The Arrest of General Stone

Wherein the provost guard carries out an order

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On February 8, Brig. General Andrew Porter received the following order from the general-in-chief, Maj. General George B. McClellan:

You will please at once arrest Brig Genl Chas P Stone U.S. Volunteers & retain him in close custody, sending him under suitable escort by the first train to Fort Lafayette there to be placed under charge of the comdg officer to await trial [sic]. See that he has no communication with any one from the time of his arrest.

Porter was the Provost Marshal for the Army of the Potomac, the officer charged with enforcing regulations and maintaining martial law in the area of the army's operations. He had served in the position since McClellan had taken command of that army, and was largely responsible for the vast improvement in discipline by the troops around Washington (though getting most of them out of the city and into the Virginia countryside had helped). He was also responsible for carrying out unpopular actions against local civilians, including the arrest of Washington City's mayor for conspiring against the government and the imprisonment of Rose O'Neal Greenhow and the other female secessionists.

Porter was a Pennsylvanian with the American army baked deep into his DNA. His father had been an officer in the War of 1812, and his grandfather had been a general in the American Revolution. Porter had only spent six months at West Point before dropping out to fight in the Mexican War, but he was nevertheless a consummate army professional. With the U.S. Mounted Rifles Regiment he was promoted to captain and won brevets to major and lieutenant colonel for prowess in battle. When Fort Sumter surrendered, Porter was chosen to be colonel of the new regular regiment the 16th Infantry, the only one of nine new colonels for the new regiments that had not graduated from West Point.

But before Porter had even seen his regiment, he was commanding a brigade in the Army of Northeast Virginia, whose commander, Irvin McDowell, had decided with such inexperienced troops a regular army colonel was needed to keep them under control. His division commander was the new colonel of his old Mounted Rifles, David Hunter, and the other brigade was commanded by Colonel Ambrose Burnside of the Rhode Island militia. Hunter was wounded on Matthews' Hill and, after the battle, Porter and Burnside argued publicly about which of them had led the division and helped out most in the battle.

Evidence Said to Impeach

In which Charles P. Stone testifies a second time

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McClellan's winter offensive came sputtering to a halt on the last day of January. Since the end of his illness, he had worked politically to regain complete control of the U.S. war effort, and he thought he had achieved it. But on January 27, President Lincoln had issued General Order No. 1 ordering all Federal armies to begin advancing by February 22. Throughout the week he rapidly put together a plan and pitched it to the President, but on January 31, McClellan received the President's rejection--by reading a copy of Special Order No. 1, directed to the commander of the Army of the Potomac (McClellan, concurrently with his responsibilities as general-in-chief), as shown to him by a member of the press.

Ordered, That all the disposable force of the Army of the Potomac, after providing safely for the defense 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 General in Chief, and the expedition to move before or on the 22d day of February next.

One thing McClellan didn't take into account was the fracturing of Lincoln's political base over the winter, best epitomized by the rise of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. The Radical Republican-dominated Committee had spent most of January interviewing McClellan's division commanders about the possibility of forward advance. They had concluded it was, and they had conveyed that assurance to Lincoln's new Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. McClellan wasn't aware of it yet, but despite Stanton's reliable Democratic politics his views on the war were actually closely aligned with the Committee's. While McClellan had spent a great deal of time consulting with Stanton before his appointment to Secretary of War, it was almost certainly Stanton who suggested Lincoln's two orders.


Stanton's regular meetings with members of the Committee had yielded another decision in their favor that struck a blow at McClellan's control of the Army of the Potomac. On January 28, almost certainly on the advice of members of the Committee who had met with him the previous day, Stanton issued an order to arrest Brig. General Charles P. Stone.

McClellan was aghast. Not only was Stone one of his handpicked division commanders (even though he had also been a protege of Winfield Scott, a rarity), but the attacks in the Republican press and in both chambers of Congress had taken on a decidedly partisan tone towards Stone's conservative politics, which happened to be McClellan's as well. Eager to avoid carrying out the order, McClellan convinced both Stanton and the members of the Committee that Stone's first, confrontational testimony before the Committee had been incomplete, and to allow him another chance.

