Chance (Or A Good Friend) Has Placed Me In Command

In which feelings are hurt

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Sir:

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the Commission of brigadier General, which you are pleased to confer on me.

The opinion manifested by the Senate of the United States as to the incompatibility of the office of a Senator of the United States with the office of General compels me to decline the Commission. I do not feel myself at liberty to resign the position with which I am honored by the State of Oregon.

While nearly every man of even minor influence in the North and South was trying to get himself a commission in the growing armies, Senator Edward Baker was busy turning one down. True, he already held the rank of colonel in the lead of the 1st California Volunteer Regiment that he had dreamed up (recruited from New Yorkers and Philadelphians), and, as he observed in his letter of refusal to Lincoln "the government is pleased to allow me a command with my present rank", but everyone else around Washington was scrambling to command one of the divisions that Major General George McClellan was creating for his new, grand Army of the Potomac.

McClellan's first two picks for division command had been perfunctory, former commanders of the Departments of Northeastern Virginia and the Shenandoah, Irvin McDowell and Nathaniel P. Banks, respectively. Both had seen their commands folded into McClellan's new Army of the Potomac, so both had been given some compensation. But his next two picks, announced on August 28 and August 30, had been more surprising.

Hooker's On Parade

In which McClellan, et al., review the new Army of the Potomac

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The old Bladensburg dueling grounds

Since he had secured his U.S. Volunteers brigadier generalship in the most dramatic way possible, Joe Hooker had set to work proving that he was a "damned sight better general than [Lincoln] had on that field" on the banks of the Bull Run. Hooker was in command of a brigade stationed at Camp Union, just shy of Bladensburg on the B&O Railroad line, where the Bladensburg Road passed outside of the boundaries of the District of Columbia.

It was a historic area, even in 1861. Named after a pre-Revolution governor of Maryland, it developed as a port on the Eastern Branch of the Potomac (today called the Anacostia) for Maryland tobacco crops. On August 24, 1814 American briefly occupied the same territory as Camp Union, before they ran from British soldiers and marines at the Battle of Bladensburg in one of the most shameful defeats in U.S. history (part of the flight was in terror from the new Congreve rocket employed by the British, which would also give its red glare to the Baltimore sky a month later, inspiring Francis Scott Key). The British had a free pass into Washington City, and burned most of it that night.

Gotcha!

Wherein the Rebel Rose is nabbed

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On August 23, the somewhat sour-faced Scot took pleasure in a good night's work. He had found the Rebels' leak in Washington and plugged it. Rose O'Neal Greenhow was now his prisoner.

Rose Greenhow

The man was Allan Pinkerton, and he was on temporary absence from his detective firm (the famed Pinkerton National Detective Agency) by special request of Major General George McClellan to found the Union Intelligence Service in Washington to root out spies, especially those that had delivered news to Confederate Brigadier General G.T. Beauregard about the build up and movement of Union forces. In reality, Beauregard probably didn't need their reports since the army had moved so slowly and destructively. But in the paranoia following Bull Run, spies were given undue importance. Besides, there was no area of the defense of Washington McClellan wasn't sure he could improve.

As far as spies went, Greenhow wasn't a particularly a good one. She had been born in Port Tobacco, Maryland around the time of the British raid that burned Washington, but when her father was killed by rebellious slaves in 1817, young Rose went to live with an aunt in the rebuilt Washington City. At her boarding house, Rose grew-up around Washington's social elites and Members of Congress and important national figures came to enjoy being around the high-spirited young woman. She fell in with Dolley Madison's social circle and met the man she would marry (with Dolley's blessing, of course), Dr. Robert Greenhow.

Rec'd: The Usual War Salutations

Harper's Weekly cartoon captioned with a quotation from a "Rebel
Paper" ("Our Artillery are improving rapidly in their firing; they
practice constantly at targets.")

It's time for the weekly local history articles round-up. I've been out of town this week, so I haven't had time to do as much reading as usual, so apologies for missing other good items.

First up, today is the 150th anniversary of a skirmish at Pohick Church in Fairfax County. Both armies had largely recovered from Manassas, but had not yet grown into their new missions and were feeling each other out. Cavalry from the brigade of William Franklin chased off an unidentified Confederate cavalry company and learned important lessons in the process. All Not So Quiet Along the Potomac sums up the action well. The official reports can be found here.

To the Sound of the Guns has an interesting piece on the gunner's quadrant, equipment I had never heard of that was invaluable to artillery.

And Adam Goodheart continues to save Disunion with an account of James Garfield's decision to join the army.

