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Price, 10 Cents, to be had at all Booksellers and News-Dealers. 
 
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 Copy 1 
 
 FKEMONT AND McCLELLAN, 
 
 IPoliiial M)i JJilitarg €muxs 
 
 .REVIEWED: 
 
 Their Birth, Education, and early Associations— Political Affinities — Fre- 
 mont's Rocky Mountain Explorations — Conquest of California — Alleged 
 "Insubordination" — McClellan at West Point — ^Tn the Mexican War — 
 Their Relative Experience — McClellan's Secret Service in Cuba— His 
 Promotion by Jeff. Davis— Visit to the Crimea — His Book — Fremont's 
 Presidential Campaign — McClellan's Proclamation— Fremont's Pro- 
 clamation — The Two Policies^ McClellan General-in-Chief — 
 Fremont's Missouri Campaign— McClellan's Plans — His Advance 
 ON Manassas — PENINSULAR C AMP AICxN — Yorktown — Wil- 
 
 LIAMSBURGH — SeVEN PjNES — MrS. LeE — StEWART'S RaID AND 
 
 the Bloody Seven Days — Cross Keys — Concluding Re- 
 flections on Strategy— " the MAN FOR THE HOUR." 
 
 VAN BUREN DENSLOW. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 PRINTED AT THE OFFICE OF THE SEMI-WEEKLY CLARION. 
 1862. 
 
 Orders reeeived at tlie Office of Wynkoop, Hallenbeck & Thomas, 113 Fnlton Street. 
 
FREMONT AND McCLELLAN, 
 
 ilitarg €nxmB 
 
 REVIEWED: 
 
 Their Birth, Education, and early Associations— Political Affinities — Fre- 
 mont's Rocky Mountain Explorations — Conquest of California — Alleged 
 " Insubordination " — McClellan at West Point — In the Mexican War — 
 Their Relative Experience — McClellan's Secret Service in Cuba — His 
 Promotion by Jeff. Davis— Visit to the Crimea — His Book — Fremont's 
 Presidential Campaign — McClellan's Proclamation— Fremont's Pro- 
 clamation — The Two Policies — McClellan General-in-Chief — 
 Fremont's Missouri Campaign— McClellan's Plans — His Advance 
 on Manassas — peninsular C AMP AIGN — Yorktown — Wil- 
 liamsburgh — Seven Pines — Mrs. Lee — Stewart's Raid and 
 the Bloody Seven Days — Cross Keys — Concluding Re- 
 flections on Strategy— " THE MAN FOR THE HOUR." 
 
 VAN BUREN DENSLOW 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 PRIKTED AT THE OFFICE OF THE SEMI-WEEKLY CLARION. 
 
 1862. 
 

 ^^ 
 
 ^v 
 
 ^^ 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by 
 
 JEREMIAH BURNS, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern 
 District of New York. 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The following review was written as one of the series (No. 3) 
 of "Crisis Papers/' now publishing in the Semi-Weekly Clarion. 
 After its appearance in that form, some of its readers, believ- 
 ing that it deserved to be more widely disseminated, and de- 
 siring to publish it in its present form, have done so, with 
 
 the consent of 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
A REVIEW 
 
 OF Tn K 
 
 POLITICAL AND MILITARY CAREERS 
 
 OP 
 
 FKEMONT AND McCLELLAN. 
 
 Upon the secondary actors in a drama, whether upon the mimic stage 
 or upon the broad theatre of real life, public opinion is generally united. 
 They pass on all sides for about what they are worth, as their lesser 
 importance, by sparing them from criticism and partisanship, saves them 
 from both friends and enemies. So in the reputations developed by this 
 war ; there is little difference and no conflict as to the merits of Butler, 
 Burnside, Anderson, McDowell, Pope, Curtis, Wallace, Sigel, and the 
 hosts of other brave and capable military men who have distinguished 
 themselves and shed lustre on their country's arms by their achievements 
 in responsible yet subordinate capacities. Fremont and McClellan, how- 
 ever, enjoy no such undisputed honors. While a portion of the people of 
 the country appear to regard Fremont as a military failure, and McClellan 
 as possessing wonderful military abilities, others are enthusiastic in their 
 admiration of Fremont's entire career as a soldier, and fail to see the evi- 
 dences that McClellan is entitled to the favor which the Administration 
 lias shown him. When we add to this, that those who are satisfied with 
 Fremont are generally those who voted for Lincoln, while the admirers of 
 McClellan are those who voted for Breckinridge, Douglas and Bell, it is 
 apparent that this war of reputations is, to a degree, partisan, and it is 
 also probable that the instinctive elective aflBnities of the people have dis- 
 cerned, in these men a fitness to be the leaders of their respective senti- 
 ments, and that therefore this aflBnity for Fremont or McClellan is based 
 on deep-seated qualities in the men, which make them fit types of the two 
 great political classes of the North. We propose to compare them, first 
 politically, and secondly as soldiers. 
 
 Fremont was born and reared with all the advantages which the son 
 of a poor widow enjoys in South Carolina. McClellan labored under all 
 the early difficulties attending the child of a prosperous physician, in 
 Philadelphia. Though poor — perhaps, because poor — Fremont educated 
 
himself. Though rich, McClellan was educated by the nation. Whatever 
 military abilities are possessed by Fremont have cost the country nothing ; 
 while it would be singular if McClellan were destitute of military knowl- 
 edge, since he was educated at West Point and sent to Europe, at the na- 
 tional expense, to obtain it. Though born in the most aristocratic State of 
 the slave South, Fremont early struck out for the free North, and his ener- 
 gy, prudence, associations, skill in business, and personal success and popu- 
 larity are all Northern in their character. He has long stood, and stands 
 to-day^ the peculiar representative type of the party of Freedom, as 
 opposed to the party of slavery-apologists in the North. Even his part in 
 the Mexican war, which consisted in the conquest of California, did not in 
 any way commit him as it did the more southern armies of Taylor and 
 Scott, and their officers, to the business which constituted the main object 
 of the war, viz. : extending human slavery, since slavery could not be 
 extended to California. 
 
 McClellan, on the other hand, though cradled in the city of Brotherly 
 Love, has never professed to be anything else than Southern in his political 
 principles upon the points which have been gradually dividing more and 
 more the North from the South, from the days of Calhoun to the bombard- 
 ment of Sumter. It is doubtless unimportant tliat the Southern press 
 claim that McClellan, while at West Point, conspicuously preferred the 
 society of Southern cadets to that of the Northern "mudsills" in that insti- 
 tution. Being a Northern student himself, it is highly improbable, what- 
 ever his political views, that he would treat his own section of the country 
 with a contempt so ostentatious as to have made it a memorable element in 
 his character. True, his service as a lieutenant in command of sappers 
 and miners, in the war upon Mexico — a war which was wholly Southern 
 in its origin, intensely Southern in its aim, and mainly Southern in the 
 officers conducting it — brought him again into association with such 
 officers as Twiggs, Quitman, Worth, Lee, Beauregard, Pillow, Davis, 
 Johnston, and Magruder, thus cementing warm personal friendships be- 
 tween him and them ; but this was but the natural effect of his position. 
 The fact that all these were his seniors in age, rank and consideration in 
 the service, naturally tended to draw him towards them by that elective 
 affinity by which ambitious minds are ever drawn to their superiors, and 
 since he was deservedly well received by them, it was but natural that 
 mutual influences should be exerted, tending to confidence upon their 
 side, and to that regard for Southern men and Southern institutions 
 upon his part which he has always consistently maintained, until it 
 became necessary for him to choose between the preservation of such 
 associations and a major-generalship in the service of bis country. 
 The claim of the Richmond papers, that he once, in correspondence with 
 one who is now a distinguished rebel officer, expressed his sympathies 
 
with the South with a force which coukl be fairly construed into a tender 
 of his services to the Soutliern rebellion, should any attempt be made to 
 coerce the South, is but a fair example of the ingratitude with whicli the 
 rebels of the South regard their former friends. Did any such correspond- 
 ence exist, the Punic faith which would reveal the fact would not scruple 
 at publishing tlie letter. It is, however, a significant contrast that during 
 the administration of Pierce, while the party of freedom were fixing their 
 eyes upon Col. Fremont as their representative man and candidate for the 
 highest office in the gift of the people, the party of slavery— then in 
 power, with Jefferson Davis as Secretary of War, and Pierre Soule (now 
 in Fort Warren) as Minister to Spain, and endeavoring to foment a war 
 with Spain for the acquisition of Cuba to the (then) United States, and of 
 course to the present "Confederate States'"— caused Lieutenant McClellan 
 to be appointed by Mr. Jefferson Davis upon secret service in and about 
 Cuba, having reference to such expected war, in which, as in that with 
 Mexico, Northern blood should again flow to build up the Southern slave 
 power. Indeed, Capt. McClellan was openly stated by the press, at the 
 time, to have been one of the minor officers who, with Beauregard, Dun- 
 can, Mansfield Lovell, G. W. Smitli, and others now in the rebel army, 
 were to command in Quitman's intended fillibustering expedition against 
 Cuba, which was broken up by Secretary Marcy. And, for his compli- 
 city with these movements for strengthening that slave power which is 
 now the secession power, he was promoted from his brevet to a full 
 captaincy by Jefferson Davis and sent to the Crimea. Fremont, however, 
 has never been honored by the then secret and now open traitors to 
 their country— nor, so far as we are aw-are, has he ever been used, 
 under instructions or otherwise, to further the machinations of the cun- 
 ning propagandists of human bondage and of its political power ; though 
 the Southern people, and especially those of Charleston, testified, by 
 the presentation of swords, &c., tljeir high appreciation of his services as 
 a soldier in the Mexican war, and their pride in the fact that he was born 
 in the South. 
 
 The first great attack upon the Sebastopol of slavery was made under 
 the banner of Fremont. The battle-cry, "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men, 
 Fremont," rang throughout the continent, from the Alleghanies to the Cor- 
 dilleras, from the snows to the tropics, with a thunder peal that announced 
 to friends and enemies that the defeat of Fremont was freedom's last defeat. 
 The North retired from the polls to their homes confident of the victory 
 of four years after. Enough of them, however, had voted with the South 
 to elect an Administration prepared to co-operate with the latter, who, 
 stung and goaded by the certainty of coming defeat, went to Washington 
 and spent the next four years, aided by the whole power and vigor of the 
 Government, in preparations for the work of overthrowing it. It is singu ■ 
 
6 
 
 larly illustrative of the fact that a happier star presided over the obscurer 
 destiny of McClellan, that while Col. Fremont was defeated by fraud for 
 the Presidency of the United States, Lieut. McClellan was successful in 
 obtaining the Vice Presidency and Superintendency of a Western Eailroad. 
 
