Pope s betrayal ? 
 
 While considering the first question, I must remind my 
 readers that I told them that, having driven the venerable 
 Lieutenant-General into retirement, McClellan had placed 
 himself at the head of the party of inaction, and permit 
 ted himself to be surrounded by the leaders of the reac 
 tionary political forces of the Northern States. I did not 
 
 1 Gen. Palfrey s " Antietam and Fredericksburg," p. 134. 
 
58 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 add, as I might have done, and now do, that he was 
 thenceforth recognized as the accepted candidate of those 
 forces for the Presidential election which would occur in 
 the autumn of 1864. 
 
 For evidence of his intense solicitude for the preserva 
 tion of the rights of property of the citizens of the 
 insurgent States, and that he regarded it as a measure of 
 higher importance than the success of our arms, I may 
 refer at large to his orders, proclamations, memoranda, 
 letters, and dispatches, whether addressed to national or 
 State officers, or to individuals, or bodies of citizens. He 
 availed himself of every pretext for expressing his convic 
 tion that no act of the Government or army should impair 
 the value or the sacredness of slave property. And his 
 assumption that his army was an armed police, for the pro 
 tection of slavery, with his persistent refusal to permit it 
 to achieve a decisive victory, justified the country in accept 
 ing the declaration of his purpose, made by his friend and 
 subordinate, Major John J. Key, who, in reply to the 
 question : " Why was not the rebel army bagged im 
 mediately after the battle of Sharpsburg?" said that " It 
 was not the game ; that we should tire the rebels out, 
 and ourselves ; that that was the only way the Union 
 could be preserved, we come together fraternally, and 
 slavery be saved." l 
 
 Strongly confirmatory of Major Key s exposition of 
 "the game" to be played by McClellan, is the general s 
 letter to the President, from the gun-boat on which he 
 had sought safety at Harrison s Landing, after the dis 
 asters of Malvern Hill. It opens with a frank confession 
 that the condition of the army was critical, and proceeds 
 to treat of subjects which, he as frankly admits, " do not 
 1 Moore s " Rebellion Record," vol. 5, p. 87. 
 
LINCOLN AND STANTON. 59 
 
 strictly relate to the situation of this army or strictly come 
 within the scope of my official duties." Having, as he 
 supposed, by exaggerated appeals to the apprehensions 
 of the President, prepared the way for bravado, the soldier 
 who professed to believe that there was then an over 
 whelming army in his front, which could drive him from 
 his positions, or reduce him to submission by blocking 
 his river communications, insolently attempted to play 
 the dictator and announced, to his Commander-in-Chief, 
 the President of the United States, that an Executive 
 declaration of views especially upon slavery, which, he 
 could not approve, would rapidly disintegrate the army 
 under his command. But on these delicate points, the 
 General must be allowed to speak for himself. He says : 
 
 " HEAD-QUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, ) 
 "Camp near Harrison s Landing, Va., July 7, 1862. j 
 
 " MR. PRESIDENT : You have been fully informed, that the 
 rebel army is in the front, with the purpose of overwhelming 
 us by attacking our positions or reducing us by blocking our 
 river communications. I cannot but regard our condition as 
 critical, and I earnestly desire, in view of possible contingen 
 cies, to lay before your Excellency, for your private considera 
 tion, my general views concerning the existing state of the 
 rebellion, although they do not strictly relate to the situation 
 of this army, or strictly come within the scope of my official 
 
 duties. 
 
 ******* 
 
 " Neither confiscation of property, political execution of 
 persons, territorial organization of States, nor forcible abolition 
 of slavery, should be contemplated for a moment. In prose 
 cuting the war, all private property and unarmed persons 
 should be strictly protected, subject only to the necessity of 
 military operations ; all private property taken for military 
 
60 LINCOLN AND STANTON. 
 
 uses should be paid or receipted for; pillage and waste should 
 be treated as high crimes, all unnecessary trespass sternly 
 prohibited, and offensive demeanor, by the military towards 
 citizens, promptly rebuked. Military arrests should not be 
 tolerated, except in places where active hostilities exist ; and 
 oaths, not required by enactments constitutionally made, should 
 be neither demanded nor received. Military government 
 should be confined to the preservation of public order and 
 the protection of political right. Military power should not be 
 allowed to interfere with the relations of servitude, either by sup 
 porting or impairing the authority of the master, except for 
 repressing disorder as in other cases. 
 
 ******* 
 
 " Unless the principles governing the future conduct of our 
 struggle shall be made known and approved, the effort to obtain 
 requisite forces will be almost hopeless. A declaration of 
 radical views, especially upon slavery, will rapidly disintegrate our 
 present armies." 
 
 Thenceforth McClellan made no special effort to con 
 ceal his presidential expectations. Indeed, it was evident 
 that, in his own judgment, his military relations and duties 
 were subordinate to the duties he owed his political parti 
 sans. His declaration to the President, that decided 
 measures against slavery would disintegrate our armies, 
 did not restrain Mr. Lincoln from issuing, on the 22d of 
 September, 1862, a proclamation, as " President of the 
 United States of America and Commander-in-Chief of the 
 Army and Navy thereof," in which he declared 
 
 " That hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted 
 for the object of practically restoring the constitutional rela 
 tion between the United States and each of the States, and the 
 people thereof, in which States that relation is or may be sus 
 pended or disturbed. * * * 
 
 1 McPherson s " Political History," 1860-64, PP- 3^5, 386. 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 6 1 
 
 " That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord 
 one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held 
 as slaves, within any State, or designated part of a State, the 
 people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United 
 States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free, and the 
 Executive Government of the United States, including the 
 military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and main 
 tain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to 
 repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may 
 make for their actual freedom." 
 
 And after reciting a recent act of Congress and certain 
 sections of another act, the President added : 
 
 " And I do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons en 
 gaged in the military and naval service of the United States to 
 observe, obey, and enforce, within their respective spheres of 
 service, the act and sections above recited." 1 
 
 The last paragraph made it the instant duty of each 
 commander of forces in the military and naval service to 
 publish this proclamation to his command. As his Harri 
 son s Landing letter had been published to the country at 
 large simultaneously with its delivery to the President, 
 much curiosity prevailed as to the course McClellan would 
 pursue under the circumstances. The duty required was 
 the promulgation of the proclamation in the orders of the 
 day ; and elsewhere than at the head-quarters of the Army 
 of the Potomac, it was published as part of the orders of 
 the day, on the day of its receipt. But not until October 
 7th did McClellan issue it to his command, and at that 
 late day he qualified it by an explanatory order of his 
 own, in which he said : 
 
 " A proclamation of such grave moment to the nation, offi 
 cially communicated to the army, affords to the general com- 
 
 1 McPherson s " Political History," 1860-64, PP- 227, 228. 
 
62 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 manding an opportunity of defining specifically to the officers 
 and soldiers under his command the relation borne by all per 
 sons in the military service of the United States towards the 
 civil authorities of the Government." 
 