An Idiot and a Dotard

In which McClellan inadvertently pens his most famous quotation

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It's not entirely clear what got George McClellan, major general commanding the Military Division of the Potomac, so upset on August 16, but he was in a fit for sure. He issued a General Order banning all passes to go beyond Union lines into Virginia (before, a not-uncommon practice) and what looked like orders to Brigadier General William Rosecrans, who commanded the army in western Virginia that McClellan formerly commanded, urging him to (ironically) stop asking for more soldiers and strike boldly at the Confederates near him. McClellan, of course, had no authority to issue such orders and similar circumstances had caused the now-simmering feud between him and the army's real commander, Winfield Scott. He had, however, refrained from labeling his headquarters an "army" in deference to the old general.

Whatever the cause, McClellan penned a sentence that historians since its accidental publishing have been unable to refrain quoting: "I am here in a terrible place--the enemy have from 3 to 4 times my force--the Presdt is an idiot, the old General in his dotage--they cannot or will not see the true state of affairs."

Given the lack of embellishing information and the frequency with which the one line is pulled out, here's a re-type of the most full version I can find, short of going into the Library of Congress's manuscript room. It comes from Sears, pp. 85-86.

. . . I am here in a terrible place: the enemy have from three to four times my force; the President is an idiot, the old general in his dotage, they cannot or will not see the true state of affairs. Most of my troops are demoralized by the defeat at Bull Run; some regiments even mutinous. I have probably stopped that; but you see my position is not pleasant. . .

I have, I believe made the best possible disposition of the few men under my command; will quietly await events, and, if the enemy attacks, will try to make my movements as rapid and desperate as may be. If my men will only fight I think I can thrash him, notwithstanding the disparity of numbers. As it is, I trust to God to give success to our arms, though He is not wont to aid those who refuse to aid themselves...

I am weary of all this. I have no ambition in the present affairs; only wish to save my country, and find the incapables around me will not permit it. They sit on the verge of the precipice, and cannot realize what they see. Their reply to everything is, “Impossible! Impossible!” They think nothing possible which is against their wishes.

6 p.m. .. . Gen. Scott is at last opening his eyes to the fact that I am right and that we are in imminent danger.  Providence is aiding me by heavy rains, which are swelling the Potomac, which may be impassable for a week; if so we are saved. If Beauregard comes down upon us soon I have everything ready to make a manoeuvre which will be decisive. Give me two weeks and I will defy Beauregard; in a week the chances will be at least even.

Hell Reigns

In which three Union regiments try to end the war

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Return of the 69th New York Militia from the Seat of War

 "Hell reigns in the 13th today, and has all day," wrote Samuel Partridge to a friend. Partridge was a young man in Company F of the 13th New York, who had fought at Bull Run as part of Cump Sherman's brigade.He was only a private on August 14, but he would rise to the rank of lieutenant as the regiment's adjutant and quartermaster by the time it finally went home in two years -- and that was the problem.

Company F, like all but three of the 13th New York's companies, was raised in Rochester. The men had pledged two years of service to the State of New York under its militia law, but under Federal law the Lincoln administration could only accept their service for 90 days. The 13th New York marched to Washington and were sent to Fort Corcoran, in present-day Rosslyn, and began a very unhappy period under then-Colonel Sherman.

Status Quo Ante

Wherein the fallout of the McClellan/Scott feud brings us back to where we were

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The nation's capital in the second week of August was filled with false alarms about imminent Confederate attacks, but the most damage to the Union cause kept coming from the Union men themselves. On August 8, commander of the Military Division of the Potomac, Major General George McClellan, had deliberately tried to embarrass General-in-chief of the U.S. Army, Bvt. Lt. General Winfield Scott. On August 10, Abraham Lincoln's efforts to quash the feud paid off.

McClellan offered the olive branch in a letter addressed to Lincoln:

The letter addressed by me... to Lieutenant General Scott... was designed to be a plain and respectful expression of my views of the measures demanded for the safety of the Government... It is therefore with great pain that I have learned from you this morning... that my letter is unfavorably regarded by him... Influenced by these considerations, I yield to your request, and withdraw the letter referred to... I will only add that as you requested my authority to withdraw the letter, that authority is hereby given, with the most profound assurances of respect for General Scott and yourself.

It was not a moment too soon, because that evening word came from Missouri that Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon's army had been defeated and the general had been killed, raising the specter that all of Missouri would fall into its pro-secessionist governor's control. Scott worked tirelessly with the Adjutant General's office to make sure Major General John C. Fremont would get the reinforcements he needed to stave off disaster.