 It is a part of his political history also, that upon the breaking out of the 
 war, McClellan, on crossing the Ohio into Virginia, issued a proclamation, 
 stating that should the slaves rebel (which they had not given the slight- 
 est evidence of intending) he, McClellan, would crush them " with an 
 iron hand," while lie instructed his troops in a general order to treat the 
 Avhite rebels kindly if they got them into their power, " because most of 
 them were deluded." Here, then, was a platform growing out of McClel- 
 lan's political sentiments, of kindness to the rebels, whom he was sent tol/ 
 punish, and of iron-handedness to the slaves, with crushing whom, if 
 they should rebel against the rebels, he and his troops had as much to do 
 as with driving home their stray cattle — no more. Nay, it is not now to 
 be doubted, that any general insurrection among the slaves at that time, 
 while it would have been far less sanguinary than the scenes which have 
 since occurred in our efforts to preserve the Union, would have spread 
 such consternation among the rebels, and would have so divided and 
 crippled their resources, as to have speedily insured the triumph of the 
 Union cause. Nor has the expectation, that a pro-slavery course would 
 develop a Union sentiment at the South, been realized in a degree sufficient 
 to afford us any assistance in quelling the rebellion. The most extensive 
 insurrection, or the most thorough anti-slavery policy, could hardly have 
 rendered the South more united than it has been. Fremont, on the other 
 hand, believing that, as commander of his department, he had as much 
 authority to free slaves as McClellan had to suppress their imaginary 
 insurrections, and knowing tliat in this claim he had the precedent of the 
 greatest of Eoman generals in ancient times, and of such generals as Jack- 
 son, Taylor and Gaines, in our own country, declared — what Congress 
 has since enacted — the slaves of rebels free. By the last-named events, 
 these two generals are politically to stand or fall. In the mere matter of 
 place-holding, Fremont has already fallen, and McClellan lias been sus- 
 tained. But office-holding is not even Fame ; still less is it virtue or true 
 greatness. The babbling of to-day's crowd may gratify greed, and be mis- 
 named success, but true glory results only from sacrifices made in the cause 
 of freedom and humanity, not from the silver bought by their betrayal. 
 
 Having I'eviewed the political considerations which influence the pop- 
 ular judgment of Fremont and McClellan, let us candidly examine their 
 respective military careers. Fremont received his first commission as 
 Second Lieutenant of Engineers in the year 1838. He immediately 
 entered upon his daring and infinitely valuable explorations of the path- 
 less regions of the Eocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and the inter- 
 
lying basin — contributing to the scientific world more valuable information 
 tlian probably any living explorer, if we may except Humboldt, and 
 entrancing the admirers of heroism and the lovers of romance in Europe 
 and America with the dangers which he encountered, and the apparently 
 insurmountable difficulties which he overcame. It was by this means, 
 instead of idly place-hunting around Washington, that Fremont had 
 passed successively through the grades of captain by brevet, captain, 
 major, and lieutenant-colonel, which was his rank in 1846, when McClel- 
 lan entered the array from "West Point as second lieutenant of engineers. 
 As .showing the comparative degrees of military experience possessed by 
 tlie present actors in this war, we may state tliat A. S. Johnston was then 
 captain of dragoons, and Beauregard a lieutenant of engineers, so that 
 Fremont then outranked all the present actors in this war, on either side, 
 except Scott, Shields, "Wool, and Twiggs. At the close of the Mexican 
 war, McClellan was even nearer to Fremont in rank than in reputa- 
 tion. McOlellan had won creditable mention as a lieutenant of en- 
 gineers, in at least two oflScial dispatches of the general to whose 
 division he h.id been assigned, and had been promoted to a brevet captain- 
 cy, an average not brilliant good fortune. Fremont had, with 25 men, 
 crossed the great mountains and deserts of America, amid untold hardsliips, 
 yet with signal success, subsisting his horses on the bark of trees, and his 
 men upon the flesh of horses — and had, with this force, recruited by a 
 few Americans resident in California, while still unaware of the exist- 
 ence of war with Mexico, hoisted the Bear Flag of Oalifornian independ- 
 ence, prevented the British fleet from seizing this province, driven out 
 the Mexican forces, and, when he learned of the existence of our war with 
 Mexico, exchanged the Bear Flag for the Stars and Stripes, thus giving to 
 his country, as a province, California, the land whose rivers ran over glis- 
 tening sands of gold. This success, and his scientific explorations of the 
 Rocky Mountains, made him probably the most widely-known man of his 
 age, not of royal birth, in the world. As a soldier, it was his good for- 
 tune to win to his country a province whose untold wealth repaid the 
 cost incurred by Taylor and Scott in conquering territory to be afterwards 
 surrendered. As a man of science, he had received the praises of Hum- 
 boldt, and, as a popular hero, the applause of the people. McClellan, still 
 unknown, might trace his aristocratic ancestry to the knights of Lochin- 
 var, or search for their graves upon the bloody fields of Flodden, but the 
 world instinctively bowed before the pedigree of Fremont as one of 
 nature's royal family, whose reputation might be as storm-beaten, but 
 would be found as pure and enduring as the snow-covered mountains 
 among which his laurels had been gathered, and with which, by the mys- 
 terious coincidences of Destiny, his very name was associated. 
 
 Fremont's success in California attracted the envy of the red-tape "West 
 Pointists, to whose dullness his foresight was insubordination. Several 
 
8 
 
 charges were made against him at the instigation of General Kearney, who 
 had been sent to conquer California, but who unfortunately did not arrive 
 until some time after Fremont had completed the work. The only charges, 
 which were finally sustained, grew out of the fact that Fremont had 
 obtained, on behalf of the United States, an agreement, subject to the 
 ratification of his Government, for the purchase, for $5,000, of an island 
 commanding the harbor of San Francisco, which he foresaw the United 
 States would need for military purposes, and Avhich is, in fact, now 
 occupied by a fort, tlie property of tlie United States. In this writing, 
 he is styled Military Governor of California, in using which style his 
 offense of insubordination consisted. His defense was, that he had received 
 a commission from Commodore Stockton, as Military Gov«rnor, and that 
 Stockton and Kearney, being unable to settle between themselves the 
 question of precedence, he, being compelled to obey one or the other, 
 using his best judgment, had obeyed Stockton. This course, he had 
 every reason to believe at the time, was assented to by Kearney, who 
 cooperated with him as Military Governor, in a friendly manner, until 
 after the return of both to the States, when the charge of insubordination 
 was unexpectedly made against him. President Polk offered him a pardon 
 from the sentence of dismissal from the service passed by tlie court-martial, 
 but Fremont, believing the finding and sentence utterly without foundation, 
 refused the pardon and resigned. General Kearney, upon his death-bed, 
 solicited and received the pardon of Fremont for the injury he had done 
 him. Tlie charge, nay, often the oifense, of insubordination, being a frequent 
 fact in the lives of the greatest military men, and occurring almost inva- 
 riably when a far-seeing captain is called upon to sacrifice the interests of 
 his command or of his country to the caprice or ignorance of an official 
 superior, allies him with such names as Caasar, Bonaparte, Wellington, 
 Wolfe, Jackson, and Scott, rather than furnishes evidence of military incom- 
 petency. McClellan, also, resigned, owing, it is said, to the fact that his 
 limited prospects in his profession as a soldier stood in the way of his mar- 
 riage. Such were the relative positions of Fremont and McClellan at the 
 bombardment of Sumter. McClellan, hitherto known as an officer of an in- 
 fluential corporation, upon whom, however, the nation had bestowed 
 marked advantages of acquiring military knowledge, and who had, up to 
 that hour, voted with the South, and whose last vote was cast for Breck- 
 inridge, the extreme Southern candidate, now a brigadier in the rebel army, 
 in preference to both Lincoln and Douglas, two candidates from his own 
 State of Illinois, would seem to have stood less chance of a prominent ap- 
 pointment. The supposed necessity, however, for uniting, by such means, 
 all parties at the North, caused the first military appointments to be made 
 almost exclusively from the anti-Republican parties. Patterson, whose 
 house was mobbed in Philadelphia until he was compelled to raise the 
 
stars and stripes, was made, to the surprise of all who knew him, a gen- 
 eral, and to his apatliy and indifference, caused by his pro-Southern sym- 
 pathies, we are indebted for our defeat at Bull Run. Butler, who had 
 seceded with the secessionists from the Charleston Convention, was com- 
 missioned by his political opponent. Governor Andrew ; and though he has 
 as yet done nothing as a strictly military man, yet, as a semi-military ad- 
 ministrative officer, the country has an evidence that such selections from 
 the former vehement friends of the South may sometimes be as fortunate 
 as the cases of Patterson, Stone, and others have proved disastrous, 
 McClellan was commissioned, by Governor Dennison, of Ohio, a Major- 
 General of Volunteers, and placed by the President in command of the 
 Department of Ohio, comprising both banks of the Ohio River. Fremont 
 was then in Europe, hastening his arrangements to return, in compliance 
 with the invitation of his Government, and improving his time, means, and 
 credit in purchases of arms and munitions of war, difficult to be obtained, 
 and of which the nation stood in such need. Meanwhile, the press and 
 public men of the country, of all parties, (j^uietly assumed that his past 
 services and experience eminently fitted him for a responsible command; 
 but no word of pressure, solicitation, or dictation was imposed upon the 
 President's judgment as to what that command should be. The President 
 and Senate alone were responsible for any rank or command which might 
 be given or denied to Fremont. All that military propriety required at 
 that time was, that his rank should be equal to his former rank of Lieutenant- 
 Colonel. Still it would have been a strange freak, alike impossible to the 
 country and the President, to have overlooked the fact that his former rank 
 and military experience were superior to those of any Unionists, except 
 Scott, Shields and Wool, all of whom had passed the prime of their vigor, 
 and that, if in addition the Administration should consult civil prominence 
 as a guide and test of military talent, as in the absence of purely military 
 men it was compelled largely to do, certainly none could stand higher 
 than the modest, but pure-famed, ex-Senator from California, who had 
 been the unanimous first choice of that North to which Mr. Lincoln was 
 alone indebted for his Presidency, and who, had he contended, like Mr. 
 Lincoln, against a divided instead of a united Democracy, would doubtless 
 have preceded him in the presidential chair. Whatever data the President 
 had, therefore, in his own position, as the head of the successful popular 
 party, for estimating the popular confidence in his own civil abilities, 
 applied equally to Fremont, without disparaging the effect of the ex- 
 clusively military experience and reputation of the latter, advantages, for 
 the crisis into which the country was then drifting, which the President 
 had not enjoyed. 
 
 Meanwhile, McClellan entered upon his command in Western Vir- 
 ginia, opening it with a proclamation which, though it failed to 
 reclaim the rebels, won golden opinions from all other pro-slavery men. 
 