McClellan's Winter Offensive

Wherein Little Mac strikes back against his enemies

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Long Bridge [14th Street Bridge] across the Potomac

"Your Excellency," Maj. General George B. McClellan, general-in-chief of the U.S. Army, wrote President Abraham Lincoln on the morning of January 15, 1862, "I am so much better this morning that I am going before the Joint Committee. If I escape alive I will report when I get through."

McClellan was in the midst of a campaign to reassert his authority. Three weeks earlier, he had fallen sick, usually reported as typhoid fever. It couldn't have happened at a less convenient time, for the general. In mid-December there had already been grumbling about the lack of movement by the massive army he had assembled along the Potomac, and the disaster at Ball's Bluff and the winter campaign of Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley had stirred up the embers from the pre-Bull Run fire for rapid advance. Without McClellan's boundless energy for political wrangling to quash it, the fire had blazed up fiercer than ever in Washington, fueled by frustrated officers who had been slighted by McClellan's remaking of the army hierarchy.

The Joint Committee for the Conduct of the War was certainly the most prominent organ of dissent. Committee Chair Senator Benjamin Wade (R-OH) and member Senator Zachariah Chandler (R-MI) had interviewed almost all of McClellan's division commanders (the exceptions: Banks and Hooker, furthest away from Washington), attempting to establish a case that McClellan could attack at any time, and simply wasn't. Both men and a growing number of the so-called "Radical" wing of the Republican Party were becoming more and more convinced that this was because of treasonous beliefs among the conservative West Point officers in charge of the war effort.

A Disloyal Man

Wherein the Joint Committee checks every Stone

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Fort Corcoran [Rosslyn] (Harper's Weekly)

January 5, 1862 was a Sunday, and in the town of Hancock, Maryland, a small force of Union troops under Brig. General Frederick Lander was receiving an ultimatum from Stonewall Jackson. Lander's men had been chased out of Bath the day before [today, in West Virginia, and primarily known by its unofficial name, Berkeley Springs]. Lander arrived during the day on January 5 and was told by Jackson that the town would be shelled if the Northerners didn't abandon it. With characteristic bravado, Lander told his envoy (Colonel Turner Ashby) to "bombard and be damned!... He will injure more of his friends than he will of the enemy, for this is a damned secesh place anyhow!" Lander then scribbled a more professional note for Ashby, and sent a message back to Washington for reinforcements. But the environment it would find in Washington was one that pointedly illustrates the differences between 1861 and 1862.

Lander was in charge of the Department of Harper's Ferry and Cumberland, located on the Maryland side of the Potomac River, between, not surprisingly, Cumberland and Harper's Ferry, but including a 30 mile patch of land on the southern side of the river (which, modified based on later military organizations, became the basis for that strange nub in the West Virginia panhandle, established in 1863). This little department had been established by Winfield Scott months earlier, because Lander pledged to be more aggressive than the Army of the Potomac's George McClellan and reopen the B&O Railroad to freight traffic, but he had been delayed in reaching his command. In the meantime, McClellan had succeeded Scott as general-in-chief of the U.S. Army and Lander's department had been added to the Army of the Potomac as a division (despite McClellan not countermanding the order that it was an independent command).

So Lander sent his request down the line to the next division commander, Maj. General Nathaniel P. Banks, in Frederick, Maryland. Banks, who heartily shared Lander's belief that an immediate offensive was needed to gain Winchester and control of the lower Shenandoah Valley as well as reopen the B&O, would have sent the request on down the line. Next in line was the division of Brig. General Charles P. Stone, headquartered in Poolesville (though the request probably would have taken the direct route from Frederick, through Gaithersburg and Rockville). Next were the divisions of Brig. Generals George McCall (the Pennsylvania Reserves) and W.F. "Baldy" Smith, placed on the Virginia side of the Potomac (in Langley and Lewinsville, respectively), completing the right-wing of the Army of the Potomac.

Public Shot

The further adventures of Charles P. Stone's foot in his mouth

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Charles P. Stone was furious when he sat down to write on December 23. Just a few days earlier, his own State's senator, Charles Sumner (R-MA), had denounced him on the Floor of the U.S. Senate. Angry that the Lincoln Administration and the War Department were forcing Massachusetts soldiers to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act, Sumner's thundering denunciation of the policy dragged Stone to the center of the fight between anti-slavery Republicans and the conservative prosecutors of the war. Sumner had sarcastically said that:

Brigadier General Stone, the well-known commander of Ball's Bluff, is now adding to his achievements there by engaging ably and actively in the work of surrendering fugitive slaves. He does this, sir, most successfully. He is victorious when the simple question is whether a fugitive slave shall be surrendered to a rebel.