 And after a dissertation upon the relations of the civil 
 and military power of the Government, he proceeded to 
 console what he evidently believed to be the wounded 
 spirits of his troops by informing them that " the remedy 
 for political errors, if any are committed, is to be found 
 only in the action of the people at the polls." 
 
 On the 1 2th day of October, 1863, the General, no 
 longer in command of an army, addressed a letter from 
 Orange, N. J., to the Hon. Chas. J. Biddle, a representa 
 tive in Congress from Philadelphia, in which he said : 
 
 " I desire to state, clearly and distinctly, that having, some 
 days ago, had a full conversation with Judge Woodward, I find 
 that our views agree, and I regard his election as Governor of 
 Pennsylvania called for by the interests of the nation." z 
 
 This avowal of absolute accord with Judge Woodward 
 was accepted in political circles as a pregnant fact. Judge 
 Woodward never halted in uncertain opinions. He was 
 a positive man, and had the courage of his convictions. 
 Had he been in the 3/th Congress he would have coop 
 erated with Vallandigham, Long, Harris, and other 
 pronounced advocates of slavery and opponents of meas 
 ures proposed in recognition of the right of the Gov 
 ernment to use force in the maintenance of the Union and 
 the integrity of the country ; he would, of course, have 
 supported Pendleton s resolution restricting the power to 
 suspend the habeas corpus to the Congress of the United 
 States, 3 and have distinguished himself by the freedom 
 
 1 McPherson, p. 227. * McPherson, p. 386. 3 Supra page 12. 
 
LINCOLN AND STANTON. 63 
 
 and intensity of his denunciation of the Government, and 
 of his fellow-citizens who denied the recently promulgated 
 dogma that slavery was national and existed of right 
 under the national flag, whether on sea or land. In his 
 judgment every American citizen was hostile to the best 
 interests of his country who would not consent to the 
 abrogation of the policy of Jefferson, as embodied in the 
 ordinance of 1787, by which slavery had been forever 
 excluded from the Northwestern Territory, and approve 
 the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, under which 
 statutory adjustment, the right to restrict the territorial 
 limits of slavery had been recognized for nearly half a 
 century. 
 
 Judge Woodward was one of the few men of the North 
 who were accredited with the open expression of a pref 
 erence that the dividing line, should a division of the 
 Union occur, should be north of Pennsylvania and west 
 of New England ; and in his well-considered and famous 
 speech, to the meeting assembled on the call of the Mayor 
 of Philadelphia, in Independence Square, on the I3th of 
 December, 1860, he said : 
 
 " The inexorable exclusion of slave property from the com 
 mon territories which the Government holds in trust for the 
 people of all the States, is a natural and direct step toward the 
 grand result of extinguishing slave property, and was one of 
 the record issues of the late election. This policy must be 
 considered as approved also. Not that every man who voted 
 for the successful nominee meant to affirm that a trustee for 
 several coequal parties has a right, in law or reason, to exclude 
 the property of some and admit that of others, for whom he 
 holds ; but so is the record. The South seems inclined to 
 accept the judgment. She holds the property that is to be 
 shut out of the Territories, that is to be restricted, cribbed, 
 
64 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 and confined more and more until it is finally extinguished. 
 Everywhere in the South the people are beginning to look out 
 for the means of self-defence. Could it be expected that she 
 would be indifferent to such events as have occurred ? that 
 she would stand idle, and see measures concerted and carried 
 forward for the annihilation of her property in slaves ? Several 
 States propose to retire from the Confederacy, and that justly 
 alarms us. We come together to consider what may be done 
 to prevent it ; and we are bound, in fidelity to ourselves and 
 others, to take the measure of the whole magnitude of the 
 danger." 1 * * * 
 
 " Have I not a right to say," he exclaimed, " that a gov 
 ernment which was all-sufficient for the country fifty years 
 ago, when soil and climate and State sovereignty were trusted 
 to regulate the spread of slavery, is insufficient to-day, when 
 every upstart politician can stir the people to mutiny against 
 the domestic institutions of our Southern neighbors when the 
 ribald jests of seditious editors like Greeley and Beecher can 
 sway legislatures and popular votes against the handiwork of 
 Washington or Madison." 2 
 
 Thus General McClellan s exemplar closed his speech 
 on that momentous occasion, by announcing his readi 
 ness to unite in promoting such a revision of the 
 Constitution, framed by Washington and Madison, as 
 would be satisfactory to the slave-holding minority of 
 the Southern people. These extreme opinions were not 
 lightly held by Judge Woodward. Nor was their con 
 trolling influence limited to his personal conduct. They 
 regulated his official action. The Supreme Court of 
 Pennsylvania then consisted of five judges, and in oppo 
 sition to the otherwise almost unbroken current of judicial 
 decision, by Federal and State courts, he gave the casting 
 vote by which the Conscription Law was declared to be 
 
 1 " The American Conflict," vol. I., p. 364. a Ibid. 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 65 
 
 unconstitutional, and its enforcement rendered impracti 
 cable in Pennsylvania. The opinion of the court was 
 delivered by Chief-Justice Lowrie, whose commission was 
 about to expire, and who, having been renominated, was 
 then a candidate for reelection. But Judge Woodward 
 was unwilling that the per-Curiam opinion should speak 
 for him, and in the course of an opinion delivered by 
 himself said : 
 
 " The great vice of the Conscript Law is that it is founded 
 on an assumption that Congress may take away, not the State 
 rights of a citizen, but the security and foundation of his State 
 rights. And how long is civil liberty expected to last after the 
 securities of civil liberty are destroyed ? The Constitution of 
 the United States committed the liberties of the citizen in part 
 to the Federal Government, but expressly reserved to the 
 States and the people of the States all it did not delegate. It 
 gave the General Government a standing army, but left to the 
 States their militia. Its purposes in all this balancing of 
 power were wise and good, but this legislation disregards these 
 distinctions and upturns the whole system of government when 
 it converts the State militia into National Forces, and claims 
 to use and govern them as such." 1 
 
 How violently the opinions of the Judge were strained 
 against the Northern cause is seen in the fact that the 
 Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern Dis 
 trict of Pennsylvania, both of whose judges, Greer and 
 Cadwallader, were life-long Democrats, after having lis 
 tened to the amplest argument against the constitution 
 ality of the law, affirmed it, and in the course of their 
 opinion said : 
 
 " This review of the principal enactment of the law suffices 
 1 Kneedler vs. Lane, 45, Pa. State Reps., p. 252. 
 