10 
 
 "While the party who, through a Republican Governor and President, had 
 given him his appointment, saw him transcend his province with surprise, 
 perhaps with mortification, the President did not amend the proclama- 
 tion, and the President's constituents acquiesced, supposing he intended 
 to leave to his generals to deal with slavery according to their own 
 judgments. McClellan was fortunate in the scene of his operations. 
 Western Virginia had few slaves, and was therefore thoroughly loyal. 
 But few rebel troops had been thrown into it, and those were commanded 
 by inexperienced men, and vastly exceeded in numbers by McClellan's 
 force. The rebels never in a single instance voluntarily gave battle to 
 McClellan's subordinates; and, therefore, one report might have been 
 made of them all, that — 
 
 " When the fight became a chase, 
 He won the fight who won the race." 
 
 We say to McClellan's subordinates, as it is not generally known that Oen. 
 McClellan was not personally present^ and that no forces under Ms imme- 
 diate command actually tooTc part in any of the battles in Western Vir- 
 ginia, though the entire credit of being the commander of the department 
 in which they were fought and the author of the official dispatches in 
 which they were announced justly belongs to him alone, as the like 
 credit relative to the department of the Mississippi and its battles belongs 
 to Halleck. The first battle (Phillipi) was fought at that place (McClellan 
 being 24 miles distant, at Grafton) by Brigadier-General Morris and 
 Colonels Kelly andDumont, our forces numbering over 3,000 — the enemy 
 stated at 1,940. At Rich Mountain, General McClellan, in command of 
 10,000 men, designed to attack the enemy in front. It is difficult to 
 arrive at the exact numbers of the enemy, but we do not find them stated 
 higher than about 5,000. He sent General Rosecranz around to the 
 enemy's rear, with 3,000, who, coming only upon a force of some 300, 
 routed them ; the main rebel force, taking the alarm, quietly moved off" 
 during an interval of three hours, in which General McClellan stood 
 waiting for official information from Rosecranz, so that McClellan was 
 prevented by want of information from being actually engaged in this 
 battle. The battle, or, rather, pursuit of Laurel Mountain and Cheat 
 River, at which General Garnet was killed, was conducted by General 
 Morris in person, assisted by Captain Benham (now General) and 
 Colonel Dumont, without, it appears, the knowledge or orders of 
 McClellan. At these engagements several thousand prisoners were taken 
 by McClellan's subordinates, who, if detained by him, would have saved 
 our Bull Run prisoners from the horrors of a long captivity. The 
 prisoners which Morris, Benham, Lander, Rosecranz, Dumont, and Kelly 
 (several of whom were McClellan's seniors in age and military experience) 
 had captured, were all, in accordance with the policy announced in 
 
11 
 
 McClellan's proclamation, of showing "mercy to tlio rebels when in our 
 power, for many of them are misguided," released by General McClellan, 
 without interference from the President, xipon taking the " oath of 
 allegiance," and returned to the rebel ranks in time to aid in our 
 defeat at Bull Run. The estimation in which this policy, which soon be- 
 came the humiliation of the Administration and the nation, was held by 
 McClellan's ofRcers and troops, is happily shown by the sarcasm of a 
 captain in one of liis Ohio regiments. The troops, in pursuing the rebels 
 through the mountains, caught a rattlesnake, and, bringing it into camp, 
 asked the captain what they should do with it. "Oh, swear it," lie 
 replied, " and let it go." 
 
 The natural accompaniment of ignorance upon any particular subject 
 is implicit faith in those who pretend to understand it. At the breaking 
 out of the rebellion, both the people and the President, who had been 
 chosen from among them, professed and felt utter ignorance of the 
 theory and practice of war. When delegations called upon the Presi- 
 dent to express their views relative to the novel questions that rapidly 
 arose as the nation drifted into the vortex of war, his invariable answer 
 was, " Gentlemen, I know nothing about military matters. I leave all 
 these subjects to General Scott." We were astonished at the audacity of 
 the youthful Southern ])upils, who ventured a campaign against their old 
 instructor, the hero of a hundred fights. Disappointment alone teaches 
 us to "put not our trust in princes," and this disappointment came wlien 
 the great soldier who had triumphed from Vera Cruz to Chepultepec 
 was defeated at Bull Run. Though McDowell and his troops had 
 fought far better than any general or troops in Western Virginia, the 
 masses of the people, who judge according to success alone, and seldom 
 regard the njeaus used, looked away from the unsuccessful veteran Scott 
 to the tyro in command of the Department in which the slender but 
 only successes of the war had occurred. It was suddenly discovered that, 
 as a junior member of a military commission of three United States 
 officers sent by the Government to the Crimea, he had written a book 
 which showed great military genius. It has never been our pleasure to meet 
 with any person who has read this book, but all his admirers whom we 
 have met are convinced that it proves its author to be capable of command- 
 ing the entire Union army. True, the works of Major Delafield and Major 
 Mordecai, his co-commissioners, though received with equal favor, and 
 regarded as possessing equal ability at the time of their publication, were 
 not supposed to entitle either of those very estimable but unknown gentle- 
 men to the same exalted rank. They doubtless would, however, had 
 either of those gentlemen received from so profound a seer of undeveloped 
 military genius, as our State Governors usually are, the appointment of 
 Major-General of Volunteers. This appointment Captain McClellan had 
 
12 
 
 obtained from Governor Dennison, of Ohio, and Majors Delafield and 
 Mordecai had not— an appointment, however, which made him the only 
 Major-General (though of three months' volunteers), except Scott, then in 
 the service ; Wool being only Major-General in the United States army 
 by brevet. So that the gratitude of McClellan and the country is due in 
 a greater degree to Governor Dennison of Ohio, than to all other sources 
 combined for his military prominence in this war; and though these facts 
 may seem to make McClellan's prominence the result of accidental good 
 fortune in obtaining office rather than of any brilliant military achievements, 
 still, when we consider how often great reputations are the otfsprings of 
 accident, though more frequently of those occurring in the field than in the 
 cabinet, we are not surprised if men occasionally win rank as courtiers, 
 which they had not won as soldiers. No one supposes that, had McClellan 
 not resigned from the regular army, he would at this moment, without 
 being under fire upon any battle-field, have risen to a higher rank than all 
 his then senior officers. It is certainly a singular accidental working of 
 our military system, that the very resignation from the army which lessened 
 by some years his military experience, was necessary to liis military pro- 
 motion, and that his companions in arms, and seniors in rank, Sumner, 
 Fremont, Heintzelman, Porter, Rosecranz, Shields, "Wool, Harney, Ander- 
 son, and many others, should behold their Lieutenant of Sappers and 
 Miners returning to them as Commander-m-chief, by the magical effect of 
 the cabinet counsels of an Ohio Governor. Both tlie people and the 
 President, who so fiiithfully represents them, however, felt the need of 
 some one in whose every qualification they could repose absolute confi- 
 dence, and upon whom, in their avowed want of acquaintance with mili- 
 tary affairs, they could lean with religious faith and simple trust, and the 
 desire that McClellan might be such an one was, with many, father to the 
 faith that he was the most brilliant military man of the age. In the faith 
 of the people and the President, therefore, as well as in his position, 
 McClellan succeeded to Scott. The masses, on his promotion to the general 
 command, were as enthusiastic in praise of the late Lieutenant of Engineers, 
 whose good fortune it had never been to lead more than a company into 
 the field, as they had before been in admiration of the gray-haired con- 
 queror in a score of fights ; nay, more, for the high praise never given to 
 Scott of wearing as a name of honor, that of the terrible conqueror of 
 Europe, was conferred by the people upon McClellan, who was hailed as 
 a second Napoleon, while yet innocent of his maiden skirmish. It was 
 not displeasing to the people, therefore, that the President transferred to 
 McClellan the absolute supremacy over military matters, for which Scott 
 deemed himself to be but imperfectly competent, owing to the many 
 years he had already spent in the service of his country, a disqualifi- 
 cation from which McClellan was peculiarly free. Scott, whose mil- 
 itary jealousies are historical, was satisfied, as McClellan's previous 
 
13 
 
 humble rank and services had not admitted of rivalry or difference between 
 them. This would not have been the case had the choice fallen on Wool, 
 whom, shortly before Bull Run, Scott stigmatized as an invalid, though 
 his health has never interfered with the performance of any duties assigned 
 to him, as did Scott's immediately after that battle ; or on Shields, who, 
 though next to Scott and Wool in experience, being a fighting General, 
 was voted rash and no strategist, and with both of whom, as well as with 
 most of the other prominent officers of the army, Scott had at some time 
 quarreled. Fortunate, therefore, was the young general in entering upou 
 liis office, so obscure as not to have gained the envy of Scott, and so 
 untried as not yet to have lost the good-natured confidence of the people, 
 and consequently of the President. Fortunate was he also in the scene 
 of his operations. 
 
 And here we take up again the comparison between him and Fremont, 
 who was appointed at the same time to the command of the Western 
 Department, his instructions a carte blanche, to do in all respects (we quote 
 from recollection the language of the President) ''what he deemed calcu- 
 lated to promote" not merely the success of the army placed under his 
 command, but " the interests of the people over whom he was sety A 
 viceroy could not have received a more unlimited authority. McClellan 
 had the President, heads of Departments and Congress, at his elbow, 
 before whom to lay his plans, whose suggestions he might receive and 
 answer or adopt at pleasure. Fremont, removed from all these and 
 obliged to select even his stalF and his officers after the first military 
 talent had been absorbed by the army of the Potomac, was compelled to act 
 promptly upon facts, which, if attempted to be communicated by telegraph, 
 would have been known to the whole country, and if by mail the delay 
 would have been fatal. McClellan, having Scott on his right hand, and 
 the President at his left, the Secretary of War in front and of the Treasury 
 behind, was responsible only for success. His defeats could easily be 
 laid upon others. Fremont stood alone, responsible for success or defeat 
 alike, except in the few instances in which his plans were frustrated at 
 Washington. McClellan's enemy was concentrated at a single point — Man- 
 assas. Fremont's foes were spread over thousands of miles of the States of 
 Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee. Fremont, on reaching 
 St. Louis, found himself in command of about 22,000 troops, the terms of 
 service of most of which had already expired, who had received little or 
 no pay or attention from the Government, which had been wholly occu; 
 pied with the grand army at Washingtoa, and who were necessarily 
 scattered, by the exigencies of the service, over Missouri, Kansas, Illinois 
 and Kentucky in independent bands, the adequacy of which, as a protec- 
 tion from the enemy, may be inferred from the fact that St. Louis, though 
 threatened by an army under Price, reported at 30,000 men, had but four 
 regiments for its defense, while Cairo, similarly threatened by Johnson, 
 
