From
the Rear Ranks:
Greetings
Members! It was great to see you all in
October and once again I was happy to see some new faces. Unfortunately I am going to miss the November
meeting, due to a family vacation.
However you are in the safe hands of our Secretary Ted Pawlik who will
run the meeting in my absence. In addition
I am sorry to miss our presentation this month done by Mike Plunkett who will
present Irish music from the Civil War in what he calls “Paddy has gone for
Soldier.” I have included an important
150th milestone below which discusses the removal (finally in the
thoughts of many contemporaries) of George McClellan from his command of the
Army of the Potomac. He was told to
return home to New Jersey for orders (lucky for us) that never came. But his replacement, Ambrose Burnside would
have deep flaws as well which would be evident in the next great battle in the
East at Fredericksburg. Enjoy November’s
meeting and I hope to see you all in December!
Respectfully,
Chip
Crowe
President,
Brandywine
Valley Civil War Round Table
Note: The following article appeared in the New
York Times on November 10, 1862.
The Removal of Gen. McClellan.
November 10, 1862
Gen. McCLELLAN has been removed from the command of the Army of
the Potomac and Gen. BURNSIDE appointed in his place. The immediate cause of
this removal has been Gen. McCLELLAN's refusal to advance against the enemy,
even under the most peremptory orders of the General-in-Chief. It will be seen,
by a letter from Gen. HALLECK to the Secretary of War, which we publish in
another column, that on the 1st of October Gen. MCCLELLAN was urged by Gen.
HALLECK to cross the Potomac and give battle to the enemy, -- being at the same
time reminded of the disadvantages of delaying until the Potomac should be
swollen, and the roads impaired, by the autumnal rains. Finding that this
produced no effect, Gen. MCCLELLAN was "peremptorily ordered" by Gen.
HALLECK, on the 6th of October, to "cross the Potomac and give battle to
the enemy or drive him South." For three weeks this order was not obeyed,
and the only excuse given for not obeying it, so far as appears, -- the want of
supplies, -- is shown by the letter of Gen. HALLECK to have been utterly
without foundation. The disclosures of that letter, concerning Gen. MCCLELLAN's
constant and reiterated complaints of lack of supplies, are very remarkable and
deserve special attention.
We presume that this particular instance of disobedience of
orders, though the immediate occasion, is not the whole cause of Gen.
MCCLELLAN's removal. It is pretty generally understood that this is only the
culmination of a systematic disregard of orders, of a steady and obstinate
tardiness in the conduct of the campaign against the rebels, and of a
consequent inefficiency in command, which would long ago have secured his
dismissal under any Administration less timid than that which has now
possession of power. The fifteen months during which he has had virtual control
of the war have been utterly barren of results to the cause he has professed to
serve. Few commanders in history have had such splendid opportunities, and
fewer still have so ostentatiously thrown them away. With an army capable of
the most heroic achievements, powerful in numbers, unrivaled in discipline and
equipment, eager always for active and onward movement, he has accomplished
absolutely nothing but successful retreats from inferior forces, and the defence
of the Capital at Washington, which he should have left no foe capable of
menacing. The rebel armies have grown up in his presence, and by his
toleration. Through all his long career he has made but one attack and won but
a single victory: and that became absolutely fruitless through his failure to
follow it up.
We have no theory on which to explain this most extraordinary
failure of Gen. MCCLELLAN as a commander, or the still more extraordinary
persistence of the President in committing the fortunes of the war to his
hands. Gen. MCCLELLAN has shown too many of the qualities of an accomplished
soldier to attribute his failure to simple incapacity. That he is absolutely
disloyal to the Government we have never permitted ourselves to believe. Yet we
think it quite probable that his heart has never been in the war, -- that
through it all he has had hopes of a compromise which should end it, and that
he has feared the effect upon such a compromise of a stern and relentless
prosecution of hostilities. His position and possibly his feelings have been
those ascribed by MACAULAY to ESSEX, who commanded the armies of the Parliament
at the outbreak of the great civil war. He was an accomplished soldier and a
Parliamentarian; but he shrank from civil war, -- he hoped through it all for
an accommodation with the King, and "next to a great defeat he dreaded a
great victory." Under such a leader the war could never prosper, and it
was soon found necessary to replace him by HAMPDEN, who carried into the field
the boldness and courage he had shown in politics, and who had the sagacity to
see from the outset that "in war of all kinds, moderation is
imbecility." As a politician, Gen. MCCLELLAN's sympathies, previous to the
rebellion, had always been with the South. He has believed them wronged by
Northern sentiment and by Northern action. And beyond all question, he has
hoped and believed that a time would come when the war could be arrested, and
when the Southern leaders, backed by a powerful party in the Northern States, would
listen to terms of accommodation, -- and that nothing would stand in the way of
such a compromise more than a victory which should wound their pride by
humiliating their arms and crushing their power.
In this view of the case, Gen. MCCLELLAN has been encouraged by
the political partisans who, at an early stage in the war, made him their
prospective candidate for the Presidency, and came thus to have an interest in
putting him in opposition to the Administration which he professed to serve.
They defended his errors, and made themselves the special champions of his
worst mistakes. They had unquestionable provocation and some excuse for much of
this in the intemperate zeal with which he was assailed; but they betrayed him
into an undue reliance on the support of a party, and a ruinous subserviency to
their wishes and views. We know not how else to account for the steady and
systematic disregard he has shown of the wishes and orders of the Government,
and for his adherence to a deliberate and methodical inactivity, which has
brought the cause of the Union to the very verge of ruin. Unless we have been
misinformed, President LINCOLN has on two occasions written to Gen. MCCLELLAN,
reviewing in detail his military operations, and demonstrating his failures to
respond to the wishes and just expectations of the Government. One of these
papers was prepared just after MCCLELLAN had landed onthe Peninsula, at other
after the battle of Antietam; and we have heard both spoken of as masterpieces
of military criticism. It is a melancholy satisfaction to learn that the
President of the United States, who is the Commander-in-Chief of all its
armies, and who is responsible, before God and the country, for the behavior of
all its Generals, did not keep Gen. MCCLELLAN in command of the Army of the
Potomac from any confidence in his capacity or his fitness for the place. Why
he did retain him so long after he had satisfied himself that he ought to be
removed, it might be curious, though it would be useless to speculate. We trust
that the first act of Congress, when it meets next month, will be to call for
all the correspondence, and all the documents of every kind, which can throw
light upon the extraordinary campaigns of this unfortunate commander.
Gen. BURNSIDE has been three times offered the
command of the Army of the Potomac. He declined it twice, partly from a strong
feeling of personal affection for Gen. MCCLELLAN, and partly from thorough
confidence in his military capacity, and his devotion to the Union cause. This
confidence, we suspect, was somewhat shaken during and after the battle of
Antietam; while the treatment he has since received for having remonstrated
against the General's causeless suspension of the fight, has probably released
him from the personal obligations on which he was previously inclined to lay
such controlling stress. We presume, therefore, that he will now accept the
command. He has shown thus far during the war great military ability, and a
thorough, unqualified, unquestioning devotion to the cause he serves. What he
will be able to accomplish remains to be seen. It is now certain that, in
consequence of the extraordinary delay in the movements of our army, the rebels
have completely eluded them, and are now beyond their reach. The autumnal rains
have commenced; the rivers and small streams of Virginia are no longer
fordable; the roads are becoming muddy and impracticable; and all rapid and
effective movement is nearly impossible. If it was any part of Gen. MCCLELLAN's
purpose to prevent a decisive battle with the rebel army, he was probably left
in command just long enough to accomplish his object.