66 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 to indicate its general purposes. The organization of armies 
 under it is to cease on the termination of the Civil War, for 
 whose exigencies it provides ; and the term of service of those 
 drafted under it cannot exceed three years, though the war 
 should continue longer. Such limitations of the time would 
 have prevented the compulsory requirement of military service 
 from being unconstitutional, though it had included every able- 
 bodied male inhabitant." 1 
 
 The State election was held on the 8th of October, 
 when Chief-Justice Lowrie was defeated by Daniel Ag- 
 new, a lawyer who, though comparatively unknown to the 
 people of the State, enjoyed a high reputation among 
 his professional brethren, and the question having been 
 reargued before the court as now constituted, it vacated 
 the orders granted in the cases heard in November, and 
 affirmed the constitutionality of the act, Chief-Justice 
 Strong and Justices John M. Read and Agnew making 
 the order, and Justices Woodward and Thompson reit 
 erating their denial of its constitutionality. In closing 
 the opinion of the court, which was delivered by Justice 
 Agnew, who, as if to emphasize the grounds of his dissent 
 from Judge Woodward s opinion, said : 
 
 " The constitutional authority to use the national forces 
 creates a corresponding duty to provide a number adequate to 
 the necessity. The duty is vital and essential, falling back on 
 the fundamental right of self-preservation, and the powers 
 expressed to declare war, raise armies, maintain navies, and 
 provide for the common defence. Power and duty now go 
 hand in hand with the extremity until every available man in 
 the nation is called into service, if the emergency requires it, 
 and of this there can be no judge but Congress." 2 
 
 1 McPherson, p. 273. 
 2 Smith vs. Lane et al. Grant s Cases, Sup. Ct., Pa., vol. III., p. 552. 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 6j 
 
 Horatio Seymour, Governor of New York, sought dis 
 tinction by opposing the draft, and while the Anti-Draft 
 riots raged in New York, announced to a tumultuous mob 
 of his " friends " that he had prepared an appeal from the 
 action of the Administration which he had transmitted to 
 the President by his adjutant. 1 The conduct of Governor 
 Seymour in thus exciting popular resistance to the en 
 forcement of the Conscription Law invited a discussion of 
 the subject by Mr. Lincoln, who, in replying to the Gov 
 ernor s appeal, demonstrated the necessity for, and conse 
 quently the constitutionality of, the law. In the course 
 of his letter the President said : 
 
 " I do not object to abide the decision of the United States 
 Supreme Court, or of the Judges thereof, on the constitution 
 ality of the Draft Law. In fact, I should be willing to facili 
 tate the obtaining of it. But I cannot consent to lose the time 
 while it is being obtained. We are contending with an enemy 
 who, as I understand, drives every able-bodied man he can 
 reach into his ranks very much as a butcher drives bullocks 
 into a slaughter-pen. No time is wasted ; no argument is 
 used. This produces an army which will soon turn upon our 
 now victorious soldiers, already in the field, if they shall not 
 be sustained by recruits as they should be. It produces an 
 army with a rapidity not to be matched on our side, if we first 
 waste time to reexperiment with the volunteer system, already 
 deemed by Congress, and palpably in fact, so far exhausted as 
 to be inadequate ; and then more time to obtain a court de 
 cision as to whether the law is constitutional which requires a 
 part of those not now in the service to go to the aid of those 
 who are already in it ; and still more time to determine with 
 absolute certainty that we get those who are to go in the pre 
 cisely legal proportion to those who are not to go. My pur- 
 
 1 " New York and the Conscription of 1863," General James B. Fry. G. 
 P. Putnam s Sons. Also :< The American Conflict," vol. II., pp. 506507. 
 
68 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 pose is to be in my action just and constitutional, and yet 
 practical, in performing the important duty with which I am 
 charged, of maintaining the unity and the free principles of 
 our common country." 1 
 
 On the 2Qth of August, 1864, a convention assembled 
 at Chicago for the purpose of nominating candidates for 
 President and Vice-President. The call under which it 
 assembled was for a Democratic national convention, and 
 Governor Seymour presided over its deliberations. It was, 
 however, not a convention of representative Democrats, 
 for it resolved " that after four years of failure to restore 
 the Union by the experiment of war," " justice, humanity, 
 liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate 
 efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities," and one of 
 the attending orators declared that there was no " real 
 difference between a war Democrat and an Abolitionist." 
 General McClellan was nominated for the Presidency on 
 the first ballot by a vote of 2O2-J- to 23^, and Geo. H. 
 Pendleton was unanimously nominated for the Vice-Presi 
 dency. At the November election these nominees re 
 ceived a majority of the votes cast in three States New 
 Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky. 
 
 In his memorial on the life, character, and services 
 of William H. Seward, Mr. Charles Francis Adams 
 set forth such estimates of Mr. Lincoln s intelligence > 
 and made such statements as to his relations to the 
 administration of which he was always the master spirit, 
 that Hon. Gideon Welles, who from Mr. Lincoln s 
 nomination for the presidency till the day of his death 
 had enjoyed familiar and confidential intercourse with 
 him, felt constrained to vindicate his memory from the 
 aspersions cast upon it by one whom he had honored with 
 
 1 " The American Conflict," vol. II., p. 508. 
 
LINCOLN AND STANTON. 69 
 
 such distinguished evidence of his confidence as the be 
 stowal of the mission to the Court of St. James. Mr. 
 Welles was one of the ablest of Mr. Lincoln s official 
 family. He had never been stung by the presidential 
 bee, and was indifferent to popular applause, but was 
 a diligent student and an industrious chronicler of 
 current events. His ample diary is for the present a 
 sealed book. It was written for the future, and will 
 not, unless his wishes shall be disregarded, be read by 
 this generation. Moved to indignation by the misrepre 
 sentations of Mr. Adams, Mr. Welles drew upon the 
 store-house of his memory and the pages of his diary for 
 the materials with which to vindicate the intelligence and 
 conduct of President Lincoln. Thanks to this labor of 
 love, 1 I am able to answer my second question, and tell in 
 his own language why Mr. Lincoln restored McClellan to 
 the command of his old army after his betrayal of Pope, 
 and when the President and every member of his Cabinet 
 knew he had forfeited their confidence by " atrocious " 
 misconduct. Says Mr. Welles : 
 
 " At the stated Cabinet meeting, on Tuesday, the second of 
 September, while the whole community was stirred up and in 
 confusion, and affairs were gloomy beyond any thing that had 
 previously occurred, Stanton entered the council-room a few 
 minutes in advance of Mr. Lincoln, and said, with great ex 
 citement, he had just learned from General Halleck that the 
 President had placed McClellan in command of the forces in 
 Washington. The information was surprising, and in view of 
 the prevailing excitement against that officer, alarming. The 
 President soon came in, and in answer to an inquiry from Mr. 
 Chase, confirmed what Stanton had stated. General regret 
 was expressed, and Stanton, with some feeling, remarked that 
 
 1 " Lincoln and Seward," by Gideon Welles, p. 194. Sheldon & Co. 
 
