Important and Exciting Work

Porter Alexander and the phony phony war.

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Ron at All Not So Quiet Along the Potomac has been chronicling Confederate activities and has another great post up about Joe Johnston's correspondence with new Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin on September 26 that is the beginning of the South's evacuation of the advanced line within sight of Washington. Please check it out. I offer the following post as a compliment to the narrative he is building.

Historians tend to refer to August and September 1861 as a "phony war" or a period of quiet, but it was nothing like that for Porter Alexander and the rest of the staff officers who worked ceaselessly to prepare the two armies for their next bloody encounter. When we last saw the major, he was touring the carnage of the Manassas battlefield. His hastily trained signal corps had played as central a role in winning the battle as Thomas Jackson's stand on Henry Hill, and the head of the Confederate Army of the Potomac, G.T. Beauregard, recognized it.

The day following the battle, Beauregard asked Alexander to become his new chief of ordnance, his own having been placed in charge of a brigade of Georgians (taking the spot that would have gone to the mortally wounded Francis Bartow). A few days later, Beauregard's army was officially merged with Joe Johnston's army, and Johnston asked Alexander to continue on as the chief of ordnance, since his own had been killed on Henry Hill. Alexander eagerly agreed, and was allowed to continue to live and eat at Beauregard's headquarters, which (at least initially) was closer to Washington than Johnston's. He recounted decades later:

My duties as chief of ordnance were to keep the whole army always supplied with arms and ammunition--infantry, artillery, & cavalry. It does not sound like very much to do, but there was an infinity of detail about it & I had to organize a complete system. First I had to issue blanks to every organization in the army for each one to report what arms it had & what it needed. Then I had to organize a store house for general supplies of this kind at the R.R. station & see that each organization of the army also had a train of wagons sufficient to carry a supply for at least one battle. Then I had to have weekly returns to my office from every regiment & battery & wagon train to have my eye, as it were, on the business everywhere & see what changes were taking place & that everything was as it should be.

Good Morning, General Scott

In which McClellan and Scott are no longer friends

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We all have priorities, and mine tonight was watching the Redskins and the Cowboys embarrass professional football. So I give you all only a short post today, with little commentary about a Cabinet meeting held on September 27, 1861, nominally to discuss strategy with the North's top two generals. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells noted in his diary that it was an "unpleasant interview" in which Scott harangued McClellan for circumventing him and speaking directly to the Cabinet while ignoring all requests for information.

As an offering to you for having wasted my own time, here is McClellan's account of the ordeal to Mary Ellen in his nightly letter.

He [the President] sent a carriage for me to meet him & the Cabinet at Genl Scott's office. Before we got through the General "raised a row with me." I kept cool, looked him square in the face, & rather I think got the advantage of him. In the course of the conversation he very strongly intimated that we were no longer friends. I said nothing, merely looked at him & bowed assent. He tried to avoid me when we left, but I walked square up to him, looked him fully in the eye, extended my hand & said "Good Morning, General Scott." He had to take my hand, & so we parted. As he threw down the glove & I took it up, I presume war is declared--so be it. I do not fear him. I have one strong point: that I do not care one iota for my present position.

Print Source:

• Sears, 100-101.

One Army

Wherein the org chart of the Army of the Potomac (CSA) looks like swiss cheese

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While the Northern armies around Washington were organizing the massive manpower streaming into the capital, the considerably smaller Southern forces were doing the same. But while McClellan had close to a free hand in choosing his subordinates, Generals Joseph E. Johnston and G.T. Beauregard were under much closer control. The Confederacy's provisional president, Jefferson Davis who liked to be heavily involved in the decisions of generals in the field.

In what would become a bad habit, Davis had sacked his Secretary of War in mid-September and installed the divisive Judah P. Benjamin as acting secretary. Born British, Benjamin was now on his third country, and a close confidant of Davis. But Benjamin was not tactful, and with the bad feelings already brewing between the two generals in Fairfax Court-House and Richmond, he was not the right man to bring the Confederacy's war leadership back together.

Such An Accurate Fire

A balloonist nails his mark

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By the end of September, the war appeared that it might be heating up again. Maj. General George McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, had been saying for over a month that a massive Confederate attack was imminent. He predicted the attack would come from Leesburg, and drive up towards notoriously disloyal Baltimore, cutting Washington off from the rest of the country and trapping his newborn army.