14 
 
 Buckner and Pillow, had a like inadequate force. Washington, though 
 defended by a force exceeding that of the enemy, was surrounded by over 
 thirty forts. Fremont caused three to be built for the defense of St. Louis. 
 The amount of property at stake at St. Louis was many times that at 
 Washington. Yet Fremont has been accused of unmilitary conduct in 
 fortifying St. Louis. Fremont, knowing that every available regiment 
 was required for fighting or drilling, had the digging done by contract, 
 at a cost of $130,000, an entire cost which would not pay the expense of 
 defending Washington from breakfast until dinner. Yet he has been 
 accused of lavish expenditure in this item. The data are not in possession 
 of the public for a calculation of the comparative expensiveness ot the 
 Western and Eastern Departments at this period. We only know that, 
 though Fremont was furnished with very little money, and at times witli 
 none, yet the total of claims against the Government, on account of and 
 at the close of his three months' control of the Western Department, fell 
 short of $10,000,000, a sum which would have paid the general war 
 expenses of the Government, nearly all of which were incurred in McClel- 
 lan's department, for about four days. From West and East alike the flower 
 of the national forces had hurried to Washington for the defense of the 
 capital, and in expectation that the rebellion would receive its first and most 
 vital assaults in Virginia, after driving the rebels from which McClellan 
 would proceed to crush the rebellion in the South and South-west. Little 
 did the nation then dream that the few straggling regiments left to protect 
 the West from invasion, and put down the Missouri guerrillas, would 
 form the basis of the army, which, without the aid of a single Eastern 
 regiment, would invade the Southern States, open the Mississippi, with 
 the aid of Farragut's fleet, and strike the most ponderous blows at 
 the rebellion. McClellan was in command of the grand army of the 
 Union, in whose success we were interested and determined to believe, 
 Fremont was in command of a distant and neglected department, where, 
 though the difficulties of the commander's position were increased, it was 
 thought he might be criticised or sacrificed without impairing the general 
 faith in the Union arms, whose triumph was expected to be secured, not 
 by the feeble army of the West, but by the grand army of the Potomac. 
 
 Fremont immediately set about organizing a gunboat fleet, and was ac- 
 cused of visionary views of naval expeditions on the Mississippi and its tribu- 
 taries. McClellan and the Navy Department at Washington were opposed 
 to such chimeras. In vain the brave Ellet, who has since found a victorious 
 grave, at his capture of Memphis, hurled his eloquent philippics at McClel- 
 lan and the Navy Department for their opposition to ram fleets. Not until 
 the '' irregular opposition" of the Merrimac to our wooden fleet at Fortress 
 Monroe had sunk millions of property and sent in a moment hundreds of our 
 brave sailors to a needless grave, did the lethargy of McClellan and Welles 
 give place to the strategy of Stanton, Foote, Davis and EUett. McClellan 
 
15 
 
 boldly telegraphed to the commandant of a New London fort to get his 
 ancient smooth-bore guns in order, to stop, with a distant volley of round 
 shot, the passage into New York of a vessel from whose sides the heaviest 
 solid shot from the Monitor, fired at a distance of fifty feet, fell harmless; 
 while Ellet, still unable to obtain a commission in the navy as captain, 
 finally received from the innovating Stanton, spite of the adverse influence 
 of the General whom he had criticised, a commission as Colonel of the ram 
 fleet which captured Memphis and opened the Mississippi. McClellan, after 
 one of the most disastrous military movements in history, is preserved from 
 utter annihilation by the very iron-clads which he opposed and despised, 
 while the gunboat system, initiated under Fremont, has taught the world a 
 new lesson in inland warfare, and has given to us the most brilliant suc- 
 cesses which have yet crowned our arms in this contest. 
 
 The Government was unable to provide Fremont with money or 
 men. The enemy were near. Their spies were all around him. In 
 the midst of actual weakness and poverty, there was but one safe 
 course for him to pursue, viz. : to make the utmost display of wealth 
 and strength consistent with real economy. The few regiments around 
 St. Louis were magnified by every artifice to many times their real 
 number. A relative of Fremont being the proprietor of one of the 
 most elegant houses in St. Louis, the General gave the Government the 
 benefit of its respectability without making it responsible for the rent, 
 a pitiful item of twelve hundred dollars per annum, but which has been 
 harped upon as a leading item in Fremont's extravagance. Fremont's 
 carriage, which was in constant use as a hospital carriage for his sick 
 soldiers, was drawn also by four horses, for the very democratic reason 
 that two could not draw it through the boot-jack mud of Missouri, Alas, 
 that the very mud, which was MeClellan's standing excuse for not moving 
 at all, could not justify Fremont in employing an extra team. This 
 was characterized as too aristocratic for a republican general, though 
 McClellan, with foreign princes upon his staflT, and it was said fifty horses 
 in his stall, might employ a special train and a specially decorated car 
 with which to receive Mrs. McClellan, and convey her from Baltimore to 
 Washington, as an emperor would receive and convey his consort. Yet 
 none saw aught in it but the dignity due to his oflice. 
 
 Fremont had long been habituated to prominence and command. His 
 face was as familiar in the squalid Indian's filthy hut as in the salons of 
 the European noMesse ; and, for the accomplishment of his assigned task, 
 he could, with equal indifference, take part at a diplomatic dinner or dine 
 npon roots and the flesh of unclean beasts, surrounded by hardy frontiers- 
 men, whom sheer hunger had driven to insanity, and who, in the extrem- 
 ity of their sufferings, plunged into the freezing mountain torrent in the 
 crazed hallucination that they were bathing in tropical streams. That 
 such a man, intensely matter-of-fact and practical as he was, should be 
 
16 
 
 charged with descending to the assumption of barbaric display of equipages, 
 &c., which only an ignorant oriental nabob would covet, furnishes another 
 illustration of the fact that the defamer, in his stupidity, always invents 
 those fictions which it would seem least possible that the world could 
 believe, but which partisan enemies adopt with the fiery faith of Tertul- 
 lian — Credo quia impossihile — and believe them because they are mar- 
 velous. 
 
 A few days after Fremont took command of the Western Department, 
 and before it Avas possible for him to change the condition of Lyon's com- 
 mand, the latter fought the battle of Springfield, under circumstances for 
 which the prior commander of the department might perhaps have been 
 responsible, but for which Fi*emont could not have been. That prior com- 
 mander was George B. McClellan. We prefer, however, to accept the judg- 
 ment of the very best witness in the case, the heroic Lyon himself, who, in 
 his letter written on the eve of the battle, very boldly and bluntly charged 
 the responsibility of being "determined to cripple him, if he could," upon 
 one whom he chose irreverently to designate as " old Scott," 
 
 There was one occasion upon which the nation may wish, for Fremont's 
 sake, he had acted difterently. McClellan sat in his office at Washington in 
 command of 70,000 men, a surfeit of troops such as no general on this 
 continent had ever led into an engagement. There was no attack to be 
 made or met, but with the absoluteness of a newly-entlironed boy, he 
 telegraphs to Fremont to send him five of his best regiments immediately. 
 The dispatch finds Fremont about to send those very troops to the relief 
 of the imperiled Mulligan. True, Sturgis and others have been ordered 
 to his relief, but he would make assurance doubly sure. Fremont protests.' 
 The Administration reiterates the order, more and more peremptorily. 
 Feemont ought to have disobeyed TH]fi ORDER ; but he obeyed, sending 
 the troops eastward, leaving but three thousand to defend St. Louis, and 
 Mulligan was sacrificed. Yet this is the man who is charged witli being 
 naturally insubordinate. It may be in the power of McClellan to explain 
 as satisfactorily the blunder of Ball's Bluff", the slaughter of Leesburg, 
 and the sacrifice of the noble Baker, and especially his failure to obey the 
 order of the President to advance on the 22d of February. If such an 
 explanation exists, it has not yet gone into history. One point is proven. 
 The strategy which compelled the surrender of Mulligan originated at 
 Washington, and not at St. Louis. 
 
 It would be in vain for us to attempt to do justice to Fremont's hun- 
 dred days in Missouri. He found the State secession. He left it Union. 
 He found the rebel forces threatening St. Louis. He was removed from 
 the command at the moment when, by a series of rapid marches, pre- 
 viously declared, by the Westpointists, physically impossible, and 
 brilliant military combinations unequaled in this war, he had driven the 
 
17 
 
 rebel armies to the borders of Arkansas, and was there upon the eve of a 
 battle which would doubtless (for Fremont has never yet been defeated, 
 except by politicians) have thoroughly broken up the rebel campaign west 
 of the Mississippi. Under Fremont, the rebels were driven one hundred 
 miles further than his subordinate, Hunter, thought it safe even to follow 
 them. This was a singular reason for superseding Fremont by Hunter. 
 Under Hunter the Union troops retreated, but under Hallcck they again 
 advanced over the same routes and in the same manner as under Fremont ; 
 and many months after, and under less favorable circumstances, but still 
 triumphantly, Fremont's chosen general, Sigel, fought out Fremont's 
 intended battle at Pea Ridge, thus vindicating his policy and his strategy. 
 It is known, moreover, that Fremont on the 8th September sent to "Wash- 
 ington by a special messenger, lest, if sent by mail or telegraphed, it might 
 become known to the country and ultimately to the rebels, the entire plan 
 of that now famous campaign by our army and gunboats by the way of 
 the Mississippi, Tennessee, Cumberland and White Rivers, which his ulti- 
 mate successor, Halleck, adopted, and which Halleck's subordinates carried 
 out in its details. But while Fremont, as a soldier, was putting forth his un- 
 rivalled energy in Missouri, various influences were conspiring against him at 
 Washington. Though of the regular United States army, and having filled 
 more and higher grades therein than his rival on the Potomac, he had dared 
 not only to be a soldier, but a thorough soldier, without asking leave of the 
 West Point Academy for boys. His profession had been identical, and his 
 experience similar, though superior, as an introduction to military life, to 
 that of Washington, but there is hardly any probability that Washington 
 would be considered adequate to any responsible command at the present 
 day, without first mingling with the boys at West Point. Would it do for a 
 soldier educated at West Point to approve of the plan or policy of a 
 soldier educated at all points? Would it not at least show that the advan- 
 tages he had enjoyed had failed in his case to confer superiority ? But 
 Fremont's chief oflfense consisted in having spoken, " Feeedom to the 
 Slaves of Rebels!" 
 