70 LINCOLN AND STANTON. 
 
 no order to that effect had issued from the War Department. 
 The President, calmly but with some emphasis, said the order 
 was his, and he would be responsible for it to the country. 
 With a retreating and demoralized army tumbling in upon us, 
 and alarm and panic in the community, it was necessary, the 
 President said, that something should be done, but there 
 seemed to be no one to do it. He therefore had directed 
 McClellan, who knew this whole ground, who was the best 
 organizer in the army, whose faculty was to organize and de 
 fend, and who would here act upon the defensive, to take this 
 defeated and shattered army and reorganize it. He knew full 
 well the infirmities of McClellan, who was not an affirmative 
 man, was worth little for an onward movement ; but beyond 
 any other officer he had the confidence of the army, and he 
 could more efficiently and speedily reorganize it and put it in 
 condition than any other general. If the Secretary of War or 
 any member of the Cabinet would name a general that could 
 do this as promptly and well he would appoint him. For an 
 active, fighting general, he was sorry to say McClellan was a 
 failure ; he had the slows/ was never ready for battle, and 
 probably never would be ; but for this exigency, when organi 
 zation and defence were needed, he considered him the best 
 man for the service, and the country must have the benefit of 
 his talents, though he had behaved badly. The President said 
 he had seen and given his opinion to General Halleck, who 
 was still General-in-Chief ; but Halleck had no plan or views 
 of his own, proposed to do nothing himself, and fully approved 
 his calling upon McClellan. 
 
 " In stating what he had done the President was deliberate, 
 but firm and decisive. His language and manner were kind 
 and affectionate, especially toward two of the members, who 
 were greatly disturbed ; but every person present felt that he 
 was truly the chief, and every one knew his decision, though 
 mildly expressed, was as fixed and unalterable as if given out 
 with the imperious command and determined will of Andrew 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 71 
 
 Jackson. A long discussion followed, closing with acquies 
 cence in the decision of the President, but before separating 
 the Secretary of the Treasury expressed his apprehension that 
 the reinstatement of McClellan would prove a national calamity. 
 
 " In this instance the President, unaided by others, put forth 
 with firmness and determination the Executive will the one- 
 man power against the temporary general sense of the com 
 munity, as well as of his Cabinet, two of whom, it had been 
 generally supposed, had with him an influence almost as great 
 as the Secretary of State. They had been ready to make issue 
 and resign their places unless McClellan was dismissed ; but 
 yet, knowing their opposition, and in spite of it, and of the 
 general dissatisfaction in the community, the President had in 
 that perilous moment exalted him to new and important trusts. 
 
 " In an interview with the President on the succeeding Friday, 
 when only he and myself were present, he unburthened his 
 mind freely. Military matters were still in confusion, without 
 plan or purpose, at head-quarters. The Secretary of War, 
 under Pope s defeat and McClellan s reinstatement, was not 
 only disappointed, but dejected and dispirited. The President 
 said most of our troubles grew out of military jealousies. 
 Whether changing the plan of operations (discarding McClel 
 lan and placing Pope in command in front) was wise or not, 
 was not now the matter in hand. These things, right or 
 wrong, had been done. If the administration had erred, the 
 country should not have been made to suffer, nor our brave 
 men cut down and butchered. Pope should have been sus 
 tained, but he was not. These personal and professional 
 quarrels came in. Whatever may have been said to the con 
 trary, it could not be denied that the army was with McClel 
 lan. He had so skilfully handled his troops in not getting to 
 Richmond as to retain their confidence. The soldiers certainly 
 had not transferred their confidence to Pope. He could, 
 however, do no more good in this quarter. It was humiliating, 
 after what had transpired, and all we knew, to reward McClellan 
 
72 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 and those who failed to do their whole duty in the hour of trial, 
 but so it was. Personal considerations must be sacrificed for 
 the public good. He had kept aloof from the dissensions that 
 prevailed, and intended to ; but, said he, I must have 
 McClellan to reorganize the army and bring it out of chaos. 
 There has been a design, a purpose, in breaking down Pope, 
 without regard to the consequences to the country, that is 
 atrocious. It is shocking to see and know this, but there is no 
 remedy at present. McClellan has the army with him. These 
 were the views and this the course of the President when there 
 was general dismay in the country and confusion in the army ; 
 the rebels near the intrenchments of Washington, and some of 
 the Cabinet alarmed and preparing to leave. The President 
 was not insensible to the deficiencies or ignorant of the faults 
 of McClellan, nor yet blind to and stubborn as regarded his 
 better qualities. In placing him at the head of the army he 
 went counter to the wishes of his friends, and, forgetful of all 
 else, he subdued every personal feeling, and in the spirit of un 
 selfish patriotism resolved to do what was for the true interest 
 of the country. Had the General followed up the battle of 
 Antietam, which took place a fortnight later, he would have 
 retrieved the misfortunes of the Peninsula, and given to the 
 President additional reason to congratulate himself on the rein 
 statement, but the old dilatory infirmity remained, which 
 strengthened the influence that persistently opposed him, and 
 soon after led to his being retired from the command of the 
 army." 
 
 On the third day after the Pennsylvania election of 
 October, 1862, I was the President s first visitor, and 
 had just entered upon an earnest conversation with 
 him on the subject of McClellan s mismanagement in 
 permitting the battle of Antietam to cease before the 
 sun had set and while Fitz-John Porter s corps number 
 ing 35>ooo men was still in reserve, with its entire supply 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 73 
 
 of ammunition, when my colleague from the Gettysburg 
 district, Hon. Edward McPherson, entered the Executive 
 Chamber. Though there was no concert of action be 
 tween us, McPherson was quickly followed by our col 
 league, Hon. J. K. Moorhead, who, having left Pittsburg 
 the previous morning, had spent the night at Harrisburg in 
 consultation with leading citizens of the State, and has 
 tened by the morning train to Washington for conference 
 with the President. 
 