And now, with an engagement at Lewinsville, and a series of skirmishes along the length of the Potomac River from Great Falls to Point of Rocks, it appeared that the Confederates might be feeling out the Union position to prepare for that big strike. His process of collecting the many brigades of the army into divisions so that they would be easier to handle in battle had certainly brought the most benefit to his friends and hand-picked proteges so far, but he had also given clear priority to defending the Potomac River line.

The Real George Meade

Wherein we make the acquaintance of the general everyone thinks they know

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George Gordon Meade

On September 22, 1861, George Meade sat down to write his wife, Margaretta. "I hope you will not be very much put out at not receiving a letter earlier from me, but I have really been very much occupied..." Meade was head of the Second Brigade of McCall's Division, better known as the Pennsylvania Reserves. He wrote from his headquarters in Tenleytown, in or near the new Fort Pennsylvania that the men of the division had finished recently.

By 1865, Meade would be a household name, but in 1861 that an obscure army officer could have one of the most sought after positions in the Northern states - command of a brigade in George McClellan's assembling Army of the Potomac - was somewhat astounding. That it was not just any army officer, but the notoriously difficult George Meade was even more astounding.

Meade had graduated from West Point in 1836, three years before G.T. Beauregard and a decade before McClellan. He had ranked 19th out of 56, securing him one of the last slots for artillery in his graduating class and saving him the indignity of going into the infantry. Not that Meade particularly cared, since he had never wanted to attend West Point in the first place.

By Command of Lieutenant-General Scott

Wherein the old boy gets his second wind

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View from Ft. Marcy, completed in late September 1861 by W.F. "Baldy" Smith's brigade

On September 16, George McClellan got an order transmitted by Lt. Colonel Edward Townsend, chief of staff for the general-in-chief of the U.S. Army, Winfield Scott.

The commanding general of the Army of the Potomac will cause the position, state, and number of troops under him to be reported at once to general headquarters, by divisions, brigades, and independent regiments or detachments, which general report will be followed by reports of new troops as they arrive, with the dispositions made of them, together with all the material changes which may take place in said army.

"By command of Lieutenant-General Scott," Townsend helpfully signed it, opting for a more military valediction than his typical "your obedient servant". Winfield Scott was at last striking back.

Almost since McClellan had arrived in Washington (and certainly since Scott had poo-pooed his intelligence that an attack by over 100,000 Confederates was imminent), the junior general had attempted to circumvent the elderly general-in-chief. He had decided that Scott had become too senile or too stuck in his ways to take the bold actions needed to save the Union. And Scott was affecting a cadre of senior officers from the old Army. Only by breaking the stranglehold of the same military leaders that had let the South secede, take Federal property, and win at Bull Run and Wilson's Creek, could McClellan save the Union.

Studied Indignity

How the South's military defeat began with its first general's demotion

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"No military event deserving notice occurred on our part of the frontier during the remainder of the summer," Joseph E. Johnston noted dryly in his post-war memoir about the time period following the Battle of Manassas (a markedly different assessment from his number two, G.T. Beauregard, who spent mid-September enthusing about the victory at Lewinsville and how it showed he should have more men and materiel, covered well over at All Not So Quiet Along the Potomac).

Johnston commanded the Army of the Potomac, inheriting the name and much of the organization structure from the army Beauregard had commanded up until Johnston arrived just in time for the battle on July 20. But Beauregard insisted on continuing to operate his old army as the "First Corps, Army of the Potomac", a semi-autonomous unit with its own staff. Johnston authorized Beauregard to deploy his longer-serving brigades in forward positions to make sure the enemy's identically-named Army of the Potomac wasn't moving to attack, and focused on trying to train and equip the new volunteers being funneled to Manassas Junction over the course of the summer, a tough task with the Confederacy's pathetic supply system. While Johnston never rose to the level of chain-of-command insurgent that Beauregard did, he nevertheless sent his fair share of terse notes to the War Department in Richmond.

But on September 10, the "good general" finally lost his patience with Richmond. The issue was rank, and it hinges on pride, bad feelings, power struggles, bureaucratic bumbling, and pettiness, but is more than just a salacious tale. The ensuing battle was one that shaped the Confederacy and changed the outcome of the entire war as much as any of George McClellan's conflicts with Abraham Lincoln. Johnston and Davis ensuing feud would have wide-ranging consequences, from the fall of Atlanta, to the rise of Robert E. Lee.

Perfect Order and Excellent Spirits

In which Stuart and Stevens earn their stars.

