Not Much Choice Between Them

Wherein corps and cracks are formed

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After the Two Weeks That Changed The War the two Armies of the Potomac began moving. Ron over at All Not So Quiet Along the Potomac has done some great stuff about the Confederate preparation and subsequent departure from Northern Virginia, which I will not attempt to duplicate, so make sure you stop over and read it.

 On March 8, 1862, Abraham Lincoln and his new Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, made a momentous decision--they would overrule McClellan's armies and establish four corps d'armee. French for "body of the army", the grouping of divisions in "corps" had been popularized by the phenomenal success of Napoleon. The units were designed to be armies fully capable of operating independently, but which worked in conjunction within the same theater. But since the 14 divisions of the Army of the Potomac were each larger than any American army previously in existence, the idea was anathema to many Northern leaders.

As usual, the general-in-chief, Maj. General George B. McClellan, lay at the center of what had become a controversial discussion fueled by the Joint Committee for the Conduct of the War. In McClellan's earliest days in Washington, he had stated his intention to form his army into corps. But as part of his systematic effort to remake the U.S. Army in his own image, he had held off on grouping the divisions into corps without explanation. In the meantime, the Joint Committee had caught corps fever, and on February 25 at 8:00 pm, had met with Lincoln in the White House to urge their creation. According to the Committee's report published in 1863:

They made known to the President that, having examined many of the highest military officers of the army, their statements of the necessity of dividing the great army of the Potomac into corps d'armie [sic] had impressed the committee with the belief that it was essential that such a division of that army should be made...The President observed that he had never considered the organization of this army into army corps so essential as the committee seemed to represent it to be; still he had long been in favor of such an organization. General McClellan, however, did not seem to think it so essential, though he had at times expressed himself as favorable to it. The committee informed the President that the Secretary of War had authorized them to say to him that he deemed such an organization necessary.

The Defenses of Washington

In which we begin taking a closer look at how the war changed the city

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This is the first in an occasional series on the Defenses of Washington. Future posts in the series will focus on the neighborhood of the fort or forts covered and how they have changed since their founding. This one just covers the state of the defense of Washington in December 1861. Think of it like a pilot for a spin-off series that takes place in the old series, like that time Edith Bunker had to say goodbye to Louise. That's right, this post is spawning The Jeffersons. Alright, back to moving on up.

In early December George McClellan's wife and newborn daughter had arrived in Washington, ending the steady supply of incriminating letters from Little Mac for the winter. It almost gives the impression that he had given up on internal feuding. But on December 4, something he read in the New York Times prompted a letter to the Secretary of War that still suggests his wife's arrival had done nothing to ease his squabbling nature.

As we have seen, cavalry patrols were almost constant in December, despite the common myth that all was quiet. But both armies were also hard at work trying to get their command structure, defenses, and logistics in order -- a daunting task considering that prior to July 1861, the largest American military force ever assembled had been Winfield Scott's 30,000 man army that marched on Mexico City. Both armies were larger than that by themselves, McClellan's over twice as large.

An American experiencing the war real-time, would have followed each of these story lines in the newspaper as often as possible, hoping that attention would be rewarded when one of those threads led to something of significance. Though the New York Times of 1861 was only a minor newspaper, the Grey Lady's importance today allows the 2011 reader to browse its full archives of the war. So we can read the paper on any given day just as a reader 150 years ago would have.

In this case, on December 4, a reader of the Times interested in the war around Washington would have found these articles: a small item that the loyalist Virginians meeting in Wheeling to plan the separation of their counties from their mother state had changed their preferred name from "Kanawha" to "Western Virginia"; an account of the second day of Congress in the new session and the reception Lincoln's State of the Union message received; a report by the Secretary of the Navy, including information on the Potomac Flotilla; a report on movements of New York regiments, including a (as it turned out erroneous) report on the departure of the Irish Brigade from Washington; an analysis piece on the importance of new types of pontoon bridges to the army; and a piece trying to read in to the departure of Charles P. Stone from his division across from Leesburg for several days (the paper failed to guess that McClellan was assigning him the responsibility of reopening the Canal as far as Harper's Ferry).

But it was none of these that upset McClellan. In a furiously written letter of December 9 to Secretary of War Simon Cameron, he explained:

I have the honor to enclose herewith a copy of the N.Y. Times of Dec. 4, 1861, containing as you will see a map of our works on the other side of the Potomac, & a statement of the composition of the Divisions in that same locality.