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.

Seeing the Old Man Off

Wherein we bid farewell to Winfield Scott

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Harper's Weekly cover announcing the retirement of Winfield Scott. A depiction of the last Cabinet meeting.

Before dawn on November 2, in the midst of a heavy rainstorm, retired Bvt. Lt. General Winfield Scott left his headquarters on F and 17th Street near the White House and rode to the B&O Railroad Station, located at the site of today's Union Station. It was still dark, and Scott was trying to leave town before anyone had time to call on him about his retirement the night before. The New York Times recorded:

A drenching rain was falling at the time, and this fact prevented Gen. McClellan and staff, with an escort of cavalry, from accompanying him on the route thither. A numerous assemblage, in view of the hour and the unpropitious state of the weather, had gathered at the depot, among whom were nearly a dozen ladies.

His staff accompanied him; Colonels George W. Cullum, Henry Van Rennselaer, and Edward H. Wright, all aides-de-camp to Scott, and his chief of staff, Colonel Edward D. Townsend. All four were career military men who had enjoyed many years of good fortune under the longest-serving commander of the Army in U.S. history (a record that still holds) and who had earned the respect and praise of the man now leaving in the middle of a gloomy downpour. His replacement would also be his arch enemy, who the Scott staffers had spent the last three months helping the old general attempt to thwart. Their futures were bleak, and it would take the fall of McClellan to fully rehabilitate their army careers.

Rec: The Man Who Financed The Civil War at Disunion

While soldiers marched from Alexandria and Washington on July 17, in Washington itself the Congress sent a bill to finance the war. The $250 million worth of bonds would be issued in small denominations that would pave the way for a paper currency. Disunion has the full story, well worth the quick read.

The Congressional Globe reported it in its enrolled bills signed section. The Senate also debated an important bill on the organization of the army.