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George McClellan, major general commanding the Army of the Potomac, had a great deal to crow about on September 11, but somehow it didn't work its way into his daily letter to his wife Mary Ellen. Instead, he groaned to her in boredom about his previous day visiting the Pennsylvania Reserves in Tenleytown. Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin had come down to see his pet unit and deliver regimental flags paid for by the state, since he hadn't had time to before with the rapidity of their mobilization. He also had delivered a stirring speech, not unexpected for the nation's most hawkish governor.

All our material wealth, and the life of every man in Pennsylvania, stands pledged to vindicate the right, to sustain the Government, and to restore the ascendency of law and order. You are here for that purpose, with no hope of acquisition or vengeance, nor from any desire to be enriched by the shedding of blood. God forbid! Our people are for peace. But if men lay violent hands on the sacred fabric of the Government, unjustly spill the blood of their bretheren, and tear the sacred constitution to pieces, Pennsylvania is for war--war to the death!

"It was long and fatiguing," was the extent of McClellan's assessment to Mary Ellen. The historian of the Pennsylvania Reserves didn't pick up on his disinterest, instead relating his generosity to Curtin, Reserves commander George McCall, President Lincoln, and Secretary of State William Seward. "At the close of the ceremonies the distinguished visitors repaired to General McCall's tent and partook of a bounteous collation, prepared for them by the commanding general."

McClellan did make sure to note for his wife "how the men brighten up now, when I go among them--I can see every eye glisten. Yesterday they nearly pulled me to pieces in one regt. You never heard such yelling. I did not think the Presdt liked it much." He also took time to respond to one of Mary Ellen's previous letters with shock that his friends Simon Bolivar Buckner and Gustavus W. Smith had joined the Confederate army.

Informing Secretary Cameron

In which it becomes apparent the author has read too many McClellan letters

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Secretary of War Simon Cameron

Secretary of War Simon Cameron knew that the commander of the Department of the Potomac, encompassing most of Virginia, Maryland, and all of the nation's capital, was not pleased with the U.S. Army's commander, Bvt. Lt. General Winfield Scott. In fact, Maj. General George McClellan was in something of a cold war with Scott at the moment, avoiding confrontation with him by pretending he didn't exist. For his part, Scott had still refused to withdraw his request to be placed on the retired list, effectively a resignation, but without sacrificing the gratitude the nation's longest-serving soldier expected to receive when he completed his career.

On September 7, Cameron decided the best way to make amends in the Union high command was to assuage McClellan's paranoia about a lack of support from the Lincoln Administration and the War Department. Assured, the younger general would then be able to give Scott the deference the older man thought he deserved. So he sent McClellan a carefully crafted note.

It is evident that we are on the eve of a great battle--one that may decide the fate of the country. Its success must depend on you, and the means that may be placed at your disposal. Impressed with this belief, and anxious to aid you with all the powers of my Department, I will be glad if you will inform me how I can do so.

Cameron was surely pleased with his little bit of diplomacy. It gave credence to McClellan's obsessive insistence that the Confederates were on the verge of attacking (which Scott continued to ridicule) and signaled that the War Department was eager to give McClellan what he felt he needed.

Aiming Too High

In which the troops no one wanted are bombarded at Great Falls

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Governor Andrew Curtin (Matthew Brady)

At approximately 8:30 in the morning of September 4, the attack came. Confederate cannon opened up on the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves stationed at Great Falls, just like Colonel Elisha B. Harvey had been warned.

Harvey had been preparing for the attack since August 24, when a message from the commanding officer of the Army of the Potomac, Major General George McClellan, had been transmitted to his brigade commander that a Confederate attack was imminent at Great Falls. The general - Brigadier General George A. McCall - had immediately sent Harvey to Great Falls with his regiment of infantry, a company of cavalry and a few artillery pieces to make sure a crossing couldn't occur without him knowing about it. Since then, Harvey had waited for the attack to begin.

McCall was part of a cordon McClellan had established along the Potomac River, reaching from Washington City to the division of Major General Nathaniel P. Banks at Harper's Ferry. Fittingly, the general commanding the most upstream brigade of the cordon was Charles P. Stone, the beleaguered then-colonel who had tried to cover the entire length of that distance during the Rockville Expedition with less than an eighth of the soldiers now assigned to the task. Back in Poolesville, Stone now only had to cover the distance from Point of Rocks down to Seneca Mills. To the east, the cordon was connected to the defenses of Alexandria County by a brigade under Brigadier General William Farrar Smith, better known as "Baldy" Smith, headquartered at the Chain Bridge.