 This would have been well enough, if he, according to the first rule of 
 modern statesmanship, which consists in following, not in guiding the 
 people, had waited until the masses demanded it of him. Six months 
 later. Congress and the President, in the Confiscation Bill, adopted his 
 policy ; and the world of to-day is enthusiastic in praise of that statesman- 
 ship which shuts its eyes to everything not yet pointed out by the 
 slow-moving finger of the twenty millions. It will thus be seen that 
 true wisdom is not in the astronomer applying his telescope to the 
 heavens, and peering into worlds unseen by those below, but in 
 the weather-cock on the top of his observatory, to which the crowd 
 look to discover which way the wind blows. Again, although Fre- 
 mont's vigorous anti-rebel policy was regarded by the loyal North 
 
18 
 
 with universal approbation, the loyal North were not in rebellion 
 against the Government, and were not likely to be, and therefore did not 
 need to be conciliated. The border States were, and since the North 
 would furnish men and money, no matter what the policy of the Govern- 
 ment, and the border states would only furnish their pittance of either 
 if the policy of the Government were pro-slavery, what more statesman- 
 like than to let the border States rule the loyal North on this question. 
 Fremont was removed from command in Missouri, at a time when 
 McClellau's influence was supreme in military affairs, in relation to which 
 the President frequently and publicly expressed his entire ignorance. We 
 make a deduction ; McOlellan is mainly responsible for the removal of 
 Fremont from command of the Western Department. Tlie petition from 
 semi-rebellious Kentucky would have been powerless without the concur- 
 rent influence of the General-in-Chief. 
 
 Until the advent of E. M. Stanton, McOlellan had the actual control, or, 
 rather, prevention of all war movements, and not a single military success 
 of value had been won by the Federal army. For reorganizing the army, 
 after the defeat at Bull Run, great credit has been given him. It is 
 poetical, perhaps, to say that he Avaved a "magic wand," but he did not, 
 nor did he "create an army out of nothing." The task did not even 
 require the highest order of military gifts, and could be performed by the 
 mere drillmaster and martinet. It consisted in giving the arms, with which 
 Government had supplied him, to the soldiers whom the Government had 
 enlisted for him, and teaching the latter how to handle the former, as the 
 Government had taught him at West Point. The task could not be made 
 a long one, and his army were in as good condition in October as they 
 Avere in March. Nay, some of the regiments and brigades deteriorated 
 sadly during the interval of inaction, at the close of which one of his 
 brigades was characterized by an experienced soldier from Western Vir- 
 ginia, Avho was assigned to its command, as resembling pirates rather 
 than soldiers. His reviews, frequent at first, were desisted from after a 
 few months. Reconnoissances Avere rare, mock battles almost unknown, 
 and the hope of real ones degenerated often into the peaceful desire that the 
 objects of the Avar might be accomplished Avithout them, until finally 
 week after Aveek rolled around, in which McOlellan did not even ride from 
 his oflSce in Washington across the Potomac to visit the camps, and when 
 he did he was greeted with enthusiasm, not so much because he was so 
 great a general, as because he was so great a stranger. With 200,000 men, 
 he had for months permitted the rebels, with a force which no evidence 
 shows ever to have been larger than from 70,000 to 100,000, to blockade the 
 Potomac and besiege the capital. Under pretense that he was about to 
 make a movement, he prevented his troops from erecting winter quarters, 
 but compelled them to hibernate in canvas tents, while the rebels lived in 
 comfortable log-houses. His influence, like a palsy, restrained movements 
 
19 
 
 everywhere. Halleck, Buell, and Mitchell, with 200,000 men, were pre- 
 vented from attacking Bowling Green, which the subsequent official 
 report of Beauregard, and the private letter of A. S. Johnston to Jefferson 
 Davis, written on the eve of the battle of Shiloh, show to have been 
 defended by only from 7,000 to 15,000 rebels, and Columbus, which was 
 donbtless defended by the same force which Pope met at New Madrid and 
 Island No. 10. McClellan did not prevent the Merrimac from being com- 
 pleted, but he most gallantly prevented a Northern lady fi-om singing 
 popular Northern songs to the soldiers. For this distinguished and 
 meritorious success, some conservative individuals, we believe, presented 
 liim with a sword. 
 
 With the advent of Stanton, however, came vigor. Success de- 
 pends not so much upon knowledge as upon those qualities which com- 
 mand knowledge, and without which all knowledge is unavailing, viz.: 
 character, energy, and will. These Stanton infused into the whole army, 
 by the general order of the President to " go forward" on or before the 22d 
 of February, which was secretly communicated to all the commanders. Then 
 in brilliant succession followed, like meteors gleaming out upon the dark- 
 ness, victory upon victory, in the departments which McClellan did not con- 
 trol. Rapidly as the running lightning could communicate the cheering 
 intelligence to the country, came Mill Spring, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, 
 Bowling Green, Columbus, New Madrid, Island No. 10, Nashville, 
 Murfreesboro', Huntsville, Newbern, Fort Macon, Fort Pulaski, Forts 
 Jackson and St. Philip, New Orleans, Pea Ridge, and Pittsburgh Landing. 
 Lo ! the centre of the rebellion was broken ; the war almost decided iu 
 our favor by the generals in other departments. McClellan, meanwhile, 
 was proving himself a second Napoleon only in the number of men under 
 his command, which now stood at the enormous figure of 230,000. His 
 force exceeded all the forces combined which had won the thirty Union 
 victories iu other departments, had been longer in the service, was more 
 thoroughly equipped, yet, with the exception of the slaughter of Ball's 
 Bluff and the unintentional but successful skirmish at Drainsville, he 
 had made no strategic movements except upon the Treasury. Not even 
 had he by armed reconnoissances ascertained the enemy's true force, 
 or whether his guns were of brass or wood. Naturally, where all was 
 ignorance, all was exaggeration. We state, without fear of contra- 
 diction, that never before in history had a force one-fifth as large been 
 under the command of a general who never had led a regiment into battle. 
 Though the enemy opposed to him numbered but a third of his own huge 
 and unwieldy command; though an armed reconnoissance would have 
 shown at any time that the enemy's apparently most powerful batteries 
 were of wooden guns; though the ablest rebel generals— A. S. Johnston 
 and Beauregard— had left the indolence of opposing McClellan at Manassas 
 
20 
 
 to such calibre as ex-Street Commissioner G. W. Smith, while they found 
 more fitting scope for their abilities in endeavoring to stay the headlong 
 progress of Grant, McClernand, Wallace, Sigel, Pope, and Mitchell at the 
 West; though, finally, the President's order for an advance was peremp- 
 tory, the day passed, and the order stood disobeyed. McClellan was not 
 ready, and opposed any advance prior to the 15th of April, by which 
 time the heats of summer would have set in, and a further postponement 
 till fall would have been inevitable, accompanied by a still further decline 
 in Government credit, and a recognition of the independence of the 
 Southern Confederacy in Europe. Upon the question of this disastrous 
 policy, a council of his twelve division generals was called. Eight of the 
 twelve (seven of whom had been appointed at McOlellan's request) voted 
 for McClellan's inaction. Four, the most experienced officers in the 
 service, all of whom were McOlellan's seniors in age, service, and 
 experience, voted for an advance. The President, then, overruling 
 McClellan's counsel, ordered the army divided into iowr coiys d. armee, each 
 under command of one of the four belligerent generals, the whole to remain 
 under the command of the pacific McClellan, to whom remained the alter- 
 native of advancing against his judgment or resigning. McClellan advanced 
 under protest, on the 10th of March, upon the smoking ruins of the winter 
 quarters, in which a rebel force, one-third to one-sixth liis own in number, 
 had quietly spent the winter upon a plain destitute of natural strength, 
 heavy entrenchments, or artillery. Never did the ' American arms, 
 except in the surrender of Hull to the British, or of Twiggs to tlie rebels, 
 suffer so great a humiliation, as when the advance on Manassas showed 
 what 60,000 rebels had during a long winter achieved against 230,000 
 Federal troops. It is difficult in the light of the facts which tlie advance 
 revealed to conjecture upon what possible views McClellan could have 
 feared a defeat. Interested or biased contemporaries may urge Avant of 
 time for preparation, but the plea contains its own refutation, for time 
 passed at the same rate over McClellan as over the rebel generals, his 
 assistance and resources at all times quadrupled theirs, and there was no 
 I'eason why he should not have been more ready than they. Impartial 
 history will regard the second advance upon Manassas as so inglorious 
 in its long delay as to be only less liumiliating to the Federal arms than 
 the first. 
 
 The President felt the humiliation of this left-handed and barren suc- 
 cess, and, in honest vindication of his own course, published his order for 
 a general advance, made two months earlier, and also two further orders, 
 one limiting McClellan openly, as he had for a brief period before been 
 practically, to the army of the Potomac, and one restoring Fremont to 
 command, placing llalleck, Fremont, and McClellan, upon a level as 
 commanders of the three departments. 
 
21 
 
 Tlie order and sequence of these events are significant, as showing, 
 first, that the utmost efforts of the pro-slavery, West Point, and red- 
 tape enemies of Fremont had been unable to make good their hue-and- 
 cry, by any proofs tending to tarnish his fair fame for incorruptibility, 
 energy, and military capacity; secondly, that the moment McClellan 
 ceased to advise and commenced to act, the cloud passed away from before 
 the star of Fremont, and finally that McOlellan, though still untested as 
 to his capacity to command upon the field, was proven to be no longer 
 the fit person to control the military counsels of the Government. 
 
 Again the Government ordered McClellan forward, this time to Rich- 
 mond. Then was one of McOlellan's golden opportunities. By the evacu- 
 ation of Manassas, he had become acquainted with the exact force of the 
 rebels. They, accustomed to and expecting a continuation of McOlellan's 
 masterly inactivity, would have been taken as much by surprise by a sud- 
 den display of energy in him, as by a strategical movement by another. 
 Had he then, in compliance with the policy of Stanton, marched upon 
 Richmond, by the direction of Manassas and the healthy valley of 
 the Shenandoah, keeping his whole army united, and covering always his 
 base of operations, is it within the range of possibility, that that army of 
 230,000 marching to Richmond in a week could have been beaten by the 
 60,000 rebel troops, who withdrew from Manassas? The terras of service 
 of the rebel troops were rapidly expiring, they were discouraged by their 
 constant "Western defeats, and their conscriptions had not yet filled up 
 their ranks. Even under these circumstances, McOlellan reluctantly and 
 against his own judgment, but according to his own plan, advanced. We do 
 not believe that history justifies any government in entrusting to a comman- 
 der the execution of projects which he disapproves. If his army prevails, 
 his judgment is overthrown. If his judgment is vindicated, his army is over- 
 thrown. The issue will leave him in the inevitable dilemma of being either 
 unsuccessful or injudicious. After two weeks of vacillation had enabled 
 the rebels to perfect their retreat to Richmond, McOlellan's novel and 
 startling plan was announced, being the abandonment of the direct route, 
 xia Manassas, which he had been content to pursue as long as it was 
 obstructed by the enemy, for a march upon Richmond via Yorktown. 
 This policy the President and Seci-etary of War disapproved, upon views 
 now proved to have been wise, notwithstanding the sanguine assurance 
 of McOlellan, that, taking this route, he needed but 120,000 men to cap- 
 ture Richmond — thus proposing to leave in the extended department of 
 the Potomac and the Shenandoah, and for Western Virginia, in all, 110,000 
 men, including McDowell's corps. The President at last deferred, upon 
 the maxim that " the general who is to fight a battle has the right to plan 
 it." It is claimed, however, by some of McOlellan's adherents, that by 
 his plan, McDowell's corps should have been sent to him in addition. 
 