If Sumner dragged Stone into the middle of the national spotlight, it was Stone who nailed himself to the ground so firmly there was no escaping. When a friend gave Stone a copy of Sumner's remarks, transcribed in the local papers, Stone sat down to angrily rebut the Senator's criticism. He argued that it was his orders and his responsibility to enforce the laws of the nation, including the fugitive slave law, and that only a strict respect for property rights of loyal civilians as understood before the war began would lead to a quick end and a reunion of the country (in fact, he had sent the commander of the expedition to Ball's Bluff with standing orders to shoot any soldier who plundered).

But if Stone's self-confidence was his greatest virtue, the arrogance it bred was his greatest vice. And his fury at Sumner's perceived mangling of his carefully considered position brought out the worst in Stone. The letter he wrote on December 23 was the first time since Ball's Bluff when he addressed anyone other than personal friends about the hot water he had found himself in outside of the official military channels, a major breach of personal decorum for Stone. Worse, he concluded his letter with words meant to insult:

Please accept my thanks for the speech in which you use my name... There can hardly be better proof that a soldier in the field is faithfully performing his duty than the fact that while he is receiving the public shot of the enemy in front he is at the same time receiving viterpuration [sic] of a well-known coward from a safe distance in the rear.

Never politically savvy, Stone probably did not realize he was making himself Enemy No. 1 of the group of Republicans that would come to be known as the Radical Republicans (a name full of baggage and not contemporary to 1861, so I'll avoid it for now). Sumner took the letter immediately to Lincoln, when he received it. Sumner and his allies believed that Stone's actions at Ball's Bluff had been either gross mismanagement or outright treason, and that Lincoln's good friend, Senator Edward Baker, had paid the price to either save Stone's debacle or thwart Stone's malfeasance. The letter's conclusion seemed to offer proof that Stone was malicious.

Lincoln, who had closely interviewed Stone about Baker's death, was deeply disturbed, but told Sumner that though he would not have written such cruel words himself, he believed Stone was probably within his rights after the harsh treatment Sumner had given him on the Floor. Not recorded is what Lincoln responded to Sumner's original speech, considering it was his Administration's policy that Sumner was following.

Whatever Lincoln's feelings, Sumner also took the letter to Senators Benjamin Wade (R-OH) and Zachariah Chandler (R-MI), the top two members of the newly formed Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. The investigation into what happened at Ball's Bluff now had a principal subject of investigation.

A Brave and Impetuous Soldier

Wherein we begin the tribulations of Charles P. Stone

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The Senate had changed since it last met in the summer. In the days following the Union defeat at Bull Run (actually, before it too) the top critics of the Lincoln Administration were Democratic Senators John C. Breckinridge from Kentucky and Trusten Polk from Missouri. Neither was present when the Senate reconvened at the beginning of December. Breckinridge had fled to the Confederacy and was expelled December 4, but Polk's whereabouts (as well of those of his fellow Missouri Senator Wade Johnson) were unknown. It was suspected (correctly) that both had joined the Confederates, and on December 18 the Senate debated expelling two more of their colleagues. The fourth missing member was Senator Edward Baker of Oregon, who had been killed leading troops at the Battle of Ball's Bluff in late October.

Outside the Senate, the war effort had changed to. The top military adviser was now Maj. General George B. McClellan, who had advocated a policy of holding on all fronts while the Army of the Potomac, which he also commanded, was built up for an advance on the Confederate capital at Richmond. Unfortunately, the Lincoln administration still favored a policy closer to that devised by the former general-in-chief, Winfield Scott, which relied on a blockade of the South and controlling the Mississippi River to break the control of secessionists over Southern State governments.

The combination of traitors in their midst and strategic shifts brought back a Senate (and House) much more aggressive about overseeing the Administration's execution of the war. One of their very first acts when returning was to create a Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Chaired by Senator Benjamin Wade (D-OH). At the top of the Committee's list of priorities was to find out what had happened at Bull Run and Ball's Bluff.