Which is why it took him until August 12 to throw a wrench in Lincoln's peace negotiations with his own missive to Secretary of War Simon Cameron (up the proper chain of command, unlike McClellan's).

...I was kindly requested by the President to withdraw my letter to you of the 9th, in reply to one I had received from Major-General McClellan of the day before... I deeply regret that, notwithstanding my respect for the opinions and wishes of the President, I cannot withdraw the letter in question...

First, McClellan's original letter "seems to have been the result of deliberation between him and some members of the Cabinet" (by which Scott probably meant Salmon Chase or Montgomery Blair), who had been influencing decisions on the conduct of the war "without resort to or consultation with me, the nominal General-in-Chief of the Army." Further, the Military Division of the Potomac had been reinforced with a number of three-years regiments, which McClellan had brigaded and encamped, not "not one of these movements has been reported to me (or anything else) by Major-General McClellan." Scott, however, was positive that the Cabinet had been told.

Second, McClellan was talented, Scott acknowledged, and he didn't cherish spending his days "filing daily complaints against an ambitious junior." And third, Scott insisted that he was still old and sick and he "should unavoidably be in the way at headquarters, even if my abilities for war were now greater than when I was young." Also, there was the small matter that McClellan had sent a copy of his letter to Scott, unsigned and with only a blank piece of paper for a cover note. "This slight was not without its influence on my mind," Scott noted.

Lincoln chose at this juncture to be too busy with the problems in Missouri to take any further action on Scott's request to be ordered into retirement, and McClellan chose to celebrate August 12 with a letter to the Secretary of the Navy about an imminent Confederate attack across the mouth of the Potomac, and urging him to transfer warships from Newport News to Aquia Creek.

Letters Between Sincere Friends

Wherein Beauregard and Davis exchange less than friendly correspondence

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Thanks to the fact that Washington was never captured, that the Adjutant General's Office kept good records, and that George McClellan never had the good sense to destroy his personal letters, we have a fairly comprehensive understanding of the horrible/amusing saga of the turmoil in the early Union leadership. But across northern Virginia an equally nasty, but substantially less well documented fight was going on between Brigadier General G.T. Beauregard, the victor of Manassas and Fort Sumter, and provisional President Jefferson Davis.

Tensions had begun almost as soon as Davis had named Beauregard commander of the Alexandria Line, the small collection of soldiers that had retreated from Alexandria to Manassas Junction. Beauregard had immediately begun complaining to Davis about having too few men to defend the important railroad Y that was the juncture of lines extending to Front Royal, Alexandria, and Richmond. Before satisfying those needs, he had added complaints about not having enough men to launch a grand offensive that he had envisioned to capture Washington with his self-styled Army of the Potomac.

Then the Union forces began marching from Alexandria under Irvin McDowell, and Beauregard's wishes were fulfilled. His force was united with the Army of the Shenandoah under Brigadier General Joe Johnston, and a great victory was won at Manassas over the Northerners. Davis gave approval to unite the armies as the Army of the Potomac under the more senior Johnston, and Johnston tolerated Beauregard styling the men from his old army as the First Corps, Army of the Potomac (despite the fact that the army would never have a Second Corps) and commanding them with only minimal review from headquarters.

So Beauregard went back to sniping with Richmond, this time about the truly pitiful lack of supplies and transportation for those supplies. On August 1, Beauregard attempted to get around the stonewalling and red tape he was getting from the official channels by sending a letter to his former aide-de-camp and Confederate Congressman, James Chestnut. Chestnut and William Miles, another Beauregard aide and Congressman, decided that letter needed to be shown to the Congress in secret session.

WAR!

Wherein the old and new Fuss and Feathers blast each other to pieces

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George B. McClellan

"How does he think that I can save this country when stopped by Genl Scott?" George McClellan fumed to his wife, Mary Ellen, in his nightly letter after a frustrating meeting with Secretary of State William Seward.

I do not know whether he [Scott] is a dotard or a traitor! I can't tell which. He cannot or will not comprehend the condition in which we are placed & is entirely unequal to the emergency. If he cannot be taken out of my path I will not retain my position, but will resign & let the admn take care of itself. I have hardly slept one moment for the last three nights, knowing well that the enemy intend some movement & fully recognizing our own weakness.

The trouble should hardly have been a surprise. Too alike in temperament, the aged Brevet Lieutenant General Winfield Scott and the ambitious Major General George McClellan had grown tired of each other in less than two weeks. Each was a man obsessed with professionalism, each believed himself a master of grand strategy, and each regarded everyone as a threat to his own special mission to save the Union.