22 
 
 instead of remaining to protect Washington, and advance by way of 
 Fredericksburg. If this were his original plan, which it was not, the 
 raid of Stonewall Jackson to Harper's Ferry, with 30,000 men, at a time 
 when Washington was defended by a much smaller number, shows that, 
 had the defending force been further depleted, according to McClellan's 
 wish, by the withdrawal of the remainder of McDowell's corps — part of 
 whom were actually sent to him — the rebels could have captured Wash- 
 ington without difficulty. 
 
 161,000 men in all were sent to McOlellan on the Peninsula for the 
 capture of Kichmond, of whom over 120,000 accompanied him, and the 
 remainder followed as re-enforcements. When he landed at Fortress 
 Monroe, the enemy at Yorktown numbered 7,000 men, with a reserve of 
 50,000, at most, at Richmond. 
 
 Time and space do not permit us to trace the various phases of the 
 campaign on the Peninsula — the cabinet council in which the plan was 
 unanimously condemned, but spite of which the will of the self- 
 confident young general prevailed — the transportation of his original force 
 of 123,000 men to Fortress Monroe, at an expense of $50,000,000, and at 
 the risk of destruction by the then all-powerful Merrimac, to the unfore- 
 seen poltroonery of whose new officers he was indebted for the safety of 
 the grand army — the oppressive and ostentatious secrecy by which his 
 movements were veiled from the North, while the entire South, by his 
 weeks of delay at Fortress Monroe before advancing on Yorktown, was 
 made fully aware of his plans and numbers ere he had prepared for action 
 — his refusal to capture Yorktown while it yet contained but 7,000 troops, 
 though such policy was urged by officers who had grown gray in the 
 service before he had entered it. Arrived at Yorktown, he found entrench- 
 ments, stopped and telegraphed to the President a glowing account of 
 their tremendous strength. It is exceedingly embarrassing to a brave 
 commander to have a timid judgment. His heart may pant with the 
 desire, and his eagle eye may flash at the prospect, of driving the enemy 
 to the wall ; yet, if his genius supplies him only with a keen appreciation 
 of the obstacles in his way, and with a contemptible estimate of his means 
 of overcoming them, while his heart may be brave as a lion's, his history 
 will be meek as a lamb's. Better the ignorance of such men as Farragut 
 and Porter, which supposes that wooden vessels can smash through iron- 
 clads and stone forts, than the discernment which sees no strength except 
 in the enemy. The Secretary of War replied to McClellan's dispatch by 
 ordering him to move on to the enemy's works immediately, and take 
 them ; but, instead of obeying, he began throwing up defensive entrench- 
 ments to protect the 120,000 men under him from the garrison before 
 him. Had he marched to fight the enemy. Napoleon-like, as soon as he could 
 have got at them, and stormed every intrenchment as soon as he came to 
 
23 
 
 it, success, considering the disparity of numbers, would liave been inevita- 
 ble, tlie loss of life, treasure, and time would have been infinitely reduced; 
 the rebel re-enforcements, if such there were, for Richmond could not 
 have arrived, and Richmond would speedily have been taken, which, 
 with the "Western campaign, would have crushed the Rebellion, and re- 
 stored peace to our unhappy country. 
 
 Instead of this, there follows the month of siege with no attempt to 
 prevent the re-enforceraent of the enemy, or to intercept his retreat, termi- 
 nating in an evacuation, against which, as a failure, the country had been 
 guaranteed, but which, having occurred, was trumpeted as a victory — then 
 the battle of West Point, at which, as at the battles of Western Virginia, 
 McClellan was not present, and of Williarasburgh, fought also while 
 McClellan was still at Yorktown, the popular prints of which, however, 
 represent the second Napoleon mounted on a fiery black charger at the 
 head of his troops, within a few yards of the bayonets of the enemy — 
 McClellan's remarkable dispatches, in which he for some mysterious reason 
 gives the credit of this battle to Hancock, though, spite of the suppression 
 of the official reports, the whole country knows that it was fought by 
 Hooker — and his astoundingly pusillanimous official dispatch, " My entire 
 force is considerably inferior to that of the rebels, who will fight Avell, 
 but I will do all I can with the force at my disposal," when all that he 
 could have known was, that the portion of his forces actually engaged, 
 which was not a fifth of his entire force, was outnumbered, and when the 
 whole country knew that his force was twice that of the enemy. In rela- 
 tion to this battle. Hooker says : " History will not be believed when 
 it tells that tlie devoted officers and men of my division were permitted to 
 carry on their unequal struggle, from morning until night, unaided, in the 
 presence of more than 30,000 of their comrades, with arms in their hands ; 
 nevertheless it is true." And the country asks why was it true, not only 
 here, but all through the Peninsular battles, that some single division 
 fought against overwhelming numbers, while the capacity of the com- 
 mander failed to bring the great body of the army into action, thus show- 
 ing that the army, whatever was its ratio to the enemy, was too large 
 for its general? Nor can we dwell upon the leisurely retreat of the rebels 
 to Richmond, their leaders being at once too humane and too shrewd to 
 develop their strategy in the swamps of the Ohickahominy. Still less heart 
 have we for contemplating the ghastly spectacle of 35,000 men prostrated 
 by the fevers of the swamps and trenches, without being permitted to 
 strike a blow for their country, and led, not against rebels in arms, hut 
 against malaria, against typhoid, against the invisible darts of Death liim- 
 self. We grow sick at heart when we think that while the dying saviors of 
 our country Avere lifted at the rate of a regiment a day delirious from the 
 trenches, their pitying comrades were compelled to guard the deserted 
 and empty dwellings of rebels from being used as hospitals for the reno- 
 
24 
 
 vation and cure of their raving brothers in arms, to stand sentinel over 
 the springs of rebel water, and the shade of rebel trees, lest a Union soldier 
 miglit receive with weeping gratitude their cool i-efreshment ; thus com- 
 pelling the sick and dying youth, to wlioin at their homes fond mothers 
 and sisters would have brought the cool waters of the mountain springs 
 of Maine or of Minnesota, to drink in death from the black and muddy 
 waves of the sluggish Pamunkey, And yet, while amidst the malarious 
 seclusion of the peninsular jungles all this vast untold tragedy of ten 
 thousand scenes was being enacted, every one of which would have 
 melted in one common river of tears the homes and hamlets of the North, 
 and none of which were the eifects of battle, or legitimate consequences 
 of war, the free and easy, hail-fellow-well-met, and therefore popular 
 young general, who had never fought a battle nor won a victory, lays 
 down his cigar, takes up his pen and writes, for the country to 
 read, that "all things are progressing satisfactorily, in accordance 
 with his plans and wishes;" and the weeping and stricken country, with 
 au effort to peer dimly through the dai'kness and see in all this disaster 
 that mysterious phantom " strategy," takes back for burial the emaciated 
 forms of the sons whom, hale and stout, she had laid upon her altar, and 
 looks, still through her tears, with a marvelous constancy to the general she 
 has idolized for the full fruition of her faith. That army, which McClel- 
 lan had telegraphed was greatly outnumbered by that of the enemy, he 
 extended before Richmond in the fiice of that enemy, until it was twenty 
 miles from wing to wing, and exceedingly difficult for one portion of it to 
 re-enforce another, when, as if still further to weaken it, he threw a small 
 portion of his army across to the right bank of the Chickahominy {a la Ball's 
 Bluff). History will record with tears that Casey's division of raw and 
 newly-levied troops, Avhich had hardly yet been taught more than how 
 to camp and how to march — thus indiscreetly isolated, against the written 
 protest of General Keyes, and placed within the enemy's power by the 
 commander-in-chief— after a brilliant fight, in which 4,000 men kept 
 back 40,000 for twenty-four hours, was at last annihilated, not so mucli 
 by the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, as by the merciless asper- 
 sions of the absent commander-in-ohief, which were retracted by him too 
 late to repair the injury done to an aged and gallant general, a brave 
 division and a suffering country. 
 
 The generals engaged deemed it of the utmost importance to press up 
 the ultimate rout of the rebel forces at Seven Pines by an immediate 
 march on Richmond. McClellan overruled this policy. It subsequently 
 appeared that the rebel army fled to Richmond in a panic equaling our 
 own at Bull Run, and that, had the policy of his subordinates been pur- 
 sued, McClellan's army would have marched into Richmond almost with- 
 out resistance. McClellan was now anchored in the midst of the Chicka- 
 hominy swamps. From this position he telegraphed to Washington that 
 
25 
 
 his forces were ample, and tliat ho would bo in Richmond within two 
 days, though the two days passed in the usual (|uiet. His front was seven 
 miles from Richmond ; his rear a considerable distance forward from 
 White House Landing — his base of operations. Here immense quan- 
 tities of military stores were being collected, as rapidly as the means 
 of transportation would permit, and were piled up over acres of area 
 without a sentinel, much less a protecting force, though fifteen Union 
 soldiers stood guard over the residence and grounds of McClellan's 
 former friend, General Lee, in the vicinity. Lest the rebels might 
 in some way fail to get information of this state of facts, the gallant 
 young general causes Mrs. Lee — who was fully acquainted with them 
 — to be passed from the vicinity of the "White House through our 
 lines to Richmond, with a pomp and ceremony such as might have 
 honored the queen of an allied country, rather than the distrust which 
 might have protected our country against the lynx eyes of a female rebel 
 and spy. On the day foUotciiig, General Lee sent a cavalry force under 
 Stewart, which passed around McClellan's right flank and across his rear, 
 going over the very road over which Mrs. Lee had been taken, slaugh- 
 tered our unarmed sick soldiers upon the train at TunstalPs Station, 
 sabreing such wounded soldiers as they came across, destroyed the track 
 and bridges of the railroad which formed McClellan's means of communi- 
 cation with his base of operations, collected the information which led to 
 the great seven days' conflict, and returned unharmed around McClellan's 
 left wing to Richmond, thus making the entire circuit of our forces, and 
 accomplishing a reconuoissance, one of the most singular in history, as the 
 opportunity presented to it by McClellan was one of the most rare and 
 remarkable. What an exceedingly ungentle return was this on the part of 
 Mrs. Lee for the gallantry with which our confiding general had not only 
 enabled her to become possessed of the information which caused this raid, 
 but to communicate it to the enemy. Had our General himself, in confidential 
 correspondence with General Lee, disclosed important weaknesses in his 
 own position, it would hardly have been more ungenerous for the rebels 
 to have made use of the disclosure. Such treachery was certainly not to 
 have been expected from high-toned and chivalrous rebels. 
 