 The details of our common interview constitute part 
 of an article, which will appear elsewhere, 1 and I refer to 
 the occasion because it elicited from the President a sub 
 stantial reiteration of what he said to Mr. Welles in the 
 private interview just quoted. 
 
 After considerable discussion my colleagues withdrew, 
 leaving me again alone with the President, when our 
 conversation was resumed at the point at which it had 
 been interrupted. This was just after I had said that 
 though Lee s forces had been driven into a cul-de-sac, the 
 outlet from which was a ford that offered but an imper 
 fect roadway for a single line of guns or wagons, and 
 that although Fitz-John Porter s whole corps was fresh, 
 having, with its entire supply of ammunition, been held 
 in reserve, Lee had been allowed, without serious moles 
 tation, to retreat beyond the river, with his artillery and 
 supply-trains. Mr. Lincoln deplored this failure to 
 achieve the decisive result, which he said he believed 
 had been clearly within McClellan s grasp, and admitting 
 his absolute unfitness for the position he had occupied, 
 said it was one to which he had not deliberately as 
 signed him. He had, he said, restored him to command 
 to reorganize a broken and demoralized army, and not 
 
 1 " Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln," by men who knew him. 
 
74 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 to fight a great battle, and he owed his command at 
 Antietam quite as much to Lee as he did to him, for 
 while the work of reorganization was proceeding, Lee s 
 attempt to flank the capital, by moving into Maryland, 
 had compelled him to order the army to move and check 
 his advance. At this point, with a smile which might ex 
 press pity or sarcasm, or a mingling of both, Mr. Lincoln 
 said : " Whatever the troops and people may think and 
 say of his failure to capture Lee s army and supplies, my 
 censure should be tempered by the consciousness of 
 the fact that I did not restore him to command for 
 aggressive fighting, but as an organizer and a good hand 
 at defending a position." In response to the suggestion 
 of familiar facts, or to questions, Mr. Lincoln admitted 
 that McClellan, by incessant, and frequently unfounded, 
 complaints which were calculated to impair their confi 
 dence in his superiors, the President and Secretary of 
 War, had done much to destroy the morale of his troops, 
 and that he had wantonly sacrificed Pope ; and said 
 that to entrust to him the rescue of the army from its de 
 moralization was a good deal like " curing the bite with 
 the hair of the dog." He said he regarded his position at 
 the time of McClellan s restoration as a striking and note 
 worthy illustration of the dangers to which Republican 
 institutions were subjected by wars of such magnitude as 
 might produce ambitious and rival commanders ; for it 
 must be admitted that the civil power of the Government 
 was then subordinate to the military, and though he acted 
 as Commander-in-Chief, he found himself in that season 
 of insubordination, panic, and general demoralization con 
 sciously under military duress. McClellan even while 
 fighting battles which should produce no result but the 
 expenditure of men and means, had contrived to keep the 
 
LINCOLN AND STANTON. 7$ 
 
 troops with him, and by charging each new failure to some 
 alleged dereliction of the Secretary of War and President, 
 had created an impression among them that the adminis 
 tration was hostile to him, and withheld vital elements of 
 success that should have been accorded to him, and which, 
 in some instances, he falsely represented as having been 
 promised to him. He said, with much deliberation, that 
 he believed the restoration to command of McClellan, 
 Porter, and other of his chiefs, in the face of the treasonable 
 misconduct of which they had been so flagrantly guilty in 
 the sacrifice of Pope s army, was the greatest trial and 
 most painful duty of his official life. Yet, situated as he 
 was, it seemed to be his duty, and in opposition to every 
 member of his Cabinet he performed it, and felt no regret 
 for what he had done. 
 
 u I am now/ said he, " stronger with the Army of the 
 Potomac than McClellan. The supremacy of the civil 
 power has been restored, and the Executive is again mas 
 ter of the situation. The troops know, that if I made a 
 mistake in substituting Pope for McClellan, I was capable 
 of rectifying it by again trusting him. They know, too, 
 that neither Stanton nor I withheld any thing from him 
 at Antietam, and that it was not the administration, 
 but their own former idol, who surrendered the just 
 results of their terrible sacrifices and closed the great fight 
 as a drawn battle, when, had he thrown Porter s corps of 
 fresh men and other available troops upon Lee s army, he 
 would inevitably have driven it in disorder to the river 
 and captured most of it before sunset." 
 
 When we parted, Mr. Lincoln had not said in direct 
 terms that it was his purpose to relieve McClellan ; he had, 
 however, discussed the relative availability of certain gen 
 erals for the command, and the tenor of his remarks justi- 
 
76 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 fied me in saying to some of my fellow-citizens, on my 
 return to Philadelphia, that McClellan s military career 
 had practically ended, and that he would soon be succeeded 
 in command by Hooker or Burnside. At Warrenton, Va., 
 on the /th of November, Geo. B. McClellan received an 
 order to turn his command over to General Burnside, and 
 report to the Department by letter from Trenton, New 
 Jersey, by a prompt compliance with which order he 
 closed his inglorious military career. 
 
 Under a sense of obligation to the truth of history, and 
 to the memory of two men who, while bearing the bur 
 dens of the grandest of civil wars, admitted me to their 
 confidence and such intimate relations as enabled me to 
 see, in their example, with how single an eye to the good 
 of their country men may devote their lives, have I thus 
 endeavored to discharge a solemn duty. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 While compiling the foregoing vindication of President 
 Lincoln and Mr. Stanton, I dictated an article for a volume 
 which will shortly appear under the title of " Reminis 
 cences of Abraham Lincoln by Men Who Knew Him," in 
 which I embodied vivid and, in several instances, oft- 
 repeated recollections of interviews with Mr. Lincoln. Of 
 these, one was with a deputation of Progressive Friends, 
 and another with Prof. Goldwin Smith, both of which 
 were published in the New York Tribune and other 
 papers. To my account of the interview with the Friends 
 Mr. Oliver Johnson took exception, and in a letter to the 
 Tribune criticised it sharply and denied its allegations. 
 The confidence with which Mr. Johnson disputed my 
 statements demanded a reply, which I submitted through 
 the columns of the Tribune. As the historical facts, by 
 reference to which I make good my disputed assertions, 
 might well have been incorporated in the original text, 
 and as the volume has not yet gone through the press, 
 I herewith append the letter to the Tribune in which they 
 were embodied. 
 
 To THE EDITOR OF THE Tribune. 
 