Beginning of August, September, October, November Recess

The MPD was just one of the many bills passed by Congress their last day of session, in a tradition that continues today (though now Congress reconvenes in September instead of after the harvest in December). Since it's been the subject of blog posts before, I wanted to take a second to note that the Senate finally punted its resolution approving Presidential acts before Congress came into session (said Senator Breckinridge, "This measure is more familiar to the Senate than any resolution that has been before it during the session.") into the next session.
 
To celebrate, here's a great quotation by Senator Andrew Johnson (D-TN), the only remaining U.S. Senator elected from a state that had seceded by the seceding legislature (a group of "loyal Virginians" had sent two Senators), that I didn't get to use.

I am as much for compromise as any one can be; and there is no one who would desire more than myself to see peace and prosperity restored to the land; but when we look at the condition of the country, we find that rebellion is rife; that treason has reared its head. A distinguished Senator from Georgia once said, "when traitors become numerous enough, treason becomes respectable." [It was Robert Toombs] Traitors are getting to be so numerous now that I suppose treason has almost got to be respectable; but God being willing, whether traitors be many or few, as I have hitherto waged war against traitors and treason, and in behalf of the Government, which was constructed  by our fathers, I intend to continue it to the end. [Galleries erupt in applause]

Preventing Crime and Mock Auctions

In which we wish the MPDC a happy anniversary

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MPDC Crest,
based on the 1861 badge

When Abraham Lincoln stepped off the train into the nation's capital the city was different. First of all, stately Union Station wouldn't be completed until 1908. Lincoln arrived in the middle of the night at the old Baltimore & Ohio rail station in the same location. Lincoln was there early to prepare for his inauguration on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol without a complete dome, facing a quarter-built Washington Monument at the end of the rather scrubby National Mall (the land that is now the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial wouldn't be reclaimed from the Potomac River until the end of the 19th Century). After he was sworn in he would travel back to the the Executive Mansion ("White House" was just a popular nickname that wouldn't become official until 1911), avoiding B Street, next to the stinking, festering canal, not much used except as a garbage dump (today both are incorporated into Constitution Avenue).

A great deal of the Washington we know today has its roots in the transformation unleashed by the American Civil War, and on August 6, 1861, on the last day of session before August recess, Congress authorized a little transformation that helped make DC what it is today -- it authorized the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, the first District-wide, non-Congressional authority.

Rec'd: Spartan Feats I Trust You to Notice

In which we revisit the best articles I read this week

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Links shortly, but first:

Today in history there was a skirmish at Point of Rocks, MD. The Baltimore American had a reporter on hand to report the story of the 28th New York Regiment and the Loudoun Cavalry under Captain W.W. Meade. The cavalry was officially Company K, of the 6th Virginia Cavalry, and was on loan to Colonel Eppa Hunton to help guard the Potomac crossings. The 28th New York had been part of Robert Patterson's Army of the Shenandoah that missed Manassas, and was now stationed at Point of Rocks to make sure Patterson's replacement, Major General Nathaniel P. Banks, wasn't surprised.

A company of New Yorkers under the second-in-command crossed the river the night of August 4 to scout out the

Confederate position and Meade's cavalry chased them off. Both groups did exactly what they were supposed to: the New Yorkers advancing  until they were stopped by the enemy, and the Virginians making sure they saw no more than cavalry. The message to Banks would be the Confederates are here in force, but it is not clear what force.

For our illustrious journalist, though, there were only statistics to send back. He was a pretty good reporter or the regiments colonel, Dudley Donnelly, had a keen sense of PR, because the message sent back to the editors in Baltimore is pretty thorough. But he must have felt something was missing, because he went ahead and submitted a copy of an official report from a skirmish several days earlier at Edwards' Ferry to fill out his report, since Lt. Colonel Brown's wouldn't be ready for at least twenty-four hours. For fun, I'm running his correspondence down the side-bar instead of the usual Harper's Weekly political cartoon (they're not that good this week).

And now, the links!

The National Postal Museum got in the spirit with a piece on Confederate postal systems.

Civil War Visions has an excerpt from a letter from U.S. Grant ("Sam", of course) to his father on being promoted as part of the gang of U.S. Volunteer generals I blogged about the other day.

I fear I've been neglecting the Southern army with all the crazy that McClellan foists upon the capital, but All Not So Quite Along the Potomac writes a better post on James Longstreet's brigade after the battle of Manassas anyway.