 It would seem probable that this raid might have suggested to McClellan 
 that his base of operations. White House Landing, was too distant, and that 
 a nearer, safer, and healthier one could be found on the James River. The 
 enemy were not yet prepared to attack him while making the change, as 
 a large corps of their force was with -Jackson in the Valley of the She- 
 nandoah. That no snch idea of changing his base of operations was sug- 
 gested, however, is shown by the fact that, instead of sending a recon- 
 uoissance to the James River, he sent his engineers to relay the track of 
 the Richmond and York River Railroad, and rebuild its bridges, and 
 ordered up from Fortress Monroe still further stores, siege guns, shot and 
 
26 
 
 shell, not by way of the James, but via the York River, and which 
 could not reach him until the railroad should be repaired. Nor did he 
 remove his sick and wounded to the James River, but left them where, 
 in the tinal " change of base," they fell into the hands of the enemy. 
 Then came mysterious movements of the rebels in large force. Did 
 McClellan consolidate his army, as if expecting to make or meet an 
 attack? No ! still the immense area from wing to wing widens, and again, 
 as we are informed, he telegraphed that his forces were ample — thanking 
 the President, &c., and promising to be in Richmond within two days, 
 though he made no movement, and though, as he now tells ns, his army had 
 been diminished, by death, sickness, and furloughs, to one-half its com- 
 plement at Yoi'ktown, and was largely exceeded by that of the enemy. 
 At last — though Napoleon never allowed himself to be attacked, and 
 though it is a familiar experience of the soldier that raw troops 
 making an attack are equal to veterans receiving it — the blow was 
 struck, not by McClellan, who never attacks, but by the rebels. Upon 
 the disastrous seven days, which ended by stranding the grand army 
 of the Potomac on the James River, there to be saved from annihilation 
 by our gunboats, we have no official reports, but a few general facts are 
 plain, from the undisputed testimony of the entire correspondence of 
 those officers and men who bravely stood, uncheered by the personal 
 presence of their Commander-in-Chief, whei*e whizzing shot and scream- 
 ing shell baptized them in the fires of battle : 
 
 First. The strategic story that McClellan contemplated a change in 
 his base of operations is proven to be simply false, inasmuch as he had 
 neither shown by his acts, nor communicated to his officers any such in- 
 tended change until Jackson, pressing close upon McClellan's right wing, 
 when the same was withdrawn by the latter, had placed himself 
 between McClellan and his former base of operations, so that no other 
 line of retreat was open, except to the James River. It certainly is not 
 a strategic change of base, but a ketreat, for a general to remove his army 
 as far away from the enemy as possible, by the only route which they 
 have left possible. 
 
 Secondly. That during the first, second and third days' battles, which 
 ended in this retreat, the entire contiict was sustained by one or two divi- 
 sions, after the model of Bull Run, Ball's Bluff and Williamsburgh, while 
 the rest were idle, and that McClellan, therefore, either thought it unne- 
 cessary to bring his whole army into action, or else lacked the generalship 
 to do it. By this we do not mean to imply that, after the retreat had 
 fairly begun, the whole of our army might not have been attacked and 
 engaged, but this was the strategy of the rebels, not of McClellan. 
 
 Thirdly. That, while in each of the fights but a small portion of our 
 force was engaged, so far as we know, in each of them the entire available 
 force of the rebels was in action. 
 
27 
 
 Fourthly. That, since the commander could only judge of the numbers 
 of the enemy by the vigor of thoir fighting, McOlellan had no means of 
 knowing that, had he on the first two days of the battle brought his entire 
 force into action, he would not have outnumbered the rebels ; in short, the 
 country has no evidence that McClellan was outnumbered, and that the 
 stories that he was outnumbered rest on the same foundation as the similar 
 fictions relative to our forces at Bull Run and Ball's Bluff, which we now 
 know to have been untrue. The absence of evidence that he was outnum- 
 bered becomes necessarily the evidence that he was outgeneraled, and 
 this, too, not by any unequaled or remarkable generalship on the part of the 
 rebels, but by a mere average common sense generalship, to which that of 
 the more experienced commanders of McClellaii's corps cCarmee would 
 have risen superior, had their counsels prevailed. 
 
 Fiftlily. That, notwithstanding the particular forces engaged on our 
 part were outnumbered, they were in no single instance beaten or driven, 
 and that every time they retreated it was in consequence, not of the 
 strength of the enemy, but of the orders of McClellan, and that in each 
 case, when ordered to retreat, the division generals, who really conducted 
 all the fighting, expressed themselves able and anxious to hold their 
 ground, thus presenting the military anomaly of a series of battles, in each 
 of which we were successful, but in the aggregate of which we were 
 defeated. 
 
 "We state the above conclusions as being facts established in the minds 
 of the entire North. We state as further conclusions, which we be- 
 lieve will yet be demonstrated equally to the satisfaction of the world, 
 that every retreat that McOlellan ordered was unmilitary and unjustifiable ; 
 that every time he said retreat he ought to have said advance ; that after 
 the divisions composing his right wing had, under the able, heroic and ex- 
 perienced Fitz John Porter, nut only held their ground unflinchingly in the 
 absence of the re-enforcements which he had demanded, which were at 
 hand, but which McClellan failed to send him, but had actually thrice re- 
 pulsed the enemy, and finally driven him one mile within the line of his 
 camps, the order of McOlellan coming then to these victorious divisions, re- 
 quiring them to do what the enemy had in vain for twelve hours striven to 
 compel them to do, viz., to fall back to the rear of his left, and tlius initiate a 
 general retreat, was in itself equivalent to a rebel victory ; that no division 
 of McClellan's army had been whipped by fighting at the time he compelled 
 them all to retreat, and that the army which retreats under such circum- 
 stances is defeated, not by the enemy, but by its general ; that the deser- 
 tion of his intrenchments before Richmond was a defeat ; that the abandon- 
 ment of the immense military stores at White Ilouse, without destroying 
 them, constituted a disaster ; the retreat over the bridges of the Chickahom- 
 iny river, without destroying them, was a blunder, and the abandonment of 
 all his sick and wounded to the enemy constitute when taken in con- 
 
28 
 
 nection with the foregoing facts, a deep culmination of disgrace to the 
 Union arms, which indeed has mystified and confounded the North, 
 shaken for the time our confidence in our Government and in our military 
 leaders, but which, for that very reason, should be searchingly investi- 
 gated and fully understood, that the remedy may be promptly applied. 
 Nothing is so simple as to apply the remedy, where the difliiculty is 
 known ; nothing so impossible as to do right where the facts are con- 
 cealed. McClellau's admirers, to cap the climax of deceptive audacity, 
 may state that the advantage gained by the change of position is worth far 
 more than it cost ; but the country is wholly unable to understand the 
 strategy by whicli an overwhelming invading army is so placed by its 
 general that it is richly worth the loss of half the array to save the other 
 half. Nay, if the country have not been altogether deceived, the salva- 
 tion of the remaining half of the army is due to-day to the President and 
 General Wool. The latter, for months, in vain besought McClellan for a 
 few thousand troops with Avhich to capture Norfolk and Portsmouth. The 
 President, on his personal visit to Fortres,s Monroe, by one of those inter- 
 ferences with McClellan's plans, to which the country is indebted for the 
 measure of safety which has attended the operations of the Eastern De- 
 partment, placed the men at his disposal. Portsmouth and Norfolk were 
 taken, tlie Merrimac destroyed, and the James River thus opened to our 
 gunboats. Wool has since been removed from Fortress Monroe to Balti- 
 more ; but to his policy, in opposition to that of McClellan, the latter 
 was indebted for his ability to retreat to the James River, there to be 
 protected by our gunboats, instead of being assailed by the Merrimac. 
 If such be strategy, what is incompetency? If this be victory, what, in the 
 name of the God of Battles, is disaster? And who is General McClellan, 
 that any portion of the people should have an interest in sending their brave 
 sons to disaster and the grave under his leadership, rather than to victory 
 under the banners of other generals ? Who, that the country should, in 
 that acme of faith to which religious devotees can hardly rise in their wor- 
 ship, still ceaselessly chant, " Though thou slay me, yet will I trust in 
 thee." 
 
 It is no answer to these facts, to ask wliy he is so popular with 
 his army. His popularity with the array is very largely a past event, not 
 a present fact. So long as its general lingered idly about Washington, they 
 could see only one point in his character, viz., his manners, which are said 
 to be easy, nonchalant, affable, abandon and negligee^ especially towards 
 the common soldier. He assumes no airs of greatness, as well he may, 
 if he possesses none of its qualities, but puts himself on a level with his 
 men. These qualities are excellent in a general, and sufficient to secure 
 their affection, so long as he does nothing betraying the want of more 
 important ones. Better were it for his fame, as a general, however, had 
 he put himself upon a level with his men upon the battle-field, especially 
 
29 
 
 during the bloody seven days, instead of having it written of him, even 
 by ]u3 flattering parasites, that " he remained at his headquarters all day, 
 
 looking glura as ." Did McClellan appear on the bridges of the 
 
 Chickahominy, like Napoleon at the bridge of Lodi ? Negligee and 
 abandon may be exceedingly charming qualities in a general in private 
 life, and seemingly, but not necessarily, inconsistent with judgment, cau- 
 tion and prudence ; but let them not upon the field develop into a non- 
 chalant exposure of the lives of his men to no purpose — into a neglect of 
 all the ordinary precautions in protecting his base, his stores, and his sick 
 and wounded, and, finally, into an abandonment of them all to the enemy 
 — while he, outstripping his army in a hard-fought retreat, watches with 
 * spy-glass, from a secure position in the rigging of a gunboat, to see 
 whether his army shall come up with him or be cut ofi:' in the swamps by 
 the enemy, while the information which enables a large body of that army 
 to avoid an intercepting force of the enemy, and directs them to their 
 I)re3ent location on the James River, comes, not from their general, but 
 from a negro, whom his politico-military policy has forbidden to come 
 within his lines. 
 
 There are many other facts which deserve to be carefully and candidly 
 collated and fully brought out relative to this disastrous Peninsular cam- 
 paign, which daily will loom up more and more disastrously as its facts 
 become stripped of the gloss with which it is the interest of some to con- 
 ceal them. "We leave them without comment. 
 
