CH. XVII.]

SIEGE OF YORKTOWN

authority of his government to make an assault.1 Not to break the Confederate line of thirteen miles which stretched from the York River to the James 2 was an error; indeed it is true, as Joseph E. Johnston wrote, that "No one but McClellan could have hesitated to attack."3 April 17 Johnston took command in person at Yorktown, and at that date the Confederate army had reached the number of 53,000.4 From this time on perhaps nothing could have been better than a continuance of the scientific siege operations which McClellan had begun soon after his arrival before Yorktown. He went on erecting siege works and planting heavy Parrott guns and mortars against the Confederate fortifications, maintaining an active correspondence with the department at Washington and with his wife at home. In his letters to the President and to the Secretary of War he resented bitterly that McDowell's corps had been withdrawn from his command; he complained of the smallness of his own force, and intimated that he was outnumbered by the Confederates; he had much to say of the rainy weather and of the roads deep with mud. To his worshipping wife he told of the disadvantages he was laboring under and of his many troubles in a tone that at times degenerated into childishness; indeed some of his letters sound like the utterances of a youth ungrown rather than of the captain of a great army. Others show him to be a prey to illusions. Not only "the rebels," but the "abolitionists and other scoundrels" are aiming at

1 Official Records, vol. xi. part iii. pp. 76, 97, 425, 436; part i. pp. 14, 15. By the title of Official Records I designate the government publication : War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I. is to be always understood unless there is mention otherwise. In making references to these records the abbreviation O. R. will be used.

April 6 the President telegraphed McClellan: "I think you better break the enemy's line from Yorktown to Warwick River, at once." — O. R., vol. xi. part i. p. 14. McClellan wrote his wife: "The President very coolly telegraphed me yesterday that he thought I had better break the enemy's lines at once! I was much tempted to reply that he had better come and do it himself."- Own Story, p. 308.

8 April 22, to Lee, O. R., vol. xi. part iii. p. 456. • Johnston's Narrative, p. 117

his ruin. It is the men at Washington to whom he refers when he writes, "History will present a sad record of these traitors who are willing to sacrifice the country and its army for personal spite and personal aims."1 The President, yearning for the success of McClellan and willing to do anything in his power to bring it about, sent him Franklin's division of McDowell's corps, which reached him April 22. Still McClellan did not open a general attack from his batteries. April 28 he called for some 30-pounder Parrott guns from Washington, and brought forth this answer from the President: "Your call. . . alarms me chiefly because it argues indefinite procrastination. Is anything to be done?"2

Crossing to the Confederate lines, one is impressed with the good fortune of the South in having an able commander for its principal army at the commencement of the war instead of being obliged, as was the North, to grope about through bitter trial and sickening failures. Johnston coolly watched the operations of his adversary, and made up his mind that Yorktown would be untenable when McClellan's elaborate siege operations were set in motion. Desirous of avoiding the loss of life which a bombardment would occasion, he timed nicely his evacuation of Yorktown and the adjacent works, withdrawing his army on the 3d of May, three days before the contemplated opening of a general fire from the heavier Union batteries. McClellan's procrastination had given the Confederates a precious month, in which they commenced the reorganization of their army, gave some measure of training to the Virginia militia, and brought reinforcements from the South. The evacuation of Yorktown took McClellan by surprise. Nevertheless he gave orders for immediate pursuit, while he himself remained at Yorktown to superintend the

1 Letters to his wife, McClellan's Own Story, p. 310, ante, et seq.

2 O. R., vol. xi. part iii. pp. 126, 130.

3 See vol. iii. of this work, pp. 606, 616.

"The action of the enemy almost always disappointed McClellan.". Gen. Francis Palfrey, who was in McClellan's army in the Peninsular Campaign: Papers of the Military Historical Society of Mass., vol. i. p. 155.

CB. XVII.]

YORKTOWN TO THE CHICKAHOMINY

5

embarkation of Franklin's division on transports which were to go up the York River.1 Hooker with his division overtook the enemy and began the battle of Williamsburg, which was fought without a plan, under confused orders and defective disposition of forces, and, though somewhat relieved by a brilliant exploit of Hancock, then commander of a brigade, resulted in a Union defeat and considerable loss. McClellan arrived on the field at about five o'clock in the afternoon, receiving, as he always did, loud and enthusiastic cheers from his men; but the battle of Williamsburg was over. He made a disposition of forces for the conflict which he expected. would be renewed on the morrow; but that night the Confederates marched away from Williamsburg on their retreat to Richmond. McClellan followed with almost incredible slowness. The march from Williamsburg to the place where his army went into camp on the Chickahominy, a distance of forty to fifty miles, consumed a fortnight.2 The roads of course were bad, and Virginia mud is a factor to be taken into account in the consideration of many campaigns; but the young general exaggerated these obstacles and the inclemency of the weather, even as he overestimated the force of the enemy. Lincoln, who was undoubtedly weary of this constant grumbling, and observed that the Confederates marched in spite of bad roads and made attacks in spite of rough weather, once said: "McClellan seemed to think, in defiance of Scripture, that Heaven sent its rain only on the just and not on the unjust."4

1 "Curiously enough, there was almost always something for McClellan to do more important than to fight his own battles."― Palfrey, Papers of the Military Historical Society of Mass., vol. i. p. 156.

