Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction Allen Guelzo (novels to read .txt) 📖

Now Lee took personal command of the Richmond defenses, and, in complete contrast to McClellan, he at once advanced to the offensive and opened what became known as the Seven Days’ Battle. On June 26, finding the Federal army still straddling the Chickahominy, Lee decided to strike at Federal troops on the north side of the river at Mechanicsville. Lee’s attacks were repulsed and his forces suffered more than 1,400 casualties, but the next day Lee attacked the same Federal troops again at Gaines Mill, and this time the Confederate forces inflicted nearly 6,800 casualties on the Union troops and forced them to withdraw.53

McClellan’s communications with his supply base at White House Landing on the York river were now bare, and McClellan, imagining himself to be outnumbered and endangered by untold hosts of rebel fiends, concluded that he had no choice but to fall back to a safe spot on the James River and set up a new base there. Lee, scenting blood, harried and snapped at McClellan’s retreating army at Allen’s Farm and Savage’s Station (on June 29) and Glendale, or Frayser’s Farm, and White Oak Swamp (both on June 30), hoping to pick off and crush isolated Federal brigades and divisions, until at last he was handed a bloody repulse by the Federal rear guard at Malvern Hill (July 1). All in all, the Seven Days’ Battle cost Lee’s army 3,494 men killed and 15,758 wounded—but he had saved Richmond.54 McClellan, still believing himself outnumbered and blaming his defeat on Lincoln’s unwillingness to send him McDowell, dug the Army of the Potomac into an impregnable defensive position at Harrison’s Landing, on the James River. The great Peninsula Campaign was over.

And so, it seemed, was McClellan’s career. McClellan, of course, saw no blame in himself; in fact, he expected Lincoln to grant him reinforcements so that he could move from the new base at Harrison’s Landing along the south side of the James River and clamp Richmond into a siege from below. But on July 8, when Lincoln himself came down to Harrison’s Landing to speak with McClellan, the president was in no mood for petting the Young Napoleon. Even as McClellan was still struggling back to Harrison’s Landing, Lincoln had decided to appoint a new commander for the scattered Union forces that had been beaten black and blue by Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley. He selected a hard-fighting, no-compromise, anti-slavery westerner named John Pope and had the forlorn remnants of McDowell’s corps and the troops Jackson had led merrily up and down the Shenandoah reorganized as a new army, the Army of Virginia. He then sent them off to launch a fresh invasion—an overland invasion, not one of McClellan’s fancy but fruitless combined land-and-sea operations.

Under Pope, there would be no observances of polite niceties by Union troops in rebel territory. In a series of general orders, Pope freely authorized his troops to forage from the population at will, to shoot any civilians guilty of taking potshots at Federal soldiers while “not forming part of the organized forces of the enemy nor wearing the garb of soldiers” and confiscate their property, and to impress local civilians into military road work. There would be no more studious protection of Southern property: “Soldiers were called into the field to do battle against the enemy, and it is not expected that their force and energy shall be wasted in protecting private property of those most hostile to the Government.” When Pope’s men flooded into northern Virginia’s Culpeper County, Jefferson Davis was astounded to learn that the Yankees “are systematically destroying all the growing crops and everything the people have to live on”; on July 31 Davis ordered Lee to treat any of Pope’s officers he might capture as “robbers and murderers” rather than prisoners of war.55

While Pope was spreading premeditated devastation into northern Virginia, McClellan remained motionless at Harrison’s Landing, demanding that Lincoln supply him with another 100,000 men for his new drive at Richmond. Even if Lincoln had wanted to give them to McClellan, the time it would take to reinforce and reequip McClellan for another campaign on the Peninsula would allow Lee and his victorious Confederates to slip northward and menace Washington in force. Lincoln could not risk another close call like the one Stonewall Jackson had given the capital in March. Yet Lincoln hesitated to cashier McClellan outright. Although Lincoln might have wanted to rid himself of “Little Mac” right on the dock at Harrison’s Landing, McClellan had become too clearly identified with Democratic political interests in the North. With critical state elections in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and with the 1862 congressional elections hanging over the horizon in November, Lincoln could not afford to alienate Northern Democratic sympathies. He was “tired” of McClellan’s “excuses [and] said he’d remove him at once but for the election.”56

What was even more dangerous, McClellan still possessed the loyalty and admiration of the ordinary soldiers of the Army of the Potomac, and he had had fully a year to fill up the officer corps of the army with his friends and subordinates. Not only might those officers refuse to serve under a McClellan replacement, but Lincoln could not be certain that they might not attempt a political action of their own if McClellan was summarily relieved of command. Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, who accompanied Lincoln to Harrison’s Landing, was appalled to hear “mutterings of a march on Washington.”57 Hence Lincoln chose not to dismiss McClellan but to ease the Army of the Potomac out from under him. On August 3 McClellan was ordered to begin putting elements of the Army of the Potomac back onto their transports to return to Washington, where one by one McClellan’s proud formations were fed over to General Pope to become part of the Army of Virginia.

This delicate outmaneuvering might have gone off smoothly if it had not been for the ferocious aggressiveness of Robert