 SIR : In the Tribune of September 6th is a communication 
 from Oliver Johnson, which would have received earlier atten 
 tion had I not been enjoying needed rest in the health-giving 
 
 77 
 
7 8 LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 
 
 valley of the Genesee, and away from books, papers, and cor-* 
 respondence. It purports to correct my account of the inter 
 view of the Progressive Friends with Mr. Lincoln, and closes 
 with the remark " that if the Tribune Reminiscences of Lin 
 coln are to take a permanent form in our literature Mr. 
 Kelley s contribution will need to be carefully expurgated and 
 reconstructed." 
 
 As the Tribune has said that too much light cannot be 
 thrown on that important matter Mr. Lincoln s attitude tow 
 ard the Abolitionists before he emancipated the slaves, you 
 will, I doubt not, give me space in which to show that it is 
 Mr. Johnson who is in error on that point. He says I 
 "was unable to give the name of the religious body which 
 the deputation represented, and could only describe it vaguely 
 as an independent organization ; that it was the Pennsyl 
 vania Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends which the depu 
 tation represented ; that the object was not, as I had said, to 
 present a Minute, but a formal and solemn Memorial, to the 
 President ; and that I appear not to have recollected the 
 name of a single member of the deputation." 
 
 It happens that although the gentleman who acted as my 
 amanuensis at the time I dictated the article under con 
 sideration has resided in Virginia for more than sixty days, 
 and had, before leaving, destroyed much rejected manuscript, 
 I find among my papers a number of pages of his first draft, 
 from one of which I quote as follows : " It was, I believe, 
 during 1852 that there was organized at Longwood, Chester 
 County, Pa., a religious society to be known as Progressive 
 Friends, to consist of men and women who attached higher 
 importance to purity of life and unselfish conduct than to 
 creeds and dogmas. That the observance of the Sabbath 
 should be maintained by this sect without a creed, and church 
 without a preache r, a meeting-house was erected in which a 
 hymn is sung on each First Day, after which earnest men and 
 women may deliver to assembled Friends communications on 
 
TAN TON. 79 
 
 lich they: may believe themselves to 
 rly meeting of the Society is held 
 .1 part of the year, in that region of 
 e and flowers. John G. Whittier, 
 ..n Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, 
 
 Fred liiiam Elder, George William Curtis, 
 
 Hen r of distinguished Liberals have par 
 
 ticipated m me.se thoughtful anniversaries." 
 
 I find, too, that I named Oliver Johnson as the person who 
 read the Minute to the President ; and I aver that I vividly 
 remembered the names of four of the six delegates whom he 
 mentions. 
 
 Mr. Johnson and others may ask why, if all this and much 
 more on the same subject was written, did none of it appear in 
 the article as printed ? The reason was that the object of my 
 paper was to present, in compliance with the request of the 
 person v/ho invited me to do the work, facts illustrative of 
 Mr. Lincoln s character. "It is not," said he, "for impres 
 sions of his character, for but incidents illustrative thereof, that 
 we ask " ; and while I deemed the interview under consideration 
 an eminently characteristic incident, I feared that if I printed 
 what I had dictated, the article might be regarded as a remi 
 niscence of Progressive Friends, and not of Mr. Lincoln. I 
 therefore struck out what related solely to the Society and its 
 members, and thus furnished Mr. Johnson ground for his 
 erroneous conclusion that my recollection of the occasion was 
 " of a very shadowy kind." 
 
 One fact I did not remember : it was the day of the month 
 on which the interview occurred ; but, in the absence of that 
 knowledge and while believing it to have been much earlier in 
 the month, I was able to say, from the President s appearance 
 and manner when we entered the room, " that the visit was in 
 opportune. The air was full of evil rumors from the Peninsula, 
 and the President had evidently passed a night of anxiety " ; 
 to which I added, " that the guests,, who were strangers to the 
 
80 LINCOLN AND STANTON. 
 
 President, did not perceive, as those familiar with him did, 
 that there was an unusual air of impatience in his manner." 
 
 If offence were given to the Society, or its representatives, 
 by my use of the word Minute instead of Memorial, it was the 
 result of conscientious effort on my part to use the appropriate 
 word. Halting between Testimony, Memorial, and Communi 
 cation, I went to the office of a number of Quaker lawyers, 
 and, telling them that I had prepared a paper on the " Pro 
 gressive Friends at the White House," asked for the proper 
 word to use in describing the scroll on which the views, 
 formally expressed by the Yearly Meeting, were embodied. I 
 was told that Friendly parlance required the use of the word 
 Minute ; as the representatives had borne to the President a 
 certified Minute that a Memorial in the words presented had 
 been formally adopted by the Society. 
 
 I have not said, as Mr. Johnson says I seem to think, " that 
 the visit was an impertinence"; what I did say was that "it 
 was inopportune," to which I now add that, containing as the 
 Memorial did, a direct intimation to the President that the 
 Progressive Friends regarded him as faithless to promises he 
 had made when seeking the Presidential office, it could not 
 have been otherwise than offensive to him. 
 
 Mr. Johnson will pardon me for saying, as I do with entire 
 respect, that I believe him to have been the author of the 
 report to the Tribune, which he cites against me with so much 
 confidence. He was an experienced newspaper man, and had 
 previously given the Tribune the benefit of his experience and 
 ability, and there is abundant evidence in the report that it was 
 prepared by one of the delegates, among whom he was the only 
 newspaper man. If in examining the columns of the Tribune 
 for the extract he quoted, Mr. Johnson had read the telegrams 
 from Washington and the vicinity of McClellan s head-quarters 
 for the week which terminated with the day on which the re 
 port appeared, he would have wondered that the President 
 could have given ear to any thing that did not relate to the 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 8 1 
 
 imminent business of the hour. In this sense the Memorial of 
 the Progressive Friends, telling him what blessings would im 
 mediately flow from a proclamation of emancipation, and that 
 in default of the issue of such a proclamation the Friends had 
 " fearful reason to apprehend that blood will continue to flow, 
 and fierce dissensions to abound, and calamities to increase, 
 and fiery judgments to be poured out, until the work of 
 national destruction is consummated beyond hope of recovery," 
 could not fail to have been regarded by him as inopportune 
 and impertinent to the hour. 
 