2 Committee on Conduct of the War, part i. p. 20; Webb's Peninsula, p. 83. 8 In a somewhat merry mood McClellan enlivens his book with an anecdote of which he more than once thought during this campaign and from which he might have drawn an apposite lesson. McClellan asked an old general of Cossacks who had served in all the Russian campaigns against Napoleon how the roads were in those days. "My son," he replied, "the roads are always bad in war."-Own Story, p. 275.

4 Nicolay and Hay, vol. v. p. 414.

On the morning of May 11 McClellan, who had then cov ered nineteen miles beyond Williamsburg, learned that the Confederates had evacuated Norfolk and destroyed the ironclad Merrimac,1 thereby leaving open to the Federal fleet the James River, which offered to the Union general a line of advance on Richmond more advantageous in every important military consideration. It made available to him the cooperation of the navy; it saved him the risk of braving the fever-breath of the Chickahominy swamps; it would have enabled him to threaten the most important communication of the Confederate capital with the States farther South.

McClellan is wise after the event, and in his report of August 4, 1863, and in his book acknowledges that the approach to Richmond by the James was a safer and surer route than the one adopted; 2 but, unable to admit that he ever made a mistake, he ascribes his evident failure in strategy to the administration at Washington. Having asked repeatedly for reinforcements, he finally sent to the President on May 14 a respectful and reasonable despatch, the gist of which was: "I ask for every man that the War Department can send me by water." Four days later the Secretary of War replied that while the President did not deem it wise to uncover the capital entirely by sending the available forces by the waterroute, he had, however, ordered McDowell with his 40,000 men to march from Fredericksburg overland and join the Army of the Potomac either north or south of the Pamunkey River. He then directed McClellan to extend his right wing north of Richmond in order to establish this communication as soon as possible. This command, declares McClellan, "is the reason for my not operating on the line of the James." His excuse is not borne out by his own private correspondence of the time, which contains not even the vaguest

1 O. R., vol. xi. part iii. p. 164.

2 Ibid., part i. p. 28; McClellan's Own Story, p. 346; see, also, McClellan's article, The Century Company's War Book, vol. ii. p. 173.

3 The Pamunkey was the south branch of the York River. 4 O. R., vol. xi. part i. pp. 26, 27.

CH. XVII.]

DESTRUCTION OF THE MERRIMAC

7

allusion to a desire for such a movement; in fact, the tenor of all his despatches and letters is that he expected to fight Johnston's army between the Chickahominy River and Richmond. Moreover, he knew on the 11th of May of the destruction of the Merrimac, and did not receive notice of the promised reinforcement by McDowell until the 18th. The full week intervening was his for considering and adopting the plan of moving on Richmond by the line of the James River. This he had unhampered power to do, and this is exactly what he ought to have done.

As soon as the destruction of the Merrimac was known, the Monitor and a number of gunboats started up the James. Their approach caused more of a panic in Richmond than did any direct menace of McClellan's army of 100,000 during the whole of the Peninsular Campaign. There were, indeed, anxious hearts in the capital city when the Union troops first appeared before Yorktown; but when McClellan, instead of attacking the Confederates, went on with his scientific siege operations, anxiety gave way to wonder and to contempt for his generalship. The fall of New Orleans was a blow, and the destruction a fortnight later of the Merrimac — “ that great gift of God and of Virginia to the South "2-seemed disaster crowding upon disaster. Although McClellan's military ability was despised, the march of his well-trained and well-equipped army towards the capital of the Confederacy could not be looked on without apprehension. While there was a quiet confidence in Johnston, strictures on Jefferson Davis were not uncommon. Of him who was now acting as military adviser to the President and became later the greatest Southern commander, the Richmond Examiner, standing for a widely held opinion, said: "Evacuating Lee, who has never yet risked a single battle with the invader, is com

1 See despatches in O. R., and letters to his wife in Own Story; testimony before Com. on Conduct of the War; also Webb's Peninsula, p. 87; Nicolay and Hay, vol. v. p. 384; Swinton's pamphlet, McClellan's Military Career Reviewed and Exposed, p. 22.

2 Richmond Examiner, May 13.