If you want a Civil War date, I recommend checking out the Civil War wine tour. I'm not sure the quality of their history, but the wines aren't bad at all!

The Smithsonian has put together a remarkable cross-section of how West Point graduates dealt with choosing between states they regarded as their home and the oaths they swore.

Bull Runnings has the transcript of a letter from the wife of a private in Ambrose Burnside's 1st Rhode Island Regiment that formed part of his brigade at Manassas. The soldier was wounded and captured there, and died in Richmond on August 2.

Finally, G.T. Beauregard's complaining to everybody he could reach about his shortage of supplies at Manassas Junction finally triggered a snide response from provisional President Jefferson Davis on August 4. The American Civil War has us covered with a transcript.

The Two Napoleons

Wherein McClellan follows the usurper's example

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Prince Napoleon, in 1860

On August 3, after a grueling morning presenting his new strategy to the Cabinet and a busy afternoon of memo writing, George McClellan joined the President for a state dinner in honor of Prince Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte. Prince Napoleon, as he was known, was the cousin of Napoleon III, the reigning Emperor of France, and the grandson of the brother (Jerome) of the renowned Napoleon Bonaparte, to whom McClellan was often compared in the North (and G.T. Beauregard in the South). For McClellan, it was an opportunity not to be missed.

"I dined at the Presdt' yesterday," he wrote his wife, Mary Ellen. "I suppose some 40 were present--Prince Napoleon & his staff, French Minister, English ditto, Cabinet, some Senators, Genl Scott & myself."

Today the French are the butt of jokes about their military prowess, but in 1861 they were regarded as the world's premier fighting nation. Only a generation before, the French had fought a coalition of nearly every European country, conquering all of them (though the British will insist that the Treaty of Amiens was not an admission of defeat, merely a cease-fire). It was the triumphant campaigns of Napoleon as interpreted by his admirer and former aide Henri Jomini that American cadets studied at West Point (to the degree they studied anything beyond engineering), and it was these Napoleonic strategies and tactics that would guide the decisions of nearly all generals in the war, both North and South (today, military thinkers prefer Prussian Carl von Clausewitz to Jomini, but while On War had been published already in 1861, it had not yet been translated to English and wouldn't win the attention of Americans until after the Prussians decimated the French in 1870).

A Carefully Considered Plan

Wherein McClellan heroically sticks his nose in other people's business

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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 antagonists, especially those of the governing aristocratic class, of the utter impossibility of resistance.

McClellan's Headquarters, the house of George Wilkes
on 19th Street and Pennsylvania Ave, NW

The sentiment would not have been out of character for a zealous Republican supporter of President Lincoln, such as Senator (and Colonel) Edward Baker the day before in the U.S. Senate, but the author of those words on August 2 was Major General (only twenty-four hours before officially officially) George B. McClellan. McClellan could not be criticized for a lack of effort in the week since he had taken command of the Military Division of the Potomac, encompassing the Departments of Washington and Northeastern Virginia.

"I was in the saddle nearly 12 hours yesterday," he wrote his wife on the evening of August 1 about yet another day of riding from camp to camp seeing his men and surveying the ground around Washington. "I broke down your Father [Randolph March, who McClellan has made chief of staff] and sent Seth [Williams, his adjutant] home... neither of them having been out all day." McClellan's trips had more purpose than gloating over his father-in-law and assistant, though. He was preparing an army to fight a great war being envisioned in his head.

Pointed Arguments

Wherein sharp words find their logical place in the Senate

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In the wake of the Northern loss on the hills overlooking Bull Run all the fears of March returned to Washington. The rout of Irvin McDowell's army had galvanized the South, in the same way the surrender of Fort Sumter had months before. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina had all waited until after Lincoln's April 17 call for volunteers to secure Federal property before seceding, but the fall of Sumter on April 12 couldn't have been overlooked when they decided to leave the Union. Another Confederate victory in northern Virginia could be the push Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, or Missouri needed to declare for Richmond.

The Lincoln Administration had been aggressively attempting to make sure this did not happen. In Missouri, where the state's secessionist governor and part of the state militia had taken up arms against the Federal government claiming the state had left the Union already (the legislature voted to do so, but without a proper quorum), there was an army of militia under Nathan Lyon and John C. Fremont marching to quash the insurrection. In Maryland, soon-to-be Major General (USV) Nathaniel P. Banks had been using military might to detain suspected secessionists (especially in Baltimore) without trial since May, and his successor when he took over at Harper's Ferry, John Dix, was actively searching for secessionists too.