 We have no epithets — we have only sorrow for the reverses of those to 
 whom the country entrusts the power to serve her cause and promote her 
 glory. Nor is it so much the fault as the misfortune of McClellan that he 
 has failed to be what a portion of the people, witliout any word or act on his 
 part to justify the expectation, insisted upon mistaking him for, viz., an 
 able man and a great general. We only trust that the people will take 
 to themselves their full share of the blame for the giddy elevation to 
 which they have raised him, and that their ultimate construction of his 
 conduct will be as charitable as that of those who have felt it to be a duty 
 which they owed to the country, to speak with bold, sad kindness and 
 truthful criticism of his career. We have briefly touched upon the salient 
 points in the contrasting careers of these two widely different men. Con- 
 densing them all into their logical sum and conclusion, they prove, that 
 while Fremont, owing to his identification with those political views which 
 this Administration was elected to carry out, and in consequence of the 
 adoption by him of a war policy, as to slavery, which the Administration 
 and country have since adopted, and for no other reason, was removed, 
 yet that his plans, both political and military, have all eventually been 
 agreed to and put in practice ; and though, doubtless, less perfectly than 
 they would have been by their originator, have been crowned with inva- 
 riable success. While, on the other hand, McCIellan's political policy, in 
 
30 
 
 reference to the rebels and their property, has been abandoned as impolitic, 
 and his military plans, though he has had the unimpeded opportunity of 
 carrying them out with the aid of unlimited means, have never commend- 
 ed themselves to the judgment of those who have been called to pass 
 upon them, have resulted in such monstrous failures, and have so played 
 away our immense resources against such comparatively small obstacles, 
 and yet lost, that the reflection upon them inevitably involves the minds 
 of very many in thoughts which cannot be uttered. For ourselves, if this 
 rebellion could possibly be put down by conciliatory means, we be- 
 lieve General McClellan qualified to command our armies, if, indeed, 
 any armies would be necessary. "We believe that those who have 
 adhered to him in a partisan spirit are those who believe that the 
 rebellion is to be put down by some other mode than fighting. We 
 have conversed with his soldiers, and we know that the basis of much of 
 their former confidence in him was the belief that he would achieve 
 great results without loss of life. All these theories are radically 
 false. Instead of accomplishing great results with little loss of life, he 
 has accomplished only defeat, at a tremendous sacrifice of life, and of 
 every other element of success. We believe this rebellion will be put 
 down by fighting, and kept down by a radical change in the feelings and 
 aspirations of the ruling class of the South ; that this change is not 
 to be the result of individual conversions of those who constitute the 
 ruling class, but is to be a change in the class that rules — by sending the 
 class that now rules to the bottom of society, and by bringing the class 
 now at the bottom to the top ; by taking the sceptre from the one 
 million of slaveholders, and giving it to the seven millions of " poor white 
 trash " who now do their bidding — by so changing and remodeling the 
 Constitution of Southern society as to make it democratic instead of 
 aristocratic — republican instead of monarchical — united instead of disin- 
 tegrated, liberal instead of despotic — free instead of slave — rich instead 
 of poor — educated instead of ignorant — civilized instead of barbarous — 
 happy instead of miserable. 
 
 As the aspirations and feelings of the present ruling class of the South 
 are for slavery, because it helps them to everything dear and valuable in 
 life, as our aspirations are for freedom, because it brings to us everything 
 dear and valuable in life, so will the affections of this upturned common 
 people of the South be for the freedom to which they will have been 
 indebted for everything dear to them, and necessarily to that Union which 
 binds them to free States, free press, free speech, and free schools. This 
 war can have but one or the other of two results — The South must he 
 free^ or her slaves must he free. Slavery is the magazine of the rebellion. 
 Send a single effective shot into it, and that which now supplies it with 
 all its resources will explode and be the instrument of its destruction. 
 
31 
 
 Slavery is our mortified limb, and its amputation is necessary. Let not 
 the task be entrusted to one who believes that amputation is murder. His 
 hand will tremble and his heart will fail him. Let it rather be entrusted 
 to the representative man of those great radically Democratic ideas, of 
 the superiority of tliose institutions in which all men are free, for 
 which this war on our part is waging, and not to a devotee of the 
 repudiated ideas of the sovereignty of the States, and the perpetuity of 
 negro bondage, with all its inevitable tendencies, to establish despotism 
 over wliite as well as black, for which this war, on the part of the South, 
 is being waged, but which, by the very act of entering upon this war, the 
 North has logically cast to the winds. Yes, let it be entrusted to that man 
 to whom every constituent of the present Administration looks with a pecu- 
 liar affection, which it is not given to any man in the nation to rival or 
 destroy ; who has in every trial been not merely true to the idea of Free- 
 dom, but a pioneer in its path ; before whom (we quote from the language 
 of a Southern Unionist) " the rebels have run faster and further, during 
 this war, than before any other general ;" who, at the battle of Cross 
 Keys, at the head of 10,000 men, defeated Stonewall Jackson, the ablest 
 general of the rebels, at the head of 28,000, and drove him out of the 
 Shenandoah Valley, and who stands to-day not the first monument in 
 history of the temporary ingratitude and incomprehension of Republics, 
 but with a sweet compensation in the discriminating and criticising, but 
 intelligent and affectionate regard of almost the whole people of that 
 North which is to be henceforth the country. We do not suppose there 
 is a man in the country who believes that Fremont, with 161,000 men, 
 could have failed to capture Richmond, defended by 91,000. It is not 
 eulogy, but history, to say that while Fremont has always acted with less 
 means at his command than any other generals considered it possible for 
 him to succeed with, he has always been successful, except in pleasing 
 red-tapists and slow-coaches, and has often been brilliant in his military 
 achievements, w^hile McOlellan, with greater means at his command 
 than Alexander, Csesar, Napoleon, or "Wellington, has yet to win his 
 first success ; has lost more men and means in his disasters than 
 they in their victories, and, to conclude our comparison, has sacri- 
 ficed twice as many men as Fremont has ever commanded. Presi- 
 dents and administrations may pass away ; but the principle of Free- 
 dom, with which the name of Fremont is associated, will endure 
 forever. He that has been crucified with it shall reign with it. 
 
 Some have embarked into this war, and many have remained at home 
 to thwart and oppose it, under the fixed determination that, whatever else 
 shall come of it, it shall not free the slaves. The undoubtedly necessary, 
 but tyrannical edicts of such pro-slavery men as Ilalleck and Butler show 
 that the alternative is to enslave the masters; and it becomes us to 
 consider whether it is less practicable to free four millions of black slaves 
 
32 
 
 than to reduce to political slavery eight millions of Avhite freemen — for 
 we have no evidence that, until Southern institutions are homogeneous 
 Avith our own, the Southern people will, unless compelled hy military coer- 
 cion, remain in union with us, and permanent military coercion is political 
 slavery. From this blind, illogical, and therefore temporary influence, 
 the American people are soon to emerge, and when they do, and, as a 
 corollary, the military events of this war shall he viewed with sound 
 judgment instead of party prejudice, it will appear that, in deep vision 
 and forecast of the future — in energetic and able adaptation of means to 
 emergencies — in modesty in the hour of victory over traitors in the field, 
 and fortitude under defeats inflicted by "patriots with rebel sympathies" at 
 home — in skillful performance of every duty to which he has been called 
 — and, above all, in that pioneer forecast which makes those who have 
 succeeded but followers in his path, and those who have failed opposers 
 of his plans — one name stands pre-eminent — it is that of John C. Fremont, 
 and we believe that the people of the North will yet rise in their might 
 and demand that Fremont, the most experienced and energetic officer in 
 the service, and the senior in rank, be placed where he deserves to be, 
 and where the interests of his country in this fearful crisis require that 
 he should be — at the head of the American armies. Yet, though this, or 
 aught like this, fail— though Fremont be still kept back — though he be 
 required to do penance for his victories, while others are promoted for 
 their disasters — yet, when the smoke and clouds of the combat shall have 
 cleared away, his star shall shine forth as the morning star of regenerated 
 American Freedom, and his fame shall be that of the pioneer in that 
 reformed Kepublican policy which shall have given to the world a restored 
 American Union. 
 
 "For Humanity sweeps onward — where, to-day, the martyr stands, 
 On the morrow crouches Judas, with the silver in his hands ; 
 Though to-day the stake is ready, and the lurid fagot burns, 
 All the world, upon the morrow, for its loved apostle mourns ; 
 While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe returns, 
 And gathers up the scattered ashes into History's cold urns." 
 
LiBRftR^orSSS 
 
 THE 
 
 CEISIS PAPEK8; 
 
 OR. 
 
 AMEEIOAN LIBERTY ON TEIAL. 
 
 Published in the SEMI- WEEKLY CLARION, at $2.00 per Annum. 
 
 TO TliE I>TJBX.IC- 
 
 A series of articles, designated the "Crisis Papers," written expressly for the 
 Clarion, by some of the most distinguished persons in the country ; — men who 
 stand before the public as leaders in the political, literary and scientific world, and 
 whose views on the respective subjects of which they treat cannot be otherwise than 
 interesting and instructive. The Public will observe tliat the list contains the 
 names of eminent orators, statesmen and writers, whose reputation for ability and 
 learning are already world-wide. 
 
 Contributions from such minds as these, at this important era in the history of 
 our coimtry, will exert an influence which cannot be otherwise than salutary and 
 potent in the moulding of public opinion, and in the formation of a high-toned 
 patriotism among the jjcople. Treating, as they will, on the salient points of our 
 past and present career, they will be invaluable to the present searcher after truth, 
 as well as the future student, who will find in these papers an abridged gazetteer of 
 the present epoch of our nation, and a vindication of the principles now on trial. 
 We would further state, that when this series— fifty-two in number — shall be com- 
 pleted, they will be neatly bound, bearing the title of the " Ckisis Papers ; or, 
 American Liberty on Trial, ' ' and a copy of the same presented to each person sub- 
 scribing before the first of May, at the bare cost of publication, thereby preserving 
 these papers as a great Standard National Work, without which no American library 
 will be complete. The work will be embellished, when bound, with the portraits 
 of a number of our leading men. 
 
 We are enabled to announce that the following well-known names are to be 
 among the number who are to contribute to these papers. Others equally eminent 
 will be announced in due season. 
 
 HENRY J. RAYMOND, 
 GOV. WM. GILPIN, 
 J. G. WHITTIER, 
 REV. JOHN PIERPONT, 
 P. M. WETMORE, 
 BAYARD TAYLOR, 
 WM. A. CROFUT, 
 GEN. GEO. P. MORRIS, 
 HON. DANIEL S. DICKINSON, 
 
 GEORGE P. 
 
 HON. HENRY C. CARY, 
 PROF. ELIAS PISSNER, 
 HON. CHAS. H. HASWELL, 
 J. D. GRISCOM, M. D. 
 REV. J. T. HEADLY, 
 M. D. LANDON, 
 REV. ROBERT BAIRD, 
 PARSON BROWNLOW, 
 WILLIAM C. BRYANT, 
 PUTNAM. 
 
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