 The examination of the columns of the Tribune for that 
 single week would have reminded Mr. Johnson that the battle 
 of Fair Oaks had been fought, and have shown him that, with 
 an oppressive summer temperature prevailing, our sick and 
 wounded soldiers from that and other fields were festering in 
 the sun around what would have been comfortable quarters for 
 a hospital, in the midst of green fields and under the shade of 
 umbrageous trees, which, because the property belonged to a 
 Confederate officer, Lieutenant Lee, was guarded by Union 
 soldiers against them and the medical staff of the army ; and 
 that when, to escape one of the violent summer gusts that 
 characterize that malarial portion of our country, bluff Ben. 
 Wade and a party of Senators sought shelter under the roof of 
 the broad porticos, or, what in the South are called the 
 " galleries " of a luxurious mansion, bayonets in the hands of 
 Union soldiers repelled them. The property belonged to a rebel, 
 who was then serving as an officer in the Confederate army, and 
 loyal citizens could therefore not be admitted within the en 
 closure even for shelter from a passing summer gust. When the 
 Senatorial party found Gen. Sumner, who was in immediate 
 command, and complained to him of the exhaustion of our 
 men by compelling them to protect the property of those who 
 were in arms against them, the reply was : " Gentlemen, you 
 must not hold me responsible. I am not General-in-Chief, 
 and must, within my lines, enforce the orders of my superior 
 officer." 
 
82 LINCOLN AND STANTON. 
 
 As part of that week s history Mr. Johnson would also have 
 learned that, while the President had reason to expect news of 
 a vigorous advance of our army, the rebel Colonel Stewart, 
 with a single regiment of cavalry and four pieces of mounted 
 artillery, had raided through our lines to our base of supplies, 
 the White House. A subdued account of this discouraging 
 incident is thus given in General McClellan s final report of 
 the Peninsular Campaign, under date of August 4, 1863 : 
 
 "On the i3th of June two squadrons of the Fifth U. S. 
 cavalry, under command of Captain Royall, stationed near 
 Hanover Old Church, were attacked and overpowered by a 
 force of the enemy s cavalry, numbering about fifteen hundred 
 men, with four guns. They pushed on towards our depots, 
 but at some distance from our main line, and, though pursued, 
 very cleverly made the circuit of the army, repassing the Chicka- 
 hominy at Long Bridge. The burning of two schooners laden 
 with forage, and fourteen government wagons ; the destruc 
 tion of some sutlers stores, the killing of several of the 
 guard and teamsters at Garlick s Landing, some little damage 
 done at Tunstall s Station, and a little eclat, were the precise 
 results of this expedition." 
 
 This official account had not reached the President on the 
 2oth of June, 1862, but the Tribune had, and in addition to the 
 information the General s report would subsequently furnish 
 had told him that by the light of blazing schooners, forage, 
 army wagons, and sutlers stores, the raiders had been able to 
 select from our hospitals needed medical supplies and stores 
 generally for the Confederate army. 
 
 While Confederate troops were permitted to thus forage 
 upon us, and destroy our forces in detail, the country was cry 
 ing, " On to Richmond !" The President, in response to the 
 popular appeal, was begging the General to advance, and 
 McClellan and his trusted lieutenants were appealing to the 
 troops against Lincoln and Stanton for alleged interference 
 with his management of the army. Prominent among the evil 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 83 
 
 reports to which I referred, was the alarming one that large 
 bodies of the troops under McClellan, with their officers, had 
 been so prejudiced against the President, by their commander 
 and his personal adherents as to threaten resignation by offi 
 cers and revolt in the ranks, if colored troops were enlisted 
 or radical views on the subject of slavery were declared. 
 These reports came daily to the President ; nor were they idle 
 rumors, for in less than three weeks after the interview under 
 consideration, McClellan s seditious letter of July 7th, to the 
 President, from the gunboat on which he had sought shelter 
 from the dangers of battle, was made public, with its bold 
 avowal that " a declaration of radical views, especially upon 
 slavery, will rapidly disintegrate our present armies." 
 
 In view of these few straggling facts it will not be believed 
 that I was mistaken when I said, " there was that in the Presi 
 dent s manner which showed that the visit was inopportune." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was mortal ; he was, in my judgment, by far 
 the greatest man our country has produced : yet he was mor 
 tal, and yearned, above all things, for the final approval of 
 mankind. When his self-respect would permit it, he com 
 plained and justly to the inner circle of his friends of the 
 wounds the Abolitionists as a body delighted to inflict upon 
 him. It was as an Abolitionist that my revered friend, Dr. 
 Furness, put into the mouth of scoffers, as a proverb, the say 
 ing, " The President would like to have God on his side, but 
 he must have Kentucky." It was as an Abolitionist that Wen 
 dell Phillips spoke of him as " a mosaic of slavery and free 
 dom a man who had never walked a straight line in his life." 
 And it was as Abolitionists that the Progressive Friends called 
 on him ; and when, in listening to their deliberately prepared 
 address, he found that by the use of an imperfect quotation 
 from an address delivered years before his nomination for the 
 Presidency, his attitude on the question of slavery was 
 changed, the qualifications with which he had defined it 
 omitted, and his veracity impugned, he replied with an asperity 
 of manner of which I had not deemed him capable. 
 
84 LINCOLN AND STANTON. 
 
 From Mr. Johnson s report to the Tribune I quote the fol 
 lowing extract from the Memorial : " That in his speech, de 
 livered at Springfield before his election to the office of Chief 
 Magistrate, the President expressly declared that a house 
 divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this govern 
 ment cannot permanently endure half slave and half free. I do 
 not expect the Union to be dissolved ; I do not expect the 
 House to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will 
 become all the one thing or all the other/ " Mr. Lincoln s first 
 duty to himself seemed to him to be to repel the intimation that 
 this extract was part of a campaign speech, made while he was i 
 candidate for the Presidency, and he did it with emphasis, for, 
 straightening himself to his full height, and, I repeat, with an 
 asperity of manner quite unusual with him, he said : " It is true 
 that on the lyth of June, 1858, I said : I believe that this 
 government cannot permanently endure half slave and half 
 free/ but I said it in connection with other things from which 
 it should not have been separated in an address discussing 
 moral obligations. What I did say was this : If we could first 
 know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better 
 judge what to do and how to do it. We are far into the fifth 
 year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and 
 confident promise of putting an end to the slavery agitation. 
 Under the operation of .that policy that agitation has not only 
 not ceased, but is constantly augmented. In my opinion it 
 will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and 
 passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. 1 be 
 lieve that this government cannot permanently endure half 
 slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dis 
 solved ; I do not expect the House to fall, but I do expect that 
 it will cease to be divided. It will become all the one thing 
 or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest 
 the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind 
 shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate ex 
 tinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall be- 
 
LINCOLN AND STAN TON. 85 
 
 come alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North 
 as well as South." And Mr. Johnson tells us that he added : 
 " The sentiments contained in that passage were deliberately 
 uttered, and I hold them now." 
 
 Mr. Johnson is as unfair to the President in this communi 
 cation as Mr. Lincoln felt the Progressive Friends in Yearly 
 Meeting assembled had been. For instance, he says that the 
 " alleged disjointed quotation from Mr. Lincoln s Springfield 
 speech had appeared a thousand times in exactly the same 
 shape, and was made in perfect good faith." Does that prove 
 that each time Mr. Lincoln had heard it from the lips of pro 
 fessed friends he had not been grieved by it ? Again he says : 
 " Mr. Lincoln naturally desired to turn its point so far as to make 
 it seem that it was not incompatible with his conscientious delay to 
 strike off the shackles of the slaves." Do honest and truthful 
 men strive to turn the point of their important utterances 
 when responsibility arises ? and does not Mr. Johnson in this 
 remark admit that their Memorial was intended to tell Abraham 
 Lincoln that the Progressive Friends held him false and dere 
 lict ? Mr. Lincoln sought to repel this covert imputation upon 
 his integrity and veracity ; and if Mr. Johnson s report may 
 be relied upon, ridiculed their prayer by saying : " If a decree 
 of emancipation could abolish slavery, John Brown would 
 have done it effectually. Such a decree would not be more 
 binding upon the South than the Constitution, and that cannot 
 be enforced in that part of the country now. Would a procla 
 mation of freedom be any more effective ? " But further, 
 after Mr. Barnard had addressed the President a fact which 
 I had failed to note, Mr. Johnson tells us the President said, 
 " he had sometimes thought that perhaps he might be an in 
 strument in God s hands of accomplishing a good work, and 
 he certainly was not unwilling to be," and added : " Perhaps, 
 however, God s way of accomplishing the end which the Me 
 morialists had in view might be different from theirs," a dash 
 of that quiet sarcasm of which he was so complete a master. 
 
86 LINCOLN AND STANTON. 
 
 Whatever Mr. Lincoln s personal convictions or aspirations 
 may have been on that 2oth of June, he was not a free agent ; 
 he had to choose between challenging the execution of the 
 threats which came from the neighborhood of McClellan s 
 head-quarters, that to take such a step as the Progressive 
 Friends prayed for would disintegrate the army, and declining 
 to grant the sentimental prayer of these well-meaning but inex 
 perienced Memorialists. 
 
 With a degree of what Mr. Lincoln once in my hearing spoke 
 of as the " self-righteousness of the Abolitionists," Mr. John 
 son says that " the President, at that very moment, was more 
 than half persuaded that the Abolitionists were right, and 
 waited only for the growth of the public sentiment that would 
 justify him in doing what they desired." To one who had 
 familiar access to Abraham Lincoln, who had studied him, 
 his experiences, his character, his purposes, the arrogance 
 of this sentence is little less than sublime. 
 
 I have known men who were intimate with Mr. Lincoln at 
 all the varied periods of his life, through all the struggles of 
 his early years and the trials and triumphs of his eventful man 
 hood, and have questioned many of them as to whether at any 
 time in his life he had indulged in profanity, and have been 
 unable to hear of his having used an expression that might be 
 regarded as profane in the course of his whole life. It is well 
 authenticated that he did once, with much emphasis, invoke 
 the name of the Almighty. It was not, however, profanely, 
 but to register in heaven a vow while yet in the twenty- 
 second year of his age, that controlled him throughout the 
 whole of his wonderful life. He was in New Orleans with his 
 friend John Hanks ; they had seen a sale of slaves. The 
 feature that most impressed young Lincoln was the sigh of 
 one of the unhappy ones, " a beautiful mulatto girl." " She 
 was," as Mr. Hanks puts it, " felt over, pinched, and trotted 
 around to show bidders that * said article was sound, etc. " 
 Lincoln walked away from the sad inhuman sight with a deep 
 
LINCOLN AND STANTON. 8/ 
 
 feeling of " tmsmotherable hate," and then turning to John 
 Hanks, said : " By God, if I ever get a chance to hit that in 
 stitution, I will hit it hard, John," and in that blessed year, 
 1831, Abraham Lincoln was filled with convictions on the 
 subject of slavery that made him forever feel that a man who 
 warred on "that institution " was right in his object, though he 
 might err in his methods, as on the 2oth of June, 1862, he be 
 lieved the Progressive Friends were urging him to do. 
 
 How wofully the friends had exaggerated the power of such 
 a proclamation as they prayed the President to issue, is well 
 shown in the reminiscences of Moncure D. Conway, published 
 on August 3oth, in which he tells of the interview between the 
 President, Senator Wilson, Wendell Phillips, Francis W. Bird, 
 Elizur Wright, J. H. Stephenson, G. L. Stearns, Oakes Ames, 
 and himself, which occurred on the 24th of January, 1863. 
 The object of this delegation was to complain of the failure of 
 the Emancipation Proclamation, and Mr. Phillips, as its spokes 
 man, hinted that " the Northern people, now generally anti- 
 slavery, were not satisfied that it was being honestly carried 
 out by the nation s agents and generals in the South." The 
 President said he " had not expected much from it at first, 
 and, consequently, had not been disappointed," and gave it as 
 his impression that " the masses of the country generally are 
 only dissatisfied at our lack of military successes." He did 
 not hesitate in the course of the interview with these distin 
 guished men to say that "most of us here present have been 
 nearly all our lives working in minorities, and many have got 
 into a habit of being dissatisfied" ; and when this conclusion 
 was deprecated, he added : "At any rate, it has been very rare 
 that an opportunity of running this administration has been 
 lost." And when Mr. Phillips patronizingly said : "If we see 
 this administration earnestly working to free the country from 
 slavery and its rebellion, we will show you how we can run it 
 in another four years of power," to which, possibly remember 
 ing Mr. Phillips description of him as a mosaic and a " man 
 
88 LINCOLN AND STANTON. 
 
 who had never walked a straight line in his life," Mr. Lincoln 
 said : " Oh, Mr. Phillips, I have ceased to have any personal 
 feeling or expectation in that matter, I don t say I never 
 had any, so abused and borne upon as I have been " ; and Mr. 
 Conway tells us that his last utterance to the delegation as 
 it left him was : " I must bear this load which the country has 
 entrusted to me as well as I can, and do my best." 
 
 For one correction of my statement I must ask space to 
 thank Mr. Johnson. I interwove with the interview now un 
 der consideration, an incident that occurred a few days later 
 with a member of the Society of Hicksite Friends. The 
 prayer of the lady was identical with that of the Progressive 
 Friends, and Mr. Lincoln s treatment of the case was so much 
 like that he gave their application, that in referring to the two 
 incidents, as I have had frequent occasion to do, they had be 
 come blended in my memory. 
 
 WM. D. KELLEY. 
 THE ELMS, Philadelphia, Sept. 23, 1